To the reasonable folks:

A certain asshole here doesn't know shit--or the following:

1. How much I pay toward the principal.

2. That I don't have to pay a realtor's commission: (1) I could sell it as the owner--many do this every day. And (2), as I mentioned, I have two brokers in the family who could handle the transaction at no commission or a reduced commission.

3. What is happening in my neighborhood--other than what he reads online.

4. Has mistakenly assumed--among many other self-serving assumptions--that I'm making an argument for a larger trend in rising home sale prices when I'm actually just relaying factual information about what's happening with sales in my neighborhood and with my home's value.

Though there does seem to be some evidence of pockets of rising prices:

Chicago housing prices up
Chicago housing prices up 2.7% in July: index
September 30, 2009

http://www.suntimes.com/business/currency/1797604,CST-FIN-wallet30.article

(And, yes, the $8K credit is helping to fuel demand.)

So, in summary, what we have above is a grad school dropout, creepy bald-headed troll who stalks the Internet gathering information about people he disagrees with in an attempt to make himself feel relevant. You decide who's right.

9/30/2009 3:22:19 PM

Quote :

"So, in summary, what we have above is a grad school dropout student, creepy bald-headed troll who stalks the Internet gathering information about people he disagrees with in an attempt to make himself feel relevant."

9/30/2009 3:57:46 PM

Quote :

"How much I pay toward the principal."

Again, you are clueless as fuck about basic economic principles. How much you pay in principle - and I'll argue, it probably isn't much since you're full time Grad student, which begs, is your wife a sugar mama? - has nothing to do with what you said here

Quote :

"I could sell today and make money"

You might could do a FSBO and not have to pay any commission, but it's highly unlikely and certainly not the typical case. I didn't even factor in the taxes owed on the flip of the house.

Quote :

"That I don't have to pay a realtor's commission: (1) I could sell it as the owner--many do this every day. And (2), as I mentioned, I have two brokers in the family who could handle the transaction at no commission or a reduced commission"

Again, you don't know how it works with real estate. Your relatives could charge you 0% on the sell side and you'll still have to spend 2.4% to a buyers agent. In a buyers market, just how much luck do you think you're going to have selling a townhouse that looks like all the other townhouses in your neighborhood without being in the MLS system?

Quote :

"What is happening in my neighborhood--other than what he reads online."

I can certainly guess that people that want a certain unit in your 'hood that should be around 200k will gladly pay 210k for it if it means the buyer pays their closing costs (and the buyers will be happy to sale on a home they are about to be foreclosed on) AND they get the 8k credit AND their agents are pushing them to close for fear of soon to be rising interest rates. Are you telling me that your neighborhood is now in such demand (versus when you bought the place) that it has a 10% annualized return since late April?

Quote :

"4. Has mistakenly assumed--among many other self-serving assumptions--that I'm making an argument for a larger trend in rising home sale prices when I'm actually just relaying factual information about what's happening with sales in my neighborhood and with my home's value. "

Remind us all again then why you posted this in the impressive economy thread if you're not making an argument about...the impressive economy?

Wouldn't this better go in an "Impressive Cookslaws Neighborhood Thread"?

Quote :

"So, in summary, what we have above is a grad school dropout, "

How am I grad school dropout? I just enrolled this past summer after being away from school for 7 years making more money and buying more house than someone 50% older than me.

Quote :

"who stalks the Internet gathering information about people he disagrees with in an attempt to make himself feel relevant."

Uh, what? I wouldn't have to disagree with you if you weren't so fucking retarded.

Quote :

"Though there does seem to be some evidence of pockets of rising prices: "

As if this thread didn't make it painfully obvious, one data point isn't evidence of a trend.

I can understand that you just want to post whatever the fuck you want to post and it be law, but it doesn't work that way around here. Keep raging though, you wouldn't be nearly as fun to own (with real information, not trolling mind you) otherwise.

[Edited on September 30, 2009 at 4:12 PM. Reason : .]

9/30/2009 4:07:45 PM

Blah, blah, blabber! I'm a tumor!



[Edited on September 30, 2009 at 4:35 PM. Reason : principle]

9/30/2009 4:33:37 PM

Quote :

"This chart should give chills to anyone hoping that Americans will stop saving and start spending again. For one thing, we're way below the personal savings rate we saw in the early 70s, let alone the savings rate in the pre-Greenspan era. Plus, as David Goldman points out, demographics isn't on our side. With the recent wealth shock and the aging population, there are a lot of folks eager to hold on to every last dollar they've got."

