patrick.net

heh. I find it very funny that just as we talked about not getting a student loan, bam, Paulson is now throwing TARP money to cover collateralized student loans. And so, students are bailed out.

I think what treasurey is doing is more sensible than their original crazy plan. Although it doesn't give much confidence to markets. I am glad markets dragged him to this route.

Malcolm Says:
I’m ballparking the list is less than 2,000 people. Is there any measure of how that compares to stable times?

That list is not complete - it did not mention AMD, Applied Materials, Xerox, Synopsys, Yahoo, and a whole bunch of small startups in just the Silicon Valley area. There are also some site-closings here where local branches are shuttered but the headquarters is out-of-state (Motorola, Nokia, Nortel, etc.) so it does not show up as a local layoff unless you drill down.

And there are more cuts coming. Very credible rumors about Cadence, Yahoo, Sun, and another search-engine company that I am not at liberty to mention.

That's why I ask because my hunch was that layoffs are happening in the 10s of thousands.

Then why is my train so crowded?

Mr. Buffet's company is taking a beating. Probably a sign that we are going much lower.

Yea. It IS odd.
During the tech bust, traffic was notably light. I am not seing that at all as of yet. Maybe we are just at the 'announce the lay-off' stage, but the plan is to actually let people go early next year?

And don't forget we are letting 48,000 USPS workers go.

@Duke 10:49am.

Well said, rear view mirror indeed. Agreed, there is a long list of folks preparing to pull their hands out of their pockets.

I understand K street corridor in downtown DC is buzzing, and CRE space leasing, to all manner of white collar pedigreed grifters peddling rolodexes to long list of Fortune 500 and industry associations.

"Get yourself in play now as the money spigot will not flow forever. My fees are only $500 hour, minimum 50 hours. Pay to play boys."

And howdy all, been busy but still lurking every now again. Now that the cocktail party talk seems be sprouting right off the patrick pages, I am getting my fill of schadenfreude elsewhere.

Traffic is notably lighter in the DC tech corridor and beltway bandit government contractor zone. Several "non official" hiring freezes with big tech companies of which I'm aware, something I've not heard of before.

"Uh, we are not saying don't fill those reqs officially, but I'd advise not increasing headcount at this time. You did not hear that from me."

Suppose it's all happening so quickly and so much uncertainty.

On topic, a good friend has zero interest balance transfer offers, 3% fee, 6-12 months continuing to roll in fairly consistently. High 600's fico, high debt to income also.

Peter P Says:
Then why is my train so crowded?

Interesting you asked that - just this morning on Central Expressway through Sunnyvale, I passed a Caltrain with just three coaches instead of the usual five or more, and was wondering if they are running shorter trains. It is a single data-point, so we can't extrapolate much but you may want to see if that's happening with your train.

Malcolm Says:
That’s why I ask because my hunch was that layoffs are happening in the 10s of thousands.

Given what I hear from Cisco, Sun, Google, etc., I guess thousands of contractors are already out of work in the last couple of quarters. They don't make the news.

And how many thousands of jobs _didn't_ get created compared to year 200X - that will show you that the trend has changed direction, with profound impact coming up on traffic, real-estate, local malls, and PeterP's train.

The fact that gas prices are falling at a faster pace, to me that tells me not as many people driving around daily. They're not dropping the price because "they" are nice.

OK, what do you guys think?

Bush just said in 1929 a tariff plunged us deeper into the depression. Funny how everyone can pick and choose which policy did what. My question is, would tariffs not actually help the US economy by promoting production here? I don't buy the argument that we even have free trade now.

Malcolm,
I have to admit I'm a bit shocked YOU're asking that question. May I suggest Randy H's site, www.capitalism2.org if you want an earful :-)
And from Kathleen Pender's column at sfgate(dot)com:
"He [Hank Paulson] is absolutely the most powerful person in the country. Maybe the world," says Wall Street accounting expert Robert Willens.

Hey maybe those laid-off Wall Street guys can give us a hand on foreign policy problems.

