patrick.net

Link to the Lembi story in the Business Times.

WW3 is only a matter of time. It is quite likely that we will see one in our lifetime.

I am of the belief that that most people who lost money to Madoff will be made whole somehow by taxpayer money. Of course this will happen a bit down the road when no media is looking.

They can claim fraud and have the government cover the loss to "restore investor confidence". Our government runs on the premise that the taxpayers always have to bailout the rich guys.

SP,

the problem is, I have to bank $250K of CASH with bank, but I can bank $250K worth of stocks holding companies that I believe won't be printed away.

It comes down to the fundamental belief if USD Cash will be king. I do not believe so, therefore I would rather hold $250K today's worth of stock, which will do fine in an intentional devaluation event.

On a side note, the Fed has eventually moved onto buying Treasury. That's what I said before, quit beating around the bushes, just go straight to the point.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aoz6joAbOPoA&refer=home

Now let me repeat the last step of Uncle Ben's playbook
--"A more direct method, which I personally prefer, would be for the Fed to begin announcing explicit ceilings for yields on longer-maturity Treasury debt (say, bonds maturing within the next two years)"
--Bernanke's 2002 helicopter speech

The above, in laymen's term, means unabated printing with no cap. Whatever the government wants to spend, whatever Fed will buy.

I don't know why people keep calling Bernanke bluff, he has published all his actions more than 4 years ago before he became the chairman. How much clearer do you want him to be? I know these academia types, and I know they will go through with their academic belief once they get to test their thesis on the entire world. Follow Uncle Ben and you will be saved.

I think Ben is a great Fed Chairman, at least he doesn't mince words like Greenspan. The only fault of him is he didn't print fast enough.

It comes down to the fundamental belief if USD Cash will be king.

Well, looks like either you or I will be a distinct winner or loser. I put nearly all my savings into insured CDs, including a one-year bought two days ago at 3.75% I do have my own paid-for residence house along with a paid for rental house, so I have a hyperinfation hedge as well.

If we have some strange inflation that runs up the prices on everything except houses, at least I can use my cash to buy more rental properties.

You are quite the cheerleader for the Guttenburg boy, but HeliBen may not be able to print fast enough to outpace the credit collapse. In that case, your $250k of "today's price" stocks may be like someone's "2006 price" house.

No, I am not betting on hyperinflation or even inflation.

I am betting on the collapse of the USD (or severe weakening) against all real assets, especially oil, gold, agriculture and the like. My house is almost paid for, so I don't really care if it goes up or down, but I am in a locked fixed rate and locked in tax base, so I naturally welcome inflation that reduces my repayment cost and tax to almost nothing.

I keep cash, just not in USD. Ben will print fast enough, they are just trying to save the USD as much as possible while trying to save the economy and our current government (primary goal), but the economic fundamentals will force them to give up on USD, and that is good enough for my bet to pay off.

The fundamental is, our government cannot survive in its current form given our debt load if we allow deflation to persist.

If our government collapses, we get hyperinflation, but that is not the most desirable outcome for me, because I need a stable society to cash out my chips and enjoy life. So the best scenario for me personally is a stagflationary environment, in which stuff I invest in (necessities) goes up, stuff I desire goes down. And the stagflation must be not too severe or we go back to hyperinflation, which usually leads to extremely ugly social outcome.

For a country with military power, hyperinflation is quite unlikely. But we may head into that direction, and before we get there we may already end up in social chaos.

JustMe says:

I have not yet seen a video of the emergency landing on the Hudson River.

One nagging thought. When you have an engine failure/fire in flight, you are supposed to shut down the affected engine. This procedure is practiced during Emergency Procedure Sims and during in-flight simulated engine failures. I remember from my old AF days how sometimes the pilot would reach for the wrong T-handle and/or throttle, effectively shutting down a good engine. Since a bird strike that would kill more than one engine is very rare, this thought occured to me.

The investigation will most likely show that both engines injested birds, so my nagging thought is just that.

OO says:

Ben will print fast enough

That is the crux. If I thought so too, I would do similar to you. Perhaps I am too "Mish Conditioned" to believe in anything but a deflationary future. That includes falling prices for stocks, gold, wages, and even "necessities."

OO,
I'm not necessarily saying "all is well" (given the situation with some of the major banks), but Treasury purchases are a standard part of Fed OMO. Look at the latest H.4.1; there is plenty of cash from member banks for the Fed to make some Treasury purchases.
Black Friday Redux: I went all in with some retirement money on Wells Fargo; will be interesting to see how hard they get hit by Wachovia and Option ARMaggedon.