9/30/2009 5:19:42 PM

^^^^

Boone 1

Hacksaw 0

9/30/2009 5:35:04 PM

Quote :

"This is what an economic strategy of pulling it forward looks like. In August, car buyers were going nuts with a $4,500 incentive to trade clunkers in for brand new cars. Many warned, of course, that these sales would simply end up decreasing future sales, getting us nowhere. Well, September's here, and... yeah. A monthly sales rate of over 14 million units annualized quickly fell to just above 9 million."

10/1/2009 5:39:57 PM

Quote :

"You're just an asshole who just wants to be shitty and who doesn't know what he's talking about other than what he reads on the "financial blogs.""

If I don't know what the fuck I am talking about, Robert Shiller doesn't either

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/09/30/qa-shiller-sees-5-years-of-stagnant-home-prices/

Quote :

"What are the main factors driving U.S. house prices? What could push them up, or cause another slump? Shiller: The main factor is the world economic crisis and the efforts of governments around the world to stimulate the economy. Parts of those efforts have been directed at the housing market. In the U.S., there is an 8,000 dollar first-time home buyer’s tax credit which expires at the end of November. That’s a reason for concern, as it comes to an end. Also, the Federal Reserve has a plan to buy $1.25 trillion worth of mortgage-backed securities to support the housing market. They are most of the way through the program and anticipate phasing it out at some time in 2010 - that’s another thing that will go away. We’ve yet to see how the housing market will continue. Part of the problem is that people are buying now rather than later. When later comes, there could be a downturn in the market."

I'm just a foaming moonbat idiot.

10/1/2009 7:28:03 PM

Quote :

"Today's jobs report was ugly by nearly every measure. There were huge job losses, income growth was weak, and the work week hit a record low again. And here's another depressing measure: The duration of time people spend unemployed. Today's chart measures the share of the labor force that has been unemployed at least 15 weeks. As you can see, we're in uncharted territory."

10/2/2009 6:23:45 PM

Implementation of an inverse tax on profit per unit input for every company would fix everything.

10/2/2009 9:30:33 PM

implementing a policy of you shutting the fuck up would fix this thread.

10/2/2009 9:57:20 PM

Bailout cop: Treasury fibbed to save economy

Quote :

"WASHINGTON (CNNMoney.com) -- A government watchdog says federal officials weren't entirely honest with the public about the health of the first 9 financial firms that got federal bailouts, according to a report released Monday. Bailout special inspector general Neil Barofsky says in an audit that Treasury Department officials painted an overly rosy picture, creating "unrealistic expectations," when they called the first bailout banks "healthy" institutions that would be able to lend more with government help. "It is not our intent to suggest that government officials should make public their concerns over the financial health of individual institutions, but rather that government officials should be particularly careful, even in a time of crisis, of describing their actions (and the rationales for such actions) in an accurate manner," the report stated."

http://money.cnn.com/2009/10/05/news/economy/bailout_report/index.htm


Not that it matters, TARP was going to be passed no matter what the voters said, but it is good to know that the government has our best interests in mind when it institutionally lies to the American public.

10/5/2009 6:37:01 AM

Quote :

"Amazingly, massive printing by governments around the world hasn't resulted in massive inflation -- at least in terms of crazy price movements. But don't get complacent. From Kyle Bass's latest investor letter comes this chart of the US monetary base, and obviously the big, gold-shaped "excess reserves" spike stands out. This is basically cash that banks are hoarding. As he notes, if this V-shaped recovery materializes as the market expects, the banks start lending, inflation lies in wait, and will roar back to life."

10/5/2009 6:23:39 PM

Quote :

"In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar. Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars. The plans, confirmed to The Independent by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong, may help to explain the sudden rise in gold prices, but it also augurs an extraordinary transition from dollar markets within nine years. "

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/the-demise-of-the-dollar-1798175.html

10/6/2009 7:09:13 AM

FWIW, here is a pretty solid rebuttal to the hype of the link I posted above ^

Quote :

"All of this talk about what oil is priced in is a needless red herring. In an on again off again situation Saudi Arabia Won't Include U.S. Dollar in OPEC Talks. My Comment: This is of course total nonsense. Revenues have not diminished one iota over three years because of the decline of the dollar. However, the value of currency reserves has diminished in that time frame. These are separate and distinct items and it is extremely important to not confuse the two."

