A Ledgie wants to know: Economy Edition

[petep9000]

OMG. I was going to put that in my post too! I was going to say that right after I mentioned taking my herbal tea black, but then I said....."no, maybe not". ya never know who might get offended.

I have a terrific 'Stevie of Death' too, but I'm terrified of posting it. It really might be pushing the limits.

[David]

Originally Posted by petep9000

OMG. I was going to put that in my post too! I was going to say that right after I mentioned taking my herbal tea black, but then I said....."no, maybe not". ya never know who might get offended.

I have a terrific 'Stevie of Death' too, but I'm terrified of posting it. It really might be pushing the limits.

Remember the round-robin party tune the Oliviers & their guests used to sing during weekends at Notley Abbey?

"A long, strong ***** pudding up my sister's arse . . ."

(I hope I don't get banned for this.)

[HejiraNYC]

Originally Posted by petep9000

OMG. I was going to put that in my post too! I was going to say that right after I mentioned taking my herbal tea black, but then I said....."no, maybe not". ya never know who might get offended.

I have a terrific 'Stevie of Death' too, but I'm terrified of posting it. It really might be pushing the limits.

Oh, come on, how bad could it possibly be? Post it!

I remember the first time I saw Airplane I was probably 10 years old, and I was literally crying after that line.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by HejiraNYC

Oh, come on, how bad could it possibly be? Post it!

I remember the first time I saw Airplane I was probably 10 years old, and I was literally crying after that line.

Well, first it's all Mexican's eat tortillas and now it's little white girls and black men humor. What's next - beastiality? Not to mention the whole insult to hookers. I am highly offended!

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by petep9000

. . . I have a terrific 'Stevie of Death' too, but I'm terrified of posting it. It really might be pushing the limits.

I posted this one, which I think nobody got, but it is the shodaow of a Hiroshima victim that is permanently infused into the pavement



not to mention this one:



So, I say go ahead and post.

[petep9000]

ok. Here goes.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by petep9000

ok. Here goes.

Homo - erotic or at least homo suggestive Stevie of Death in a death camp - nice

Actually, it is funny:

I wish knew how to put the Stevie of Death in this Nizi mocking as well:

[JWS]

Originally Posted by HejiraNYC

Oil is at record highs, gold is at record highs, the U.S. dollar is at record lows against the Euro, inflation is out of control yet incomes are flat, unemployment is spiking upward, housing values are tanking, the U.S. banking system is on the verge of collapse, house foreclosures are way up, the national debt is nearing 9 trillion dollars, jobs are being exported, there is an unending war costing U.S. taxpayers $12,000,000,000 per month, etc.

The George Bush legacy.

[strandinthewind]

^^^

Sadly, yes, that is his legacy. Everything that man has ever touched has turned to stone. And, what kills me is some of the ideas were not half bad, but the execution of them and the follow up destroyed any good that initially or could have come from them.

On another point, here is an interesting article on the NYC economy from www.nytimes.com

March 18, 2008
Troubled Outlook for New York City Economy Turns a Lot Grimmer
By PATRICK McGEEHAN
The outlook for New York City’s economy and its main engine, the financial services industry, had already taken a bleak turn before the sudden failure of Bear Stearns, the fifth-largest firm on Wall Street.

Investment banks and brokerage firms started cutting their payrolls last fall as the weakening market for mortgages translated into huge losses. Employment in the city’s securities industry dropped by about 8,000 jobs from August to January, a decline of about 4 percent.

Now, with the impending loss of several thousand high-paying jobs at Bear Stearns, city officials and economists are bracing for the downturn to steepen. How deep it will be and how long it will last are open questions.

“Who knows?” said William C. Thompson Jr., the city’s comptroller. “We had been preparing for tougher times. This means things are going to get a little tougher. We just don’t know how many jobs are going to be lost because of this.”

Bear Stearns had about 14,000 employees, and as many as 8,000 of them worked in the city. Last year, those workers collected more than $3.4 billion in pay and benefits, or an average of about $242,000 per employee.

Bear Stearns was one of the 25 largest employers in the city and accounted for about one of every 25 jobs in the city’s securities industry. It was not the first major Wall Street firm to collapse. Drexel Burnham Lambert and Kidder Peabody fell more than a decade ago. But Bear Stearns was a bigger component of a more consolidated industry.