The problem with releasing these Guantánamo detainees is that no one really knows for sure whether any one of them is a really bad guy, a sort of bad guy or just a fellow who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Therefore, a particular detainee's country of origin doesn't want him, the USA doesn't want him and no third party country wants him.

These packaged groups could even be sliced up into "tranches" with the more sketchy characters sprinkled more heavily into some of the lower tranches. That way a lower risk tolerant sovereign nation (in Western Europe perhaps) can have a higher comfort level in what they're taking on in the name of global justice and take down the top tranche. And a country that is less risk adverse (maybe one of the 'Stans or an African nation) might be willing to take the lower tranches in exchange for a higher maintenance fee paid by the US Government. Since Barack Obama has a tremendous amount of goodwill with the international community, who all seem to share his view that the Guantánamo detainees aren't as dangerous or risky as they were originally cracked up to be, I think the highest tranches of these group detainee packages could receive the equivalent of a tripple-A rating from the UN.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDYzNzM2M2QyZmJhZGM1NWNkOWJhODIwMWI3MjI2NGE=

Actually train ridership has been going up because people are giving up their cars.

I have a couple of friends who commute to SF for their job from Peninsula, they used to drive, but now they are giving up driving and taking trains. It is already getting hard to secure a seat if you get on from Peninsula.

It is not just the gas price, having one more car means one more committed maintenance and insurance cost.

My question is, would tariffs not actually help the US economy by promoting production here? I don’t buy the argument that we even have free trade now.

Absolutely not! Tariff begets tariff and world trade will grind to a halt.

We do not need to encourage production here. We should liquidate any excessive production capacity, here and all around the world.

Interesting you asked that - just this morning on Central Expressway through Sunnyvale, I passed a Caltrain with just three coaches instead of the usual five or more, and was wondering if they are running shorter trains.

What time was that? I am sure my train had at least 4 cars.

Alas, I know the statistically probable locations of the train doors, so I can usually get a seat in Sunnyvale.

It is already getting hard to secure a seat if you get on from Peninsula.

Past Sunnyvale/Mountain View it is nearly impossible to secure a seat on a bullet.

Soon enough, I will have to take non-bullets. I have my laptop and I do enjoy a few nice games of Solitaire.

BTW, did you see the PPT action towards the end of the day?

Well, that's the whole premise for my thinking. I think we do need to encourage production here. The only way to get out of this mess is to do real value add work here and get people at the lower levels of society into good paying jobs. I blame the WalMart model for a lot of the mess this country is in.

And I don't think we should exempt foreign products coming in under the guise that they are for American companies, if you make your product overseas it is a foreign import.

The best way to encourage production here is to foster an entrepreneurial environment. Perhaps we can use some bailout money as prize money for basic scientific research.

How is solar holding up? I hope alternative energy does not get affected by the collapsing oil price.

It could but solar is looking really good right now. It is not depression proof though and it is definitely a purchase people can put off although the state incentives with the tax credit make it cheaper than ever before.

Even that is pissing me off though. Now the industry leaders panels are made in China as well. There's just no getting around this crap. We have created a serf class of hopeless people so that others could make more money retailing these goods.

Goods in general that is.

I have a very low opinion on humanity.

If we all get together and do something good, we have limitless potential.

However, there is just no way to align people for the right way.

That's true, that's why I see no reason to have American workers competing with Chinese and other foreign workers who are one level up from being slaves. How is that free trade or even right? We had a nice run where prices stayed level and fell as wages were propped up by various bubbles. My opinion is that it has run its course and it is time to shore things up here.

I recently received a balance txfr offer:

0% for 12 months then X%
no balance txfr fee with this offer

But it was the first one I've seen in months...

Also, credit card arbitrage in my opinion is kind of high risk for the reward...
if you screw up you can get dinged pretty badly! But it may be good for someone with credit card debt...

NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE

Peter,

I did notice the PPT. The old dump n' pump. It was so obvious they were going to intervene. There is even an index out there tracking the likelihood of their intervention. Pretty soon the market will get used to it and render them useless.

The manufacturing of everything getting sent to China is also starting to piss me off Malcolm. Everytime we come up with something good, some slick American fuck decides he'll be able to make more money by sending his manufacturing to China. Little does he realize the long term consequence of this. We keep transferring our skills over there. At some point, they will start making their own discoveries.

The consumer is fucked. And our companies are even more fucked. We can't even compete with the monster we've created.

oh it holds. I get 5 emails a day from IT firms in India who want to write code for me for $10/hour.

globalization is retarded when there is only one country that consumes.

I get 5 emails a day from IT firms in India who want to write code for me for $10/hour.

Do they write bugs or features?

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aMXzD7tQQGdY&refer=home

so the dickwad who just socialized the entire financial system now calls for free markets?

I'm just about done with this fucking place.

Indian programmers are crap. Some of the eastern european countries might be better than the US, but India is junk.

Most of the manufacturing I have seen come from China is also junk. Until "headquarters" has spent several million dollars flying miserable Americans back and forth between here and there to fix the problems.

I have met some very brilliant Indian developers.

However, I am bearish on the outsourcing crap.

FuzzyMath Says:
November 13th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
"so the dickwad who just socialized the entire financial system now calls for free markets?
I’m just about done with this fucking place."

I know, and it pisses me off to then have to explain to people that I am neither a liberal or a soc1list. I'm sick of warding off single labels for what is a more complicated belief system than what some clown wears on his sleeve. I'm pretty much done with the whole thing too, but God I am so hopeful. I am admitedly caught up in the whole, Obama is the second coming stuff. I have high hopes for that guy.

To clarify, I blame liberals for chasing manufacturing away. I hate them for trying to micromanage people's lives, and I believe they are parasites verses contributors.
While I believe in government being a mechanism to help free markets reach levels they couldn't on their own, I am not a soc1alist for the mere fact that I believe in free markets, free movements of prices, and certainly want minimal government ownership of infrastructure.

Fuzzy, I was watching this speech live in disbelief, which is why I posed the question.

Lost Cause Says:
Try to get a student loan from one of the banks. Just try.

Uh... as several posters above mentioned, Paulson is now planning on throwing a goodly portion of the remaining $350 billion in approved TARP borrowings at student and consumer loans.

And for the record, the whole "non one's getting student loans" meme is pure bunk. I have several nieces & nephews of college age all borrowing quite well, thank you. I strongly suspect student loan borrowing will be the very *last* bastions of easy credit to collapse, for this reason:

YOU CANNOT DISCHARGE STUDENT LOANS IN BANKRUPTCY
(i.e., Uncle Sam has Sallie Mae's back 100%)
http://bankruptcy.lawyers.com/Debts-You-Cannot-Discharge-in-Bankruptcy.html

The BK laws were amended under Bush I in 1991 to limit BK discharges to "severe hardship" or cases where the debtor is permanently disabled or otherwise has extrememly bleak future earnings potential. Nothing shorrt of that will do. This is true even for Chapter 13 (repayment plan BK). SLs are in a legally unique category of debts, along with child support/alimony and federal taxes.

Legal precedents established in civil court cases since 1991 have invariably placed the burden of proof squarely on the debtor, and BKs are very rarely granted for SLs. IANAL, but faced some rather 'bleak prospects' myself during the early 1990s, so I am well versed on the matter.

Bottom line: DO NOT OBTAIN ANY STUDENT LOAN YOU CANNOT EASILY REPAY ON THE MINIMUM SALARY YOU CAN EXPECT DURING HARD TIMES.

Having student loans on a limited (or no) income is the 21st century equivalent of debtor's prison. I do not recommend it. Far better: take advantage of the many excellent state and community colleges, and pay as you go.

"Neither a borrower nor a lender be"
--Bill Shakespeare, Hamlet

Hi Harm, I was recently thinking it had been a while since I saw you here.