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2007/11/oil-pricing-unit-red-herring.html

10/6/2009 8:43:11 PM

Quote :

"Today's chart shows not only that high-yield junk debt (HYG) has decimated safe debt (LQD) since the market lows, but that in recent days the situation has gotten really extreme. Investment grade debt has started to break down over the past couple of weeks, clearly breaking an uptrend, while the risky stuff keeps on powering higher."

10/12/2009 10:40:53 PM

US economists declare recession over - 10 hours 14 minutes ago

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/10/13/2712430.htm

10/13/2009 5:46:04 AM

the same economists who told us we weren't in a recession in the first place?

10/13/2009 4:29:28 PM

Quote :

"The growth of government debt has "decoupled" from the rest of the economy. While households, businesses and the financial sector reduce leverage, public sector debt growth has simply exploded. As you can see from the chart, every non-governmental sector of the economy is now in debt reduction mode while governmental debt is growing a breakneck speeds."

10/13/2009 6:25:05 PM

Quote :

"Unemployment continues to tick upward. Small businesses forgo profits on two-for-one deals just to keep the doors open. But we're in recovery. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the guy who couldn't get around to paying his own taxes, says so. After all, government is doing all it can to speed the recovery, isn't it? "Fed keeps key rate near zero," the business-page headline screamed on September 24. Low interest rates should get things "stimulated," shouldn't they? Then, three days later, over a Washington dateline, "Jobless benefits extension backed: Lawmakers voted 331-83 to extend jobless benefits by 13 weeks in 27 states, including Nevada, where the unemployment rate is above 8.5 percent." That should help, right?"

http://mises.org/story/3764

10/14/2009 11:58:07 AM

Frontline: The Warning

On air and online October 20, 2009 at 9:00pm

Quote :

"In the devastating aftermath of the economic meltdown, FRONTLINE sifts through the ashes for clues about why it happened and examines critical moments when it might have gone much differently. Looking back into the 1990s, veteran FRONTLINE producer/director Michael Kirk (Inside the Meltdown, Breaking the Bank) discovers early warnings of the crash, reveals an intense battle among high-ranking members of the Clinton administration and uncovers a concerted effort not to regulate the emerging, highly-complex and lucrative derivatives markets that would become the ticking time bomb within the American economy."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/

[Edited on October 15, 2009 at 7:30 AM. Reason : .]

10/15/2009 7:30:05 AM

[quote]TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, is a year old now. On September 19, 2008, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced the need for a $700 billion program to purchase toxic assets held by banks to prevent a financial meltdown, and after some modification Congress rapidly approved TARP on October 3. Looking back after a year, was TARP necessary? Did it work?

The answers are No, and No.[

. . .

Was it necessary to appropriate $700 billion to buy toxic assets? In hindsight, we can see the answer is No, because the money wasn't used that way. Are we any better off for having used it instead to partially nationalize financial institutions and manufacturing firms? All TARP did for Chrysler and GM was delay their bankruptcies for six months and buy the government its ownership interest.

As for the banks, it may be that some of them would have failed without the money, but that is not a bad thing. When firms take risks, they must balance the potential profits from success against the potential losses from failure, and the TARP support removes the last part of that balancing act. There may have been some dislocations in the short run from bank failures, but in the long run allowing them to go under preserves the incentive structure that fuels a market economy./quote]

http://mises.org/story/3770

10/20/2009 11:03:35 AM

U.S. to Order Steep Pay Cuts at Firms That Got Most Aid
October 21, 2009

Quote :

"WASHINGTON — Responding to the growing furor over the paychecks of executives at companies that received billions of dollars in federal bailouts, the Obama administration will order the companies that received the most aid to deeply slash the compensation to their highest paid executives, an official involved in the decision said on Wednesday. Under the plan, which will be announced in the next few days by the Treasury Department, the seven companies that received the most assistance will have to cut the cash payouts to their 25 best-paid executives by an average of about 90 percent from last year. For many of the executives, the cash they would have received will be replaced by stock that they will be restricted from selling immediately. And for all executives the total compensation, which includes bonuses, will drop, on average, by about 50 percent. The companies are Citigroup, Bank of America, the American International Group, General Motors, Chrysler and the financing arms of the two automakers."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/business/22pay.html

Can the Obama administration possibly meddle more in private affairs?