Headset,

That is indeed a nagging thought. What are the odds that a good engine would not restart? They were gliding for 2-3 minutes, AFAICT.

California withholds tax refunds
Cash-strapped state says those who overpaid in 2008 are out of luck, while other checks will be held for 30 days as it tries to ward off bankruptcy.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -- California will not pay tax refunds for individuals and business that overpaid 2008 taxes, in order to conserve dwindling cash for priority payments including school spending and debt repayment required by state law, the state's controller office said Friday.

Other state checks to be postponed for 30 days include payments for vendors who provide services and products to the state government and state checks to a million aged, blind and disabled Californians to cover rent and utilities bills, State Controller John Chiang's office said in a statement.

Various state officials have been warning in recent weeks that the most populous U.S. state's coffers would run dry if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and lawmakers fail to balance the state's current budget. The governor in his state of the state speech Thursday said California faces insolvency within weeks if it does not balance its books.

Happy BFF! A trifecta it seems.

http://www.fdic.gov/news/news/press/2009/pr09004.html

http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/commerce.html

http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/clark.html

@Administrator

I agree about the cockiness out there. I emailed a Realtor about a recent bank owned property he is representing. My husband and I are willing to pay cash, we are not represented by another realtor, and instead of addressing my concerns, all he said was let me know if I can do anything for you.

The house has not had an Open House for the public or for realtors, he did not follow up on my email, and in general seems disinterested.

Very bizarre.

Headset,

on that nagging thought again. It is somewhat peculiar that there is so little communication from the crew since the accident. I'm sure they have a gag order of some sort, but still. It has been pretty much dead silence. It *could* be an indication that there is more to the story than is publicly known at this point in time.

Without doubt, the pilots exhibited incredible skill in landing the plane safely, nothing can diminish that feat.

Without doubt, the pilots exhibited incredible skill in landing the plane safely, nothing can diminish that feat.

Not to put a damper on the national euphoria, but virtualy all pilots qualified for the left seat could competently handle a water landing. Flight manuals and checklists cover ditching procedures, and pilots routinely train and are evaluated on that emergency procedure. A water landing is much like the landings they do every day, just that it is done wheels up and you float in ground effect a little longer. True, he had no power to make adjustments, but it does not matter if he is short or long on his aim point. His goal is to hit the water slow as possible with wings level. Ditching is actually safer than doing a power out landing in a field. Even so, there a been a couple of Airbus emergency landings on terrrain that resulted in no casualties.

I do not think there was anything exceptional about a water landing. Where that pilot shined was during route study. During "mission planning," pilots make note of emergency landing fields for their route. I believe that this guy decided on the ground that should he lose engines soon after takeoff, that he would ditch in the Hudson River if he could not circle back or reach another runway. My perspective is from flying Air Force, I presume much of the same procedures are used in the airlines.

Chip maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. said it will eliminate 1,100 jobs and cut the pay of management and some other employees.

Sunnyvale-based AMD (NYSE:AMD) said executive chairman Hector Ruiz and CEO Dirk Meyer will take a temporary 20 percent cut in salary.

In U.S. and Canadian operations, AMD will also cut pay 15 percent for vice presidents and higher; other employees will get 10 percent and 5 percent cuts.

Along with many of its colleagues, the company has been seeing reduced demand from customers that use its chips. In December it forecast that fourth quarter revenue would drop 25 percent.

Last year the company also announced a 10 percent staff cut and later a 3 percent cut.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia
Where Sweatshops Are a Dream

Before Barack Obama and his team act on their talk about “labor standards,” I’d like to offer them a tour of the vast garbage dump here in Phnom Penh.

This is a Dante-like vision of hell. It’s a mountain of festering refuse, a half-hour hike across, emitting clouds of smoke from subterranean fires.

The miasma of toxic stink leaves you gasping, breezes batter you with filth, and even the rats look forlorn. Then the smoke parts and you come across a child ambling barefoot, searching for old plastic cups that recyclers will buy for five cents a pound. Many families actually live in shacks on this smoking garbage.

Mr. Obama and the Democrats who favor labor standards in trade agreements mean well, for they intend to fight back at oppressive sweatshops abroad. But while it shocks Americans to hear it, the central challenge in the poorest countries is not that sweatshops exploit too many people, but that they don’t exploit enough.

Talk to these families in the dump, and a job in a sweatshop is a cherished dream, an escalator out of poverty, the kind of gauzy if probably unrealistic ambition that parents everywhere often have for their children.

“I’d love to get a job in a factory,” said Pim Srey Rath, a 19-year-old woman scavenging for plastic. “At least that work is in the shade. Here is where it’s hot.”

