phineas wrote: 

 back at ya bro!

 JustJanis wrote: 
to ya, sister

 Rod wrote: 
Not really, but the week isn't over.  What are the choices?  You either pull yourself up or let yourself sink down. I'm not much of a wallower.  But thanks for asking M.D.   

 JustJanis wrote: 

Better today? 

I'm always late......I had a meltdown on Tuesday.  Was in bed by 4:30. 

 kimyo wrote: 

It appears the FT jumped the gun.  the current plan is not exactly calling for full bank restructuring, but it does imply that that is where things will go for  some banks.  Supposedly, before any money is put out, the feds will be "stress testing" the banks to see how bad things are...assuming they are that bad, takeovers are likely. 

Martin Wolf shreds TARP 2   (option armageddon)

An absolute must-read column from FT's chief economics commentator, Martin Wolf. He asks, quite rationally, if Obama's presidency is already a failure. He came in with a huge amount of political capital, with the freedom to propose bold moves that might take control of events. And yet he is clearly letting events take control of him, with Congress taking the lead on the stimulus plan and, even more ominously, allowing his Treasury Secretary to continue the failed policies of the prior administration.

The correct advice remains the one the US gave the Japanese and others during the 1990s: admit reality, restructure banks and, above all, slay zombie institutions at once.

Geithner will not be the guy to get this done correctly. He’s too tight with Wall Street, having cut his teeth at the NY Fed. Given the choice, it seems he’d rather watch the system implode than take aggressive government action to recapitalize banks the right way.

It's not quite yet time to head for the hills, but start preparing for it right now   (the boston globe)

# Be prepared. Most of us suffer from a misplaced trust that the world is a place of civility and continuity. It isn't. We need to keep a cash reserve large enough that we don't worry at every economic hiccup. As a practical matter, even if your cash reserve earns zero interest, it can produce an outsize return in smart, day-to-day purchases of used and bankruptcy sale goods.

# Train yourself in self-reliance. Most Americans would be endangered if they lost their income for a month, their electricity for a week, or their access to a supermarket or gas station for a few days. We rediscover this in every major snowstorm or hurricane. We simply don't think about being able to sustain ourselves in our homes in the event of utility failures or worse.

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A Way To Revive Spending   (washington post)

Last weekend, I stood outside the shuttered doors of a favorite local restaurant. As a small-business owner myself, I can only imagine how hard it was for those people to hang that out-of-business sign. I can also imagine the owners of that business sharing my opinion on what America needs most, and that surely isn't tax cuts.

When I'm struggling, a small reduction in costs isn't going to persuade me to create a new position. At a huge company, that might add up to another job, but for me the choice of whether to create a job rests on only one thing: customer demand.

The rebate checks of last year aimed to provide just that, but most Americans saved the money or used it to pay down debt. Less than 20 percent went to bolster consumer spending. There's little reason to expect more from the proposed $1,000-per-household tax cut in the current stimulus bill.

A reduction in sales tax has still bigger problems. In 2001, there was a Senate proposal to reimburse states for lost income, but the legislation collapsed while lawmakers were trying to gain cooperation from each state legislature.

A better choice would be something Americans are likely to spend, and without huge logistical headaches: a gift card. By sending every taxpayer a $2,000 debit card, the government stimulates spending directly. The card doesn't get deposited with a bank, a step that greatly reduced the use of last year's rebate checks for new spending, and with a defined expiration time, perhaps a year, the program could help precisely while other programs get underway.

The American Gift Card could bear a picture of Lady Liberty, since it may be used for whatever taxpayers wish: smarter clothes, dinners out, a weekend away, a new heater. And as gift cards tend to be used in person, they are of particular interest to local businesses.

Gift cards have a nationwide redemption rate of 80 percent. If such debit cards were used at the same rate, the cost of the program would be $270 billion, for a greater effect at less cost than the proposed tax breaks.

And such cards allow people to spend where they find it most valuable, obviating debate about where the government "should" spend money. Consumers will choose what things they need most, and, whatever those are, they would be more affordable.

Best of all, the program could be implemented with all speed at the very time we need it most, helping America while the necessary other programs develop.

I would be grateful for such a card, and I imagine that the owners of any of my remaining local restaurants would be as proud to receive such a card as I would be to use it.

 

This book, published in Summer 2006, seemed to have "Spot On" predicted the present economic crisis!
Unfortunately since it was only published in German, the people who would have most benefited by it couldn't read it!
It probably wouldn't have been taken seriously by most people anyway......

"The next big economic crisis is already on its way. At some point between 2008 and 2010 the globalization bubble will burst, inflation will hit double figures, and the consumer market and economy will collapse. Europe will have to make do with goods produced on the domestic market, unemployment will soar, and the cost of living will rise.
This is the scenario described by Professor of International Management Max Otte. In this book he explains why the struggle for economic dominance between the USA and China will pitch the world into an economic crisis. Otte outlines what we can do as individuals to prepare ourselves for the crash."