On Monday, officials of JPMorgan Chase, which agreed to buy Bear Stearns and stave off a bankruptcy, declined to estimate how many of the jobs would be saved. But representatives of the firm did not dispute reports that the sale would probably result in the elimination of most of them.

Already, the rescue has implications for the redevelopment of Lower Manhattan. JPMorgan announced last year that it would build a headquarters for its investment-banking operations at the site of the former Deutsche Bank building, where there was a deadly fire last year.

But JPMorgan officials have now decided to move that unit instead to Bear Stearns’s glass tower in Midtown Manhattan. Government officials who were briefed on the revised plan said on Monday that they expected JPMorgan to honor its commitment to the World Trade Center area by moving other employees there.

The comptroller’s office estimates that the city collects $20 million in taxes for every $1 billion paid out in cash bonuses. In 2007, year-end bonuses for city residents totaled about $30 billion, producing about $600 million in income tax revenue for the city.

A significant drop in profits on Wall Street has a direct and possibly painful effect on the city and state budgets.

“New York City and state are over-dependent on the financial industry for tax revenues,” said Kathyrn S. Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, a business-advocacy group. She estimated that Wall Street accounts for one-fifth of the business taxes collected in New York.

“Even a mild downturn on Wall Street causes tremendous problems, and this is much more than a mild downturn,” Ms. Wylde said. “This is potentially a sustained period of significant losses. That translates into the need to significantly revise budgets.”

Even generally optimistic financial executives like Alan H. Fishman, the chairman of Meridian Capital, a mortgage broker, said they were unsure how long it would take the city to absorb the latest blow.

“Nobody’s ever seen something like this,” Mr. Fishman said, referring to the fallout from the mortgage mess. “If you’d asked everybody how serious this was two weeks ago, they would have said, it’s serious but it will pass. Now they would say it’s very serious.”

Two weeks ago, before Bear Stearns’s solvency was in doubt, the city’s Independent Budget Office forecast that Wall Street would cut an additional 20,200 jobs in the city by the end of 2009. It also projected a decline in business taxes collected by the city from $6 billion last year to $5.6 billion this year to $5 billion next year.

Mr. Thompson, the comptroller, said that projections of overall city revenue being flat in the first half of this year may turn out to have been too rosy.

“No matter what, looking forward, you’re not going to have a Bear Stearns to be able to grow,” he said. “We’ll have one less major firm, and that is an additional concern on top of everything else.”

[SuzeQuze]

Wow, let's hope the carnage ends with Bear Stearns. Another foreclosed condo just showed up in my property search from my realtor. And really cheap.

[HejiraNYC]

See, it's shizz like this that makes me batshizz about the unmitigated corporate greed at BS:

http://www.observer.com/2008/bear-st...za-then-bridge

Bear Stearns' Cayne Takes The Plaza, Then Bridge
by Tom Acitelli | March 17, 2008 | Tags: Real Estatebear stearnsJames CayneThe Plaza

Bear Stearns chairman James Cayne was in Detroit at the start of the weekend that saw the tanking of his venerable investment bank. Why? Mr. Cayne was competing in the North American Bridge Championship, according to reports.

Also last week, as the perfect storm gathered, Mr. Cayne closed on a $25 million condo at the revamped Plaza.

********
If there is any justice in the world, the SEC or the Fed or somebody should be going after the personal assets of these criminals. Government Repo Sale at The Plaza! Besides, who needs The Plaza when there is a luxury suite waiting for him at Rykers Island.

[HejiraNYC]

Originally Posted by JWS

The George Bush legacy.

It's actually the legacy of the 50+ million ignorant nutjob Americans out there who voted for GWB. Surely it's because everyone knows that the gays and the pro-choicers are destroying the fabric of society, whereas, a former oilman and a former executive at Halliburton would certainly look out for our best interests and would make us safer. Oh, and surely bailing out their buddies on Wall Street rather than rebuilding New Orleans is surely the moral and "Christian" thing to do.

For some reason I just cannot muster any sympathy when I read about Joe Six-pack in Red State America, with a confederate flag sticker on the bumper of his Hummer H2 (purchased with a home equity line of credit), crying about $3/gallon gasoline. America: you reap what you sow.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by HejiraNYC

See, it's shizz like this that makes me batshizz about the unmitigated corporate greed at BS:

http://www.observer.com/2008/bear-st...za-then-bridge

Bear Stearns' Cayne Takes The Plaza, Then Bridge
by Tom Acitelli | March 17, 2008 | Tags: Real Estatebear stearnsJames CayneThe Plaza

Bear Stearns chairman James Cayne was in Detroit at the start of the weekend that saw the tanking of his venerable investment bank. Why? Mr. Cayne was competing in the North American Bridge Championship, according to reports.

