Posts Tagged
‘production’
by ilene - October 29th, 2010 3:18 am
Courtesy of Gordon T Long of Tipping Points
In September 2008 the US came to a fork in the road. The Public Policy decision to not seize the banks, to not place them in bankruptcy court with the government acting as the Debtor-in-Possession (DIP), to not split them up by selling off the assets to successful and solvent entities, set the world on the path to global currency wars.
By lowering interest rates and effectively guaranteeing a weak dollar through undisciplined fiscal policy, the US ignited an almost riskless global US$ Carry Trade and triggered an uncontrolled Currency War with the mercantilist, export driven Asian economies. We are now debasing the US dollar with reckless spending and money printing with the policies of Quantitative Easing (QE) and the expectations of QE II. Both are nothing more than effectively defaulting on our obligations to sound money policy and a “strong US$”. Meanwhile with a straight face we deny that this is our intention.
It’s called debase, default and deny.
Though prior to the 2008 financial crisis our largest banks had become casino like speculators with public money lacking in fiduciary responsibility, our elected officials bailed them out. Our leadership placed America and the world unknowingly (knowingly?) on a preordained destructive path because it was politically expedient and the easiest way out of a difficult predicament. By kicking the can down the road our political leadership, like the banks, avoided their fiduciary responsibility. Similar to a parent wanting to be liked and a friend to their children they avoided the difficult discipline that is required at certain critical moments in life. The discipline to make America swallow a needed pill. The discipline to ask Americans to accept a period of intense adjustment. A period that by now would be starting to show signs of success versus the abyss we now find ourselves staring into. A future that is now significantly worse and with potentially fatal pain still to come.
Unemployed Americans, the casualties of the financial crisis wrought by the banks, witness the same banks declaring record earnings while these banks refuse to lend. When the banks once more are caught with their fingers in the cookie jar with falsified robo-signing mortgage title fraud, they again look for the compliant parent to look the other way. Meanwhile the US debt levels and spending associated with protecting these failed…
Tags: America, Asian economies, Bankrupt, Banks, Bernanke, bonds, bonuses, CDOs, CDSs, consumers, Currencies, CURRENCY WARS, debt, default, deficits, deflation, Dollar, earnings, fiat currencies, Financial Crisis, financial innovations, financial warfare, foreign central banks, Geithner, global banking industry, global demand, global economy, Gold, inflation, Interest Rates, lending, Michael Hudson, middle class, mortgage fraud, Mortgages, production, QE2, quantitative easing, Regulatory arbitrage, robo-signing, securitization products, SIVs, solvency, speculation, Taxes, toxic assets, unemployment, war-spending
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by ilene - September 10th, 2010 9:04 pm
Courtesy of Charles Hugh Smith, Of Two Minds
Conventional wisdom holds that today’s global financial crises are political rather than systemic to Neoliberal Global State Capitalism.
It is tempting to place the blame for the U.S. economy’s deep woes at the feet of our corrupt, captured political system of governance and those who captured it via concentrated wealth and power. But that would avoid looking at the crises unfolding in global capitalism itself.
From the "progressive" ideology, the "problem" is inequality of income and wealth, and the "solution" is to take more of the wealth and income away from "the rich" (i.e. those who make more than I do) and redistribute to the "have-less" citizenry.
From the "conservative" ideology, the "problem" is that the Central State, in cahoots with public unions and Corporate Overlords, grabs an ever-larger share of the national income to redistribute to reward its cronies and favorites. In so doing, it mis-allocates the nation’s capital away from productive investments and strangles free enterprise, the only real engine of wealth.
There is of course a grain of truth in each point of view. As I describe in Survival+, there is a positive feedback in the process of concentrating wealth and thus political power: the more wealth one acquires, themore political influence one can purchase, which then enables the accumulation of even more wealth as the State/Elite partnership showers benefits and monoplies on those who fund elections, i.e. the wealthy.