10/21/2009 4:27:52 PM

Private Affairs?? Those companies? Really??

[Edited on October 21, 2009 at 5:10 PM. Reason : .]

10/21/2009 5:09:56 PM

^ Yes, really. Do you dispute this?

10/22/2009 12:43:16 PM

Perhaps if they didn't need to take billions of dollars in gov. assistance, on top of the gov. assistance they've been getting since the end of the great depression, so that we all wouldn't lose our money, they wouldn't have to worry about the people trying to limit their compensations.

[Edited on October 22, 2009 at 1:58 PM. Reason : ]

10/22/2009 1:57:43 PM

^ So, any entity that accepts government money gives up its right to have compensation determined by private negotiations and contracts? Is that really what your stupid ass is saying?

10/22/2009 2:24:17 PM

Fed proposes to police bank pay for 1st time
Trying to curb excessive risk taking which led to the financial crisis
updated 1 hour, 14 minutes ago

Quote :

"Unlike a Treasury plan to slash pay at certain companies that were bailed out with large sums of taxpayer money, the Fed proposal would cover thousands of banks, including many that never received a bailout."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33434209/ns/business-us_business

Sweet Jesus--when and where will this shit end?

10/22/2009 2:59:07 PM

Quote :

"So, any entity that accepts government money gives up its right to have compensation determined by private negotiations and contracts? Is that really what your stupid ass is saying?"

That's pretty much correct. When the capital required to run the company is no longer coming from actual revenue, but rather, from the government (the public), I don't think it counts as a private entity.

This is the problem with bailouts. If the taxpayers are paying for the running of a company, how do we determine how much its employees should be paid? Under normal circumstances, payroll amounts would be determined by how much profit that company is making. But, when the company is partially owned by the government, there are no real profits.

If anything, they should have just gutted these companies, leaving only the parts necessary to operate and prevent "financial collapse." Of course, trying to do that is completely absurd. That's why bailouts are a bad idea, no matter how you spin it.

10/22/2009 3:22:55 PM

^^^ So you're saying a major stakeholder in a company shouldn't have any right to have a say in how that company is run?

10/22/2009 3:31:09 PM

i do like how the opec countries were all "oooh oil prices are high? well what can we do about it? we don't want them high either!" and now they are all "oh oil prices are too low! let's all band together again tighter, change primary money, make our own money variant that we can tie the cost of oil to directly if we want and immediately jack the price back up through the roof!"

but of jackasses, we need to get off of oil as a primary fuel fucking fast, none of this dicking around like we have been doing, we are the 3rd largest oil producer in the world we make enough for what we could use if we could come up with a alternative to oil for diesel and gas...

switchgrass to ethanol and biologically produced oil (via engineered organisms) are the road to go down. more nuclear and completely closed loop coal for electric power (supplemented by a bigger consumer solar grid) would make a massive dent in our daily oil requirements...

10/22/2009 3:34:27 PM

we have way fucking more problems than trying to reduce oil dependence

frankly, i can't wait until we are back dependent on oil hardcore, at least that means the economy is picking up.

oil will remain low for awhile, the economy is no fucking place near recovery.

10/22/2009 11:23:13 PM

^^^ No, not necessarily--you should be more specific. Do you even understand the difference in a "stakeholder" and a shareholder, you stooge?

And now the Fed is proposing to slash pay at hundreds if not thousands of banks that DID NOT receive any bailout money. Does this proposal meet with the approval of you drones?

10/23/2009 4:46:24 AM

Quote :

"And now the Fed is proposing to slash pay at hundreds if not thousands of banks that DID NOT receive any bailout money. Does this proposal meet with the approval of you drones?"

That's entirely different than slashing the pay of CEOs at companies where the taxpayer is footing the bill, though. In fact, I don't even know how it would be legal or possible to slash the pay of CEOs in companies that haven't received assistance.

I like how anyone that disagrees with you, or points out an obvious flaw in your argument, is a "drone." Sounds like something Obama said recently: Democrats think for themselves, but Republicans just do what they're told.