Also last week, as the perfect storm gathered, Mr. Cayne closed on a $25 million condo at the revamped Plaza.

********
If there is any justice in the world, the SEC or the Fed or somebody should be going after the personal assets of these criminals. Government Repo Sale at The Plaza! Besides, who needs The Plaza when there is a luxury suite waiting for him at Rykers Island.

Justice requires implementing the law. Can you prove he did anything illegal? If so, then he should be prosecuted. But, buying a condo at the new Plaza is not against the law and neither is taking a vacation to be in bridge tournament, though his timing sucks.

Again, it seems you are equating a tanking company to illegality. There may be illegal acts here, but they have yet to be proven.

I know it sounds harsh, but you building a fancy house with lanscaping and a swimming pool in a time when thousands are losing their houses and jobs also likely would appear to many less fortunates as a bad thing and that you certainly must have done something wrong to get that. I know you did not, but the appearance would be there for them to assume that. So, I do not begrudge anyone for making enough money to build a pool or buy a $25 million condo at The Plaza. Again, if they broke the law, then justice should prevail.

I readily agree that in many cases illegal acts are performed. But, as of now, there is no evidence of that. Should the SEC or some other entitity be investigating - yes, they should. And, they often get the bad guys as they did in Enron. And, they take their assets, the ones that have not been legally removed from their possession, which actually is very hard to do believe it or not.

By the way, this guy likely lost about a billion dollars or at least several hundred million dollars yesterday. So, it is not like he is without harm as well Of course, many are loathe to admit that becuase he already is a millionaire and people just cannot help but hate them and think that anything over some arbitrary number of wealth is too much.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by HejiraNYC

. . . Oh, and surely bailing out their buddies on Wall Street rather than rebuilding New Orleans is surely the moral and "Christian" thing to do. . . . .

How exactly was Bear Stearns bailed out? The company was worth tens of billions of dollars and got sold for $262 million. Their office tower on Madison was worth $1.3 billion, not to mention the other viable assets of the firm. So, Bear Stearns was most certainly not bailed out. Rather the sale to JP Morgan was a fire sale that stopped a run on a bank. JP Morgan will make billions off of this. Hopefully, they structured it so that the $30 billion or so in Fed backing for the mtg. securities will have to be repaid is they turn out to be good, which is unlikely.

But, your point is interesting and, quite frankly, very conservative. You are endorsing a free maket with no govt. interderence, which is the best method or correcting the market, though it also is the harshest. It is the harshest because it provides no stability to the markets and corrections turn into panics. So, some govt. interference is required IMO.

Interestingly, one of the primary reasons NOLA is not rebuilt is the people there are arguing about what to do. There are big plans to redo many neighborhoods, but the homeowners, city, state, and Feds cannot agree on issues of property rights. I will say this though - much progress has happened, though much remains to be done.

[strandinthewind]

A good sign?

Decline in Housing Starts Is Less Than Forecast

By REUTERS

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — United States home building projects started in February fell by 0.6 percent to a higher-than-expected annual rate while building permit activity, a sign of future construction plans, dropped off 7.8 percent, a government report on Tuesday showed.

The Commerce Department said housing starts set an annual pace of 1.065 million units in February, higher than the 990,000 expected by economists. The January starts figure was revised upward to 1.071 million from the 1.012 million originally reported.

Prices for United States Treasury bonds were down after the stronger-than-expected data, while stock futures stayed high.

Still, some analysts were skeptical that there is long-lasting improvement in the beleaguered housing market.

“I wouldn’t put anything in that little bounce,” said Josh Stiles, Bond Strategist at IDEAGlobal in New York. “The housing industry is in a recession.”

Building permits fell 7.8 percent to an annual rate of 978,000, the slowest pace since a 974,000 rate set in September 1991. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast February permits at 1.020 units after the 1.061 million rate of January.

Compared to a year ago, housing starts were down 28.4 percent. But for single-family homes, starts were off 40.5 percent from a year ago — the largest year-over-year drop since January 1991, when they fell by 45.1 percent.

www.nytimes.com