Credo in $ (club orlov)
Today's guest post is by Frank, who uncovers what must be the deeply held beliefs of those who still have hope that the status quo can be maintained. (We're just going through a rough patch, right, people?) Axiomatically, to have hope, you must have faith. (And if your hope turns out to be false, there is always charity.) Hast thou yet hope, O {username}? If so, please genuflect, direct your gaze heavenward, and repeat after Brother Frank:

I believe in worldwide Ponzi schemes and universal gullibility. I believe that reckless lending can be cured by reckless borrowing and that fraudulent borrowing can be healed by fraudulent lending. I believe that a housing bubble fueled by loose credit can be corrected by easing credit. I believe that each trillion of hallucinated dollars that disappears in a puff of Wall Street smoke then always reappears magically from behind a Treasury Department mirror.

I believe in America's almighty financial geniuses and monetary officials, who destroy wealth indiscriminately and indefinitely, and whose kingdom shall have no end. It is divine justice that those who cause financial catastrophes are rewarded with public money, while innocent bystanders are punished in their stead. I believe that central banks can print all the money anyone will ever need. I believe that if one stimulus package does not work, the next one surely will.

I believe in the redeeming power of financial complexity. I believe that hedge funds and sovereign wealth funds are righteous to enter into incomprehensible contracts having convoluted ownership and no inherent value. And I believe that opaque, secretive companies which pretend to insure those investments are offering a valuable service, even if this requires the use of public money.

I believe that economic stability and confidence will return when every failing business is bailed out, with no failure too small to be left behind. I believe that all dying institutions shall be consolidated, merging the smaller basket cases with the larger ones. The lion and the lamb shall lie down together in a new spirit of national competitiveness.

I believe that the end of days shall come when there is only one institution left, comprehensively unified, far too big to fail, owning everything and controlling nothing. All shall come and supplicate before its holy ATM machines, for they are subtle and quick to anger. It is in this one true financial institution that I put my faith, truly gigantic, truly bankrupt, amen.

"nobody could have predicted..." (dailykos oct 08)

One of the most annoying things these days is to watch our political leaders, business stars and pundits tell us that the current crisis is unprecedented, and that "nobody could have predicted" what's been going on - and go on to use the opportunity to ask for more powers to themselves in order to enact the solutions they see to the crisis.

The fact is: that crisis WAS PREDICTED - and not just by lefty bloggers. The people that now tell us they could never have conceived such a thing just dismissed the warnings, and those bearing them, with something approaching contempt back then. And of course, they are now telling us that their solutions are the only one that will work today, and that we must urgently give them more powers, and again ignore the shrill warnings of the "extremists" that were right then. Why are they taken seriously, again?

Well, the real story here is that the elites brought us this mess. They were too dumb to see an $8 trillion housing bubble and to recognize the damage it would cause when it burst. They didn't know what they were doing then and they still don't know what they are doing now.

"Nobody could have predicted" really means "I'm too stupid to know what I'm talking about."

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The Fed's Bear Stearns Assets: "No Prospect for a Profit" (naked capitalism)

U.S. taxpayers may be stuck with losses on $30 billion of Bear Stearns Cos. assets owned by the Federal Reserve even though the central bank has said otherwise, according to Robert A. Eisenbeis, Cumberland Associates Inc.’s chief monetary economist.

“There is no prospect for a profit on the assets,....Losses are mounting.”....

Last week’s total was $4.22 billion... JPMorgan Chase & Co. is responsible for the first $1.15 billion...The Fed picks up the rest.

The central bank’s Board of Governors wrote in a Dec. 29 report to Congress that it didn’t expect “any net loss to the Federal Reserve or taxpayers” from the Bear Stearns holdings.

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The Bad Bank Assets Proposal: Even Worse Than You Imagined (naked capitalism)

Dear God, let's just kiss the US economy goodbye. It may take a few years before the loyalists and permabulls throw in the towel, but the handwriting is on the wall.

The Obama Administration, if the Washington Post's latest report is accurate, is about to embark on a hugely expensive "save the banking industry at all costs" experiment that:

1. Has nothing substantive in common with any of the "deemed as successful" financial crisis programs
2. Has key elements that studies of financial crises have recommended against
3. Consumes considerable resources, thus competing with other, in many cases better, uses of fiscal firepower.

The Obama Administration is as obviously and fully hostage to the interests of the financial services industry as the Bush crowd was. We have no new thinking, no willingness to take measures that are completely defensible (in fact not doing them takes some creative positioning) like wiping out shareholders at obviously dud banks (Citi is top of the list), forcing bondholder haircuts and/or equity swaps, replacing management, writing off and/or restructuring bad loans, and deciding whether and how to reorganize and restructure the company. Instead, the banks are now getting the AIG treatment: every demand is being met, no tough questions asked, no probing of the accounts (or more important, the accounting).

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Revealed: The Day banks were just three hours from collapse  (britain's mail online - a 'hole in the wall' is an atm)

Britain was just three hours away from going bust last year after a secret run on the banks, one of Gordon Brown's Ministers has revealed.