10/23/2009 8:39:57 AM

this one radio guy had a interesting argument going on about how the root of all the economic issues comes from a act passed in '93 that was based on a horribly flawed study (data was fake or just plain wrong (negative interest rates etc)) that set up a bank rating system and then a social agenda about providing loans for low income neighborhoods. he draws it back through to subprime loans and derivatives which following his logic compounded the inevitable decline of the housing market into a housing collapse and since so many other loans and other monies had become attached to or influenced by this shit it caused a massive collapse overall...

basically it was a result of flawed poorly executed social engineering (redistribution of wealth, which i have yet to really see work)

then the gov't was able to swoop in and pretty much take control over large portions of companies that couldn't handle a economic down turn, which are the first shaky steps towards a completely government run system....


btw the government sucks at running shit effectively no matter who is in charge

Quote :

"Democrats think for themselves, but Republicans just do what they're told."

nothing like blanket generalizations...

10/23/2009 10:26:39 AM

Just to clarify, that actually is something Obama said.

Quote :

"OBAMA: Sometimes Democrats can be their own worst enemies. Democrats are an opinionated bunch. You know the other side, they just kind of do what they’re told. Democrats, ya’ll thinkin’ for yourselves. I like that in you, but it’s time for us to make sure that we finish the job here, we are this close and we’ve got to be unified."

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2009/10/22/obama_republicans_do_what_theyre_told.html

10/23/2009 10:32:15 AM

So, here is a question. What effect will falling job availability have on women deciding to stay home instead of finding a second job for the family?


Also, will the government insist on preventing deflation (not that there is any risk of it right now) despite the fact that a falling price rate would allow single families a better standard of living. What would be the repercussions if deflation did occur?

10/23/2009 1:11:11 PM

Divide and conquer
October 21, 2009

Quote :

"There are four distinct factions among the groups that make up the right of center majority. The first are the single issue voters. The Democrats quickly learned that mere words well delivered would successfully affect these voters. For example, in the most recent election, Barack Obama, an unabashed promoter of unfettered abortion rights and gun control proclaimed himself to be a Christian seeking to make abortion rare and against all gun control legislation. Because of his ability to deliver a speech and sound convincing, Mr. Obama won the Catholic vote and a much higher percentage of the evangelical and gun voters than any of the previous six Democratic nominees for president. After all, since there is no difference between the Parties, he couldn't possibly be so bad. The second faction is the fiscal conservative, but social liberals. Recall during the campaign Senator Obama's move to the center by pledging not to raise taxes on 95% of the people, and to control spending. There was nothing in his background to substantiate these promises and these lies were deliberate. As there is no difference between the parties, these voters went with the candidate for the House, Senate or the White House that said the right thing well. The third and fourth groups are even more easily manipulated. These are the ideological purists and leave-me-alone fundamentalists. These factions are constantly on alert to any real or perceived drifting from their established set of beliefs, be it behavior or policy. If a Republican member of Congress or the President strayed from any of a series of tenets, then the entire party rather than the individual is blamed. The key for the Democrats is to get these folks to stay home or vote for a conservative sounding Democrat to punish the sinners."

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/divide_and_conquer_1.html

The fact that some of you think of conservatives as a monolith shows how ignorant you truly are. There is a major debate going on right now in the Republican Party and the conservative movement in general about fundamental philosophy and direction.

10/23/2009 1:15:56 PM

Quote :

"So, here is a question. What effect will falling job availability have on women deciding to stay home instead of finding a second job for the family?"

I don't see how they would be directly effected, until their husband loses their job. Then they're both going to have work whatever minimum wage job they can get just to pay the bills. The funny thing is that when this happens, it'll make it appear (by government numbers, I can't remember the specific one that they always use that excludes part-timers that can't find anything else)

Quote :

"Also, will the government insist on preventing deflation (not that there is any risk of it right now) despite the fact that a falling price rate would allow single families a better standard of living. What would be the repercussions if deflation did occur?"

Well, I'm going to assume that by deflation you mean a decrease in prices. I usually think of inflation is an increase in the money supply, and deflation as the opposite. By those definitions, inflation is the only thing that's happening, and it's kind of crazy that people still think deflation is a possibility at this point.

I really don't see how there could be much of a decrease in prices. There could be small price fluxations downward, maybe. To entertain the thought though, deflation almost seems like it would be a good thing at this point. The stock market would naturally go down, but that's going to go down anyway.

10/23/2009 1:23:12 PM

Quote :

"In fact, I don't even know how it would be legal or possible to slash the pay of CEOs in companies that haven't received assistance."

d357r0y3r

And yet this move is being proposed and some in our society actually support it.

10/23/2009 1:31:59 PM

Oh, I don't doubt that some have proposed it and some support it. People make a lot of crazy suggestions. I'm just making the distinction between controlling wages in a company that is partially owned by the public, and controlling wages in an entirely private company. The latter would be entirely unconstitutional, but that hasn't stopped congress before.