This process eventually leads to over-reach, when the nation’s capital and income are so concentrated that the economy become precariously imbalanced and thus vulernerable to devolution and collapse. Returns on favoritism and capital become marginal, and it take more complexity and capital to wring ever-smaller profits and power from ever-greater investments.
It is also true that the State and the Power Elites mask their massive redistribution to the wealthy and powerful behind politically popular redistributions to the lower-income and/or unproductive citizenry, garnering their loyalty and complicity.
It is also true that as the State and its private-sector Elites channel an ever-larger percentage of the national income to the Central State and its fiefdoms, both public and private, then the productive class suffers a decline in energy, wealth and income. It is also true that the State makes its investment decisions based on favoritism (lobbies, political…
Tags: "power elites", conservative ideology, corporations, corruption, Economy, Energy, favortism, free enterprise, free market, INEQUALITY, neoliberal global capitalism, political system, production, Public Unions, redistribution of wealth, resources
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by ilene - July 10th, 2010 10:29 pm
Courtesy of Robert Reich
President Obama has vowed to double U.S. exports within the next five years. That’s because exports are critical for rebooting the American economy. It’s clear American consumers can’t get the economy going on their own. They can’t restart the jobs machine. They’ve run out of money and credit.
It’s not just that one out of four Americans is unemployed or underemployed (working part-time, overqualified, or at a lower wage than before). More significantly, the Great Recession burst the housing bubble that had let American consumers turn their homes into ATMs. Now the cash machines are closed.
So the Administration figures foreign consumers will have to fill the gap.
Problem is, most other economies also relied on American consumers. Remember the trade gap? Americans used to be the world’s biggest and most reliable customers – sucking in high-tech gadgets assembled in China, car parts from Japan, shirts and shoes from Southeast Asia, and precision instruments from Germany.
With American consumers pulling back, these other economies have also been slowing down. Their unemployment is rising.
Last week I attended a conference with global business executives. When I asked them where they expected to find new customers to replace Americans who are pulling back, they all said China and India and quoted me the same number: 800 million new middle-class consumers from these and other fast-developing countries over the next decade.
Yes, but. As of now China and India are still relying on net exports to fuel their growth. Even if you think their middle classes will eventually become so big and rich they can buy everything these nations will be able to produce, that doesn’t mean they’ll also buy what the rest of the world produces.
Yes, global companies will do wonderfully well. General Motors is well on the way to selling more cars in China than it does in the U.S. But American workers won’t get the jobs, and nor will workers in Europe, Japan, or the rest of the world. GM makes the cars it sells to Chinese consumers in China.
Meanwhile, the productive capacities of China and India will continue to grow: More workers, more factories, more high-tech equipment, more offices. The buying power of their middle classes will have to expand rapidly just to catch up with what these nations will be able…
Tags: American consumer, great recession, Obama, production, protectionism, Robert Reich, Trade War
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by ilene - June 1st, 2010 2:09 pm
Courtesy of The Pragmatic Capitalist
Signs of weakness in the global economy were not apparent in this morning’s ISM report. Equities were set to tumble 1% this morning after weaker than expected data in China and continued concerns in Europe, but turned around on the ISM’s release. Econoday detailed the strength of the report:
“Robust month-to-month growth for new orders and employment highlight another very strong ISM manufacturing report. New orders held steady at 65.7, a reading well over breakeven 50 and the third in a row over 60. Employment index was last above 60 back in May in 2004. May’s reading came in at 59.8 for a 1.3 point gain to indicate significant acceleration in hiring.
Other readings include strength for production, backlogs, export orders and continued delays for deliveries. Input prices continue to show significant pressure. The activity in production appears to be drawing inventories which points to a rising necessity for inventory restocking and a future boost for production and employment.
This report is very positive and should help bolster the optimists who say the U.S. economy is on the mend.”