The fundamental is, our government cannot survive in its current form given our debt load if we allow deflation to persist.

I agree; which is why we will have European-style sales taxes before long to fund it. If prices are too low, raise the sales tax and funnel the income back into local jobs. Best way to fight deflation there is.

Do you really think the government will go out of business before raising taxes first? Especially when Warren Buffet and Bill Gates have said they don't care if their taxes are raised? Buffet has even complained that his secretary is taxed more than he is!

The true fundamental is that American debt-fueled over-consumption cannot survive in its current form if we allow deflation to persist. Which, as far as I'm concerned, is a wonderful thing.

Buffet has even complained that his secretary is taxed more than he is!

I hope he is not spouting this to puff up a phony image, while his accountants are busy combing for loopholes and connected lobbyists are preserving breaks beneficial to him. Buffet, along with anyone else who feels undertaxed, can send a check to the Bureau Of the Public Debt. Last year, the Bureau recieved over $2 million of such voluntary payments.

This reminds me of John Kerry, who clamoured for higher taxes, yet chose to pay Massachussetts lower teir for his own state income tax. This would have been an excellent example for a filthy rich windbag to lead by example.

I am not against raising taxes on the very rich (especially those whose bonuses and executive pay was preserved by the bailout), I just would like to see those "undertaxed" whiners pratice what they preach by openly making a donation to the Bureau, thus showing us they are just as eager for themselves, and not just us, to pay thier "fair share."

PERMA-
FWIW, Google will also be closing the SF and NYC offices in months to come as part of its cost reduction.
As for AMD, their headcound is now close to its 1993 levels worldwide. However they only employ in Sunnyvale 10% today of the the 1991. Back in 1991 they employed some 75% of the 12,000 worldwide in Sunnyvale across several large buildings. Today AMD headcount is some

You may also include how Silicon Valley Solar companies are once again using Philippine Semi factories to create Solar Panels even though Obama said Solar would be US made and not exportable. I wonder how he plans to pull the plug on solar now...

Over the past some 225 years the US had more deflation then inflation. Inflation has only been around our life time. The US was what China is today.. center of cheap labor and products. Ultimately our quality got better.

danville woman - never tell realtors how you plan to pay. Keep that out of negotiations. They will assume your some millionaire and start jacking up prices using the "phantom bids" tricks. That is what made prices spike up after the rick IPOs stock of 1998-99. Prices doubled in 2 years by year 2000.

I remember Bush saying that he had to "set aside" his free market principals to prevent a collapse. This is like him saying that he had to set aside his belief in god to prevent a natural disaster! Market corrections for bad investments do correct themselves and capitalism will find the most efficient way of fixing it. The same goes for the natural world. I wonder if he would even get my analogy and question some of the other world views he holds dear.

zetabeos Says:
January 17th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
"You may also include how Silicon Valley Solar companies are once again using Philippine Semi factories to create Solar Panels even though Obama said Solar would be US made and not exportable. I wonder how he plans to pull the plug on solar now…"

Most solar panels unfortunately are made overseas. I remember Obama saying that and interpreted it to mean the industry as it pertains to designing, installing, and maintaining solar arrays can't be exported overseas.

Financial Literacy and Mortgage Outcomes
http://www.aeaweb.org/annual_mtg_papers/2009/retrieve.php?pdfid=524

A paper by Kris Gerardi of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Lorenz Goette of the University of Geneva and Stephan Meier of Columbia University asked a battery of simple financial literacy questions of recent homebuyers. Many of the respondents could not correctly answer even simple questions, like this one: What will a $300 item cost after it goes on a “50 percent off” sale? (The answer is $150.) They found that people who scored poorly on the financial literacy test also tended to make serious investment mistakes, like borrowing too much, and failing to collect information and shop for a mortgage.

Payday Loans, Uncertainty, and Discounting: Explaining Patterns of Borrowing, Repayment, and Default
http://www.aeaweb.org/annual_mtg_papers/2009/retrieve.php?pdfid=15

Abstract

Ten million American households borrowed on payday loans in
2002. Typically, to receive two weeks of liquidity from these loans
households paid annualized (compounded) interest rates over 7000%.
Using an administrative dataset from a payday lender, we seek to ex-
plain demand-side behavior in the payday loan market. We estimate
a structural dynamic programming model that includes standard fea-
tures like liquidity constraints and stochastic income, and we also in-
corporate institutionally realistic payday loans, default opportunities,
and generalizations of the discount function. Method of Simulated Mo-
ments estimates of the key parameters are identiÂ…ed by two novel pieces
of evidence. First, over half of payday borrowers default on a payday
loan within one year of their Â…rst loans. Second, defaulting borrowers
have on average already repaid or serviced Â…ve payday loans, making
interest payments of 90% of their original loanÂ’s principal. Such costly
delay of default, we Â…nd, is most consistent with partially naive quasi-
hyperbolic discounting, and we statistically reject nested benchmark
alternatives.

