“Very serious recession.” Keep those words in mind.

[defio70]

I forget...was it car?...or condo?. http://tinyurl.com/23omjvy ..guess it depends on where they wrote the song


beep..beep..yeah...pass the salt?

Video: Florida Condos Selling for the Price of a Car

http://tinyurl.com/2debeyf

U.S. new-home sales fall to record-low pace in July

[GSIMMERLE]

Don’t be fooled by the stock-market reaction, that revision to 2Q GDP reported today was awful. Commerce Department now says gross domestic product in the second quarter rose at a 1.6% annual rate, down from the 2.4% it originally report. For the vast majority of Americans, an economy that is growing at a 1.6% rate is barely distinguishable from a recession, no matter what spin anybody puts on it.
What do these numbers say to you? 5%. 3.7%. 1.6%. That’s GDP for the past three quarters. See a trend there? Those numbers have been steadily falling as the government’s varied and myriad stimulus programs have been running out...
http://tinyurl.com/395lloj

ECRI At -9.9% As Downward Historical Prior Revisions Continue
http://tinyurl.com/3abczsk

[sowhat]

on Sat Aug 28, 2010 10:06 am
This guy has a point....




Why Economic Growth in the United States Cannot Happen

It is time to ask some questions and get some answers. Who was doing the thinking when the government started giving corporate America incentives to offshore our best highest paying jobs to India and China? The deflation of wages due to offshoring is exactly the kind of dynamic that is crushing the American middle class. Who was doing the thinking when American agriculture was outsourced to Mexico with the help of NAFTA? Who sold NAFTA as free trade instead of what it is, a corporate land grab south of the border? What interests of American farmers in such a thing? How is it that higher education is now only affordable for the very rich? How is it that our public education system has sunk to the point where schools are in some cases limited to four days a week? How is it that with one of the worst and most unaffordable healthcare systems that we get health care reform giving us still the worst and most unaffordable healthcare system?

http://tinyurl.com/2vv6naf

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...Offshoring transforms American workers’ wages into performance bonuses for executives, capital gains for shareholders, and honoraria and research grants for economists who shill for the practice.
The problem that the US economy faces is far more serious than the financial crisis resulting from financial deregulation. The reason that traditional monetary and fiscal policies cannot produce an economic recovery is that so much of the US economy has been moved offshore. As the jobs have departed, there is no work to which low interest rates and massive government spending can recall workers. This is the real freefall.

[sowhat]

Personal Income and Outlays, July 2010
http://tinyurl.com/29zpvm

BEWARE THE COMING CONTRACTION IN ISM

There is something potentially more alarming about the Philly Fed numbers when we look under the hood. The Philly Fed’s data is the very highly correlated to the ISM data. The two have shown a near 1:1 correlation over the last decade. Based on recent Philly Fed readings the ISM is likely to take a nosedive in the coming months into contraction territory (sub 50).
http://tinyurl.com/35bfwrp

[defio70]

8:30 a.m. US ISM-New York Aug Current Business Index 55.6 Vs 59.4 July

The two month delayed Case Shiller index came in at 4.4% for Q2, after having fallen 2.8% in the first quarter. Nationally, home prices are 3.6% above their year-earlier levels. In June the Y/Y change for the Composite 20 portion of the index was 4.23% on expectations of 3.6%, with the previous 4.61% revised to 4.64%. Again, as this index shows how the economy performed almost a quarter ago, this can and should be completely ignored. Furthermore, the non-seasonally adjusted index came in at a far more somber 2.3% increase, but this number too is irrelevant. Obviously, nobody has explained the definition of lagging indicators to the computers trading the SPOOs, so this headline was enough to push futures a few handles higher, even though we have much more coincident data that show just how bad housing has been in July already...
http://tinyurl.com/32pwfpg

[dlry]

Hungry....feel like another leg?... http://tinyurl.com/243fgpy




Second Leg of Crisis Beginning: Hedge Fund Manager

The majority of banks remain over leveraged going into what could be the second leg of the financial crisis, De Noronha added.


“The regulators used 6 percent as the threshold for defining the minimum capital ratios, but that 6 percent number includes non-cash assets such as deferred tax assets and goodwill," he said. "If you use only tangible book equity the 6 percent of the biggest offenders turns into closer to 2 percent which implies a leverage ratio of 50 times. That is hardly conservative for current the current economic reality."

http://www.cnbc.com/id/38930268


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[Entendance]

It's a desert, 'The Consumer is Totally Wrecked', the administration is disfunctional...

http://tinyurl.com/2fbklqn

THOSE WHO IGNORE HISTORY….
http://tinyurl.com/2vbdbrn


REWARDS for FAILURE
http://tinyurl.com/25p4ucc



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[defio70]

Jobless claims "fell" 6K, to 472K. Funny, but last week it was at 473K. What happened? Last week was revised higher. Non-farm productivity much worse than expected, at -1.8% on expectations of 1.9, previously coming at -0.9%.Shocked that claims number revised upward from last weeks rally number of 472K to 478K.
Non-Farm Productivity falls by the most in 4 years, and first negative number since the last quarter of 2008.

Factory Orders - Yawn
http://tinyurl.com/37m8fkb

[dlry]

Most people won't even notice... http://tinyurl.com/2u8ss7v


A mirage sped up....but will they get caught up in the jetwash?



State Tax Revenues Slowly Rebound ... But

The "improvement" in personal income taxes was a mirage caused by California speeding up collection of personal income taxes. California required payment of estimated taxes before money was even earned! Ignoring California, income tax collections actually declined from a year ago.

Much of the improvement in sales taxes is a result of tax hikes, not increased sales. Those effects will soon wear off in year-over-year comparisons (assuming of course there is not another round of sales tax hikes, by no means a good bet).

In simple terms that dramatic rebound shown in the first chart merely means things have stabilized but only vs. the rock bottom depressed level of second quarter of 2009.

Gallup Polls and sales data from MasterCard Advisors paints the same grim picture. Please see Gallup Poll Shows Consumer Spending Pullback, Consumer Confidence Levels Below Depressed 2009 Levels ; Back-to-School Sales Bust Says WSJ for details.

States remain in a world of hurt and the economy is slowing once again. I expect GDP contraction in the third quarter.

Thus, states are going to have to address the problem of public union wages and pension benefits whether they like it or not.

http://tinyurl.com/2dcapae


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[GSIMMERLE]

...The actual percentage of people who are employed .vs. the civilian labor force available to be employed (that is, non-incarcerated working-age people) hasn't budged materially, and after the small indications of improvement, it is now headed back downward.
So we're now back to where we were in June of 2009 in this regard - more than a year later, and after tentative signs of improvement. Wow, I'm impressed. NOT!
Here's reality - we cannot close the budget deficit gap until and unless this improves. We certainly cannot maintain the economic stimulus that comes from our deficit spending with 59% of the labor force actually working. Not a prayer in hell. In fact, until we get back to 63-64% we cannot solve the budget problem at all!
To put this in hard numbers we need to add over 11 million jobs to close this gap.
The mainstream media and "economists" aren't focusing on this but I sure as hell have been for the last two years, and will continue to. This is the "Greece" problem coming straight at us at 90mph, in that as social spending demand continues unabated the tax base is inadequate to support those demands, no matter what you do with tax rates and giveaways.
We need serious and dramatic changes in macro level economic policy folks, not incremental changes and give-aways. I know these things are anathema to the Washington establishment, but all we're doing right now is marking time until the deficits that are and remain structural become unable to be funded...
http://tinyurl.com/39gkgg6

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