City Minister Paul Myners disclosed that on Friday, October 10, the country was 'very close' to a complete banking collapse after 'major depositors' attempted to withdraw their money en masse.

The Mail on Sunday has been told that the Treasury was preparing for the banks to shut their doors to all customers, terminate electronic transfers and even block hole-in-the-wall cash withdrawals.

Only frantic behind-the-scenes efforts averted financial meltdown.

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U.S. Debt Default, Dollar Collapse Altogether Likely  (seeking alpha)

The prospect of the United States defaulting on its debt is not just likely. It's inevitable, and imminent.

The regulatory black holes into which sanity and reason disappear on a daily basis are soon to collapse under the mass of their sheer size. The circle jerk going on among G7 governments has to end – the steady advance of gold, even in the face of a managed price, exposes the real value of the U.S. dollar, as opposed to its apparent value expressed in the dollar index.

Is 2009 the year that the United States formally defaults? And with that, will the dollar collapse be rolled back ten for one or more?

There are a lot of reasons to support that theory. To Wall Street economists, such an event is heresy and therefore unthinkable. Yet Wall Street is the very La-la-land that bred the idea of a perpetually indebted nation in the first place.

Number one among the indicators favoring this scenario is what is happening in the U.S. Treasuries auction market.

I don’t arrive at this conclusion because I like making catastrophic outlandish predictions. Its merely the result of following certain logical paths to their most likely outcome based on what has happened in the past.

In discussions on this topic with editors of top tier financial publications, such speculation is dismissed out of hand, and the argument to refute the likelihood of such outcomes is never brought forward.

Extreme Leverage In Reverse Portends Global Systemic Crash

(quoting mid-stream)

Bear in mind that fallout from Alt-A, prime home equity, credit cards, small business, and commercial real estate are still on the way.

The global banking system is clearly insolvent as discussed in Fed and BOE Shell Games to Bailout Insolvent Banks and British banks are 'technically insolvent' (and other secrecies).

In Brink of Debt Disaster we looked at how consumer debt has the United States and the United Kingdom stand on the brink of the largest debt crisis in history. Together, these posts show the threat of an outright global systemic deflationary crash is very real.

This is not a call for a global crash, rather a warning that one could easily occur.

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California is almost out of ways to pay bills, fund programs, controller says

The controller says California is down to Plan D on its checklist of paying bills. Its cash reserves are piddling; the special funds it borrows from are tapped out, and no one in the private sector is going to lend it any cash at a reasonable interest rate.

That leaves what in state government circles are called "payment deferrals" and what in real life is called "stiffing your creditors."

In this case the creditors include income taxpayers expecting refunds, college students waiting on state aid, counties that operate public assistance programs, and companies that sell goods and services to state agencies.

Chiang has said he won't write $3.7 billion worth of checks for those and other state programs if legislators and the governor haven't reached a deal by next Sunday to close the budget gap.

The controller said he must conserve what little cash the state has to be able to make constitutionally required payments to schools and interest payments to state bondholders.

Known formally as "registered warrants," the state's IOUs are just that. Someone – a vendor, a landlord, the water company – who is owed money by a California government agency gets a piece of paper that says the state owes them money, and will pay them the amount plus interest at some point in the future.

Starbucks to Stop Brewing Decaf Coffee After Noon (Update1)

By Courtney Dentch

Jan. 27 (Bloomberg) — Starbucks Corp., the world’s largest coffee chain, will stop brewing decaffeinated coffee after noon as part of a drive to save $400 million by September.

The company, which last year started brewing fresh pots of coffee every 30 minutes, will have the caffeine- free version available upon request after 12 p.m., the Seattle-based company said today in an e-mailed statement. It takes about four minutes for a fresh cup to brew, spokeswoman Bridget Baker said.

“For many of our stores, the demand for decaf is greatly reduced in the afternoon,” the company said in the statement. “With our current standard of continually brewing decaf after 12 p.m. regardless of demand, we have seen a high amount of waste.”

The company informed baristas of the change yesterday. Chief Executive Officer Howard Schultz is accelerating a cost-cutting plan to save $400 million by September from labor and product expenses. The plan includes brewing smaller pots of coffee so that less is wasted if it’s not purchased within the 30-minute time limit.

Starbucks rose 15 cents to $9.15 at 4 p.m. in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading. It has lost 53 percent in the past 12 months.

 phineas wrote: 
  Go to bed before you fall over!

 MayBaby wrote: 
I've heard of those things.

 phineas wrote: 
Wetware would be  -  the little gray cells ; )

 MayBaby wrote: 
Is that where you snap his butt with the end of a wet towel?

 Servo wrote: 


Where is that "ignore" feature, Bill?

I'll just use wetware ignore from now on.

 MayBaby wrote: 
So why drag Obama's name in where it doesn't apply?

"Say what you mean and mean what you say."  A good rule to live by!

 Servo wrote: 
Forgive me, I don't know all the acronyms used here on RP.

I believe NoEnz'  reference to big spending had nothing to do with Obama's personal spending , rather our government's big spending.