Robert Ore, chairman of the ISM Manufacturing Business Survey Committee is quite confident in the strength of the recovery:
“The manufacturing sector grew for the 10th consecutive month during May. The rate of growth as indicated by the PMI is driven by continued strength in new orders and production. Employment continues to grow as manufacturers have added to payrolls for six consecutive months. The recovery continues to broaden as 16 of 18 industries report growth. There are a number of reports, particularly in the tech sector, of shortages of components; this is the result of excessive inventory de-stocking during the downturn.”
Econoday: Definition
The ISM manufacturing composite index is a diffusion index calculated from five of the eleven sub-components of a monthly survey of purchasing managers at roughly 300 manufacturing firms from 21 industries in all 50 states. The survey queries purchasing managers about the general direction of production, new orders, order backlogs, their own inventories, customer inventories, employment, supplier deliveries, exports, imports, and prices. The five components of the composite index are new orders, production, employment, supplier deliveries, and inventories (their own, not customer inventories). The five components are equally weighted. The questions are qualitative rather than quantitative; that is, they ask about the general
…
Tags: backlogs, export orders, global economy, inventory restocking, ISM manufacturing, production
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by ilene - March 15th, 2010 12:58 pm
Courtesy of James Howard Kunstler
Driving down the broad avenues of Cleveland, Ohio, was like flipping through the pages of a picture book about the rise and fall of our industrial empire. Where demolitions had not removed things — a lot was gone — stood the residue of a society so different from ours that you felt momentarily transported to another planet where a different race of beings had gone about their business.
Among the qualities most visible in the recent ruins of that lost society is the secure confidence expressed in its buildings. Even the most modest factory or business establishment built before the 20th century included decorations and motifs devised for no other reason but to be beautiful -- towers, swags, medallions, cartouches — as if to state we are joined proudly in a great enterprise to make good things happen in this world. This was true not just of Cleveland, of course, but the whole nation, for a while anyway.
Equally arresting are the changes visible in the collective demeanor from the mid-20th century, especially after the Second World War, when the adolescent panache of a rising economy had morphed into the grinding force of a place devoted to the production of anything. The memory of the Great Depression lingered like a metabolic disorder, and the spirit of the place was no longer caught up in the muscular exuberance of self-discovery but the sheer determination to stay powerful and alive. This phase didn’t last long.
By the 1970s, signs of a new illness were clear. Production was moving someplace else, incomes and household security with it. An existential pall settled over the city as ominous symptoms of waning vitality showed up in the organs of production. Steel-making and car-making staggered. Even the Cuyahoga river caught on fire, as if fate was a practical joke. Major retail was moving elsewhere — to the suburban outlands — where so many of the people who worked in the downtown towers had already fled. The population that remained in the city center was made of recently uprooted agricultural quasi-serfs who had only just come up to the city a generation before to make better livings in the factories that were all of a sudden shutting down. It seemed like a kind of swindle and they were understandably angry about…
Tags: Cleveland, economic development, Economy, James Howard Kunstler, Jobs, production, society, technology, the Great Depression
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by ilene - January 22nd, 2010 11:13 am
Courtesy of Edward Harrison at Credit Writedowns
The Big Picture has picked up on what appears to be an interesting development over at the NBER’s site. It seems like they are hedging there bets on a possible double dip recession beginning in late 2010 or 2011.
As you may know, the NBER is the organization which is responsible for the monthly dating of recessions in the United States. Back in May 2008, when Pollyannas were denying the recession, I wrote this prediction:
The NBER does not define a recession in terms of two consecutive quarters of decline in real GDP. Rather, a recession is a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales. For more information, see the latest announcement on how the NBER’s Business Cycle Dating Committee chooses turning points in the Economy and its latest memo, dated 07/17/03.
-NBER
So, you’ve got to look at:
- GDP
- income
- employment
- production and
- retail sales
…All the major signs of recession are there. It probably began in Dec. 2007 or Jan. 2008. The question is how long and how deep.