10/23/2009 1:45:30 PM

^ Isn't the education system "partially owned by the public"?

10/23/2009 1:47:46 PM

Yeah, and aren't those wages determined by public officials?

10/23/2009 1:49:04 PM

^ When last I checked, there is no "pay czar" actively seeking to "slash" or "clawback" the compensation of education administrators and professors--and let's face it, many are grossly overpaid.

10/23/2009 1:52:02 PM

Well, education is more of a state thing. I don't know enough about the specifics of the school system to point to exactly who is determining teacher pay, but I guarantee it's a number of state employees making the decision. It was federal money that paid for these bailouts, so I would expect federal government employees to make that decision, rather than state employees. I think it's a very different situation.

I think a better analogy would be if a private college could no longer operate without losing money, and the federal government came in and started paying their expenses. Would that still be a private school? If the contracts said that professors were to be paid 1.5 million a year, would it be up the government to provide public money to cover those costs? Or would the federal government be able to change things around because they're now the ones paying to operate the college?

10/23/2009 2:00:33 PM

Quote :

"I don't see how they would be directly effected, until their husband loses their job."

I'm talking more of a long term shift away from female employment. Since generally the mother chooses to stay home from work, if work is generally harder to find, families may wind up with a mother at home to save on child care expenses. With the jobs equilibrium point already set lower, this might be a shift required to provide stability.

Quote :

"Well, I'm going to assume that by deflation you mean a decrease in prices."

That is how deflation is generally defined, yes.

Quote :

"The stock market would naturally go down, but that's going to go down anyway."

according to some measures, it has been stagnant for a while now.



. . .



Found this quote interesting:

Quote :

""These banks that were too big to fail are now bigger," Barofsky said. "Government has sponsored and supported several mergers that made them larger and that guarantee, that implicit guarantee of moral hazard, the idea that the government is not going to let these banks fail, which was implicit a year ago, is now explicit, we've said it.... -- Neil Barofsky, TARP Inspector General"

10/23/2009 11:15:43 PM

n/m

[Edited on October 27, 2009 at 9:24 AM. Reason : .,.]

10/27/2009 9:23:39 AM

Quote :

"If anyone mentions the just-released 3.5% U.S. third quarter GDP growth, just throw this chart in their face. Cash for Clunkers clearly distorted the U.S. economic figures in an unsustainable fashion. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), motor vehicle output spiked a seasonally-adjusted 157.6% quarter on quarter. This is completely unprecedented. Vehicle output is clearly going off a cliff next quarter. The question will be how low can the blue line below go. Next quarter, we won't just be returning to business as usual for auto output. Don't forget that Cash for Clunkers pulled future auto demand, ie. some of Q4 demand, into Q3. Thus Q4 is likely to be very weak since many people who planned to buy a car in Q4 probably took advantage of Clunkers and bought in Q3. To put this into GDP terms, according to the BEA the spike you see below added 1.66% to the U.S. GDP growth figure reported. Thus without it, GDP growth would have been only 1.89% (3.5% - 1.66%) in Q3. Now imagine if next quarter the blue line below goes down into negative territory as it did just two quarters ago. Next quarter, not only are we unlikely to get Q3's boost, but motor vehicle output data could subtract from GDP as well. So watch out for the cliff..."

10/29/2009 5:46:29 PM

Berkshire to Buy Burlington Northern for $34 Billion
November 3, 2009

http://tinyurl.com/yct28ze

Looks like some companies are doing quite well.

11/3/2009 9:14:41 AM

Quote :

"Let's hope that Bernanke doesn't keep playing by Japan's suicidal 1991 interest rate playbook for too much longer. The chart below shows Japan's 1991 - 2006 interest rates on top of our current U.S. interest rate cycle. While Mr. Bernanke is trying to temporarily fight deflationary forces in the economy after the massive housing bust, don't forget that Japan's low interest rate policy lasted far longer than they had initially expected. And they lost a decade of economic growth by not allowing prices to fall when they should have. If we follow Japan, our rates would stay low until 2022. Sure, the U.S. dynamics are different. Yet if Bernanke follows the Japan model for just a quarter as long as Japan did, while we might not lose a decade of growth, we might set off a decade of dollar-destroying inflation."

11/4/2009 7:13:59 PM