-US Recession Signals, May 2008
This turned out to be right on the money when the beginning of the recession was finally dated in December 2008. Now the question is when did – or when will – it end.
There has been a lot of conflicting evidence in regards to this fake, stimulus-induced recovery we are now witnessing. NBER committee member Robert Gordon of Northwestern University made statements this past Spring suggesting he sees an early recovery dating (see Jobless claims may signal the end is near from April 2009). But Martin Feldstein, another NBER dating committee member, is holding out. He said last year:
[M]y reading of the evidence does not agree with that of those who claim that … a sustained cyclical recovery is likely to begin within the next few months. … But, although
…
Tags: Employment, GDP, income, NBER, production, Recession, retail sales
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by ilene - September 21st, 2009 4:10 pm
…
Tags: capitalism, consumers, debt, Economy, James Howard Kunstler, mortgage debt, Original sin, production, suburban sprawl economy, suburbia
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February 11th, 2012 8:20 pm
Submitted by Mark Hanna
Courtesy of MarketMontage. View original post here.
Damn. Two (MJ and Whitney) of the big 4 of the 80s gone – Madonna and Prince remain. Probably the most well known Star Spangled Banner ever…
Disclosure Notice
Any securities mentioned on this page are not held by the author in his personal portfolio. Securities mentioned may or may not be held by the author in the mutual fund he manages, the Paladin Long Short Fund (PALFX). For a list of the aforementioned fund's holdings at the end of the prior quarter, visit the Paladin Funds website at http://www.paladinfunds.com/holdings/blog
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February 11th, 2012 8:05 pm
Courtesy of ZeroHedge. View original post here.
Submitted by Tyler Durden.
We have posted various extracts from this piece from Credit Suisse previously. We will post from it again, because, to loosely paraphrase Lewis Black, it bears reposting... especially in the context of the latest and greatest Greek "bailout" (of Europe's bankers), which incidentally, will achieve nothing and merely bring the country one step closer to a military coup and/or civil war.
The flaw
The market is essentially proceeding on the assumption, as we see it, that banks’ capital requirements can be met organically, through earnings and deleveraging. We ...
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February 11th, 2012 6:46 pm
It's Well Past Time for Plan Z
Courtesy of The Automatic Earth
Mario Draghi captured the utter ineptitude of him and every other Eurocrat out there when he said the following at today’s press conference in response to a question about a Greek exit: “To have a Plan B means defeat already. I am confident that all the pieces of this will fall in the proper places.”
Most 5-year old children in pre-school have already been told not to believe that they can always win and that “winning isn’t everything”, but Draghi & Co. still refuse to consider the possibility of failure even as it is staring them in the face. What’s really disturbing is that the stakes here are obviously much, much higher than they are o...
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February 11th, 2012 5:35 pm
Courtesy of Doug Short.
Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
It's interesting to watch some of the terms bandied about in headline news. For example, the LA Times headline reads S&P says student loan debt could be next financial bubble.
Next? Could Be?
What with the word "next"? Also what's with the words "could be"? Without a doubt student loans are in a bubble and have been for many years. The source of the problem, as it always is with financial bubbles, is cheap money, loans to nearly anyone, and in the case of student loans, no way to discharge the debt, even in bankruptcy.
From the article:
"Student-loan debt has ballooned and m...
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February 11th, 2012 12:00 am
Top 5 RisersStockRatingAnalysis
ICABUYThe projected value for Empresas ICA is still rising quickly even though past earnings have already improved significantly.
XBUYThe projected value for US Steel is still rising quickly even though past earnings have already improved significantly.
FEICBUYProjected value continues to rise for FEI while long term increases in earnings growth are also becoming more widely expected.
ASBCBUYMany analysts are expecting higher than previously expected long term growth from Associated Bancorp, and its near-term earnings outlook is also improving....
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February 10th, 2012 6:20 pm
Courtesy of Benzinga.
The following are the M&A deals, rumors and chatter circulating on Wall Street for Friday February 10, 2012:
Actuant Acquires Jeyco Pty
The Deal:
Actuant (NYSE: ATU) announced Friday that it has acquired Jeyco Pty Ltd (“Jeyco”). Headquartered near Perth, Australia, Jeyco designs and provides specialized mooring, rigging and towing systems and services to the offshore oil & gas industry in Australia and other international markets. Additionally, its highly engineered products are used in a variety of applications for other markets including cyclone mooring and marine, defense and mining tow systems. Jeyco generates annual revenues of approximately $20 million.
Actuant shares closed at $27.33 Friday, a loss of 0.18% on average volume.
...
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February 10th, 2012 4:11 pm
Courtesy of John Nyaradi.
Greece was “saved” for less than 24 hours but now major ETFs around the world skid into the weekend on Greek fears
After wangling for a week or more, Greek took their new deal to the European Ministers meeting, only to have it promptly rejected and so as we go into the weekend, major global markets and ETFs have again hit the skids on Greece.
After two years of wangling, the European zone is demanding yet more and deeper cuts for Greece to qualify for the next round of bailout loans that will keep the country from going bankrupt on March 20th.
Major European and United States ETF responded negatively to the new developments:
SPDR Dow Jones Industrial ETF (NYSEARCA:...
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February 10th, 2012 1:40 pm
Reminder: David is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.
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February 10th, 2012 1:22 pm
Today’s tickers: TRLG, KR & IGT
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February 6th, 2012 9:02 am
Reminder: OpTrader is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.
This post is for all our live virtual trade ideas and daily comments. Please click on "comments" below to follow our live discussion. All of our current trades are listed in the spreadsheet below, with entry price (1/2 in and All in), and exit prices (1/3 out, 2/3 out, and All out).
We also indicate our stop, which is most of the time the "5 day moving average". All trades, unless indicated, are front-month ATM options.
Please feel free to participate in the discussion and ask any questions you might have about this virtual portfolio, by clicking on the "comments" link right below.
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February 5th, 2012 5:19 am
NEW: Elliott and Ilene are available to chat with Members regarding topics presented in SWW, comments are found below each post.
Here's the latest Stock World Weekly, called "The Relentless Pursuit of Meaningless Metrics."
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January 30th, 2012 7:22 am
Here is a quick update of past trades and our current position.
AA Money
No trade this week as we wait for AA to settle. Phil remarked last week that AA seemed overvalued. In the meantime, it looks like we might have to roll our Feb 9 calls. Good thing we sold only 5 of them against our position.
Last week P&L - 310.00
We lost ground last week, but we still have 11 months to sell premium!
FAS Money
Very good week for FAS Money as we benefited from the large amount of premium sold the previous week. We covered most of the shorts in advance of the Fed speech, but sold another set of options on Wednesday after the speech - 2 FAS calls that expired worthless on Friday, 2 FAS put that we are still holding and 2 FAZ put that we bought back for a profit on Friday. A late stick comparable to last week's almost gave us problems at the end of the day though!
Last week P&L - $4277.00
IWM Money
A decent week in this virtual portfo...
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January 18th, 2012 1:09 am
Reminder: Pharmboy is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.
Finding new and exciting Biotech companies that target novel mechanisms is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Sure there are many companies working on cutting edge science, but investing in those companies to reap the rewards of their work is a very dangerous game. More often than not, companies fail because the mechanism does not pan out, the compound(s) do not have pharmacokinetics (get into the body or last very long in the body), or an adverse event happens that knocks years off a development timeline. In addition, the stock can be manipulated by market makers so investors don't know which way is up. I approach investing in biotechs as a long term prospect. I continue to like our current portfolio of biotech companies (join in chat for many of those plays), and we continually add/subtract shares and sell/buy options on ...
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