Liquidity Constraints and Imperfect Information in Subprime Lending
http://www.stanford.edu/~leinav/pubs/AER2009.pdf

A paper by Liran Einav and Jonathan Levin, both of Stanford, reporting on work with William Adams of Citigroup, shows how sophisticated automobile lenders can be in their loan technology. They use complicated statistical models not only to approve people for credit, but also to fine-tune the down payment and even to suggest what kind of car individuals can buy. This suggests to me that many borrowers can’t match the expertise of lenders.

Our data come from an auto sales company that operates used car dealerships in the United States. Each potential customer fills out a loan application and is assigned a credit category that determines the possible financing terms. Almost all buyers finance a large fraction of their
purchase with a loan that extends over a period of several years. What makes the company an unusual window into consumer borrowing is its customer population. Customers are primarily low-income workers and a great majority are subprime borrowers. In the United States, Fair
Isaac (FICO) scores are the most-used measure of creditworthiness. They range from 350 to 800, with the national median between 700 and 750. Less than half of the company’s applicants have a FICO score above 500, the second percentile of the national FICO score distribution. This kind
of low credit score indicates either a sparse or, more often, checkered credit record. The principal characteristics of subprime lending are high interest rates and high default rates. A typical loan in our data has an annual interest rate on the order of 25–30 percent. The flip side
of high interest rates is high default rates. Over half of the company’s loans end in default. With such a high probability of default, screening the good risks from the bad, and monitoring loan payments, is extremely important. The company has invested significantly in proprietary credit
scoring technology.

California

· Adobe Systems Inc. is laying off 75 employees at 601 Townsend St. in San Francisco on Feb. 3.

· Advanced Medical Optics is laying off 61 employees at 510 Cottonwood Drive in Milpitas on Jan. 17.

· Belkin International Inc. is laying off 84 employees at 501 West Walnut St. in Compton on Jan. 16.

· Castaic Brick is laying off 77 employees at 32201 Castaic Brick in Castaic on Jan. 7.

· Downey Ford is closing down and laying off 63 employees at 9500/9207 Lakewood Blvd. in Downey on Jan. 18.

· Exelixis Inc. is laying off 76 employees at 249 East Grand Ave. in South San Francisco on Jan. 5.

· Gregg Industries Inc. is laying off 81 employees at 10460 Hickson St. in El Monte on Feb. 11.

· Health Research Association is laying off 79 employees at 1640 Marengo St., 7th Floor in Los Angeles on Jan. 30.

· Irvine Regional Hospital and Medical Center is closing down and laying off 510 employees at 16200 Sand Canyon Ave. in Irvine on Jan. 15.

· KLA-Tencor Corp. is laying off 153 employees at One Technology Drive in Milpitas and 81 employees at 160 Rio Robles in San Jose on Jan. 19.

· Lam Research Corp. is laying off 149 employees at 4300-4650 Cushing Parkway in Fremont on Jan. 20.

· Naked Juice Plant is closing down and laying off 52 employees at 533 West Foothills Blvd. in Glendora on Jan. 30.

· National Semiconductor Corp. is laying off 151 employees at 2900 Semiconductor Drive in Santa Clara on Jan. 13.

· Palm Inc. is laying off 107 employees at 950 W Maude Ave. in Sunnyvale on Jan. 19.

· Pearson Ford is closing down and laying off 130 employees at 4300 El Cajon Blvd. in San Diego on Jan. 19.

· Qualex Inc. is laying off 68 employees at 18250 Euclid St. in Fountain Valley on Jan. 16.

· Riverside Cement Co. is laying off 84 employees at 19409 National Trail Hwy in Oro Grande on Jan. 30.

· Seagate Technology LLC is closing down and laying off 43 employees at 155 & 195 S. Milpitas Blvd. & 311 Turquoise Drive in Milpitas on April 3.

· Shutterfly Inc. is laying off 70 employees at 3157 Corporate Place in Hayward on Jan. 16.

· Starwood Vacation Ownership Inc. is closing down and laying off 218 employees at 190 Carousel Mall in San Bernardino on Jan. 19.

· Symantec is laying off 38 employees at 350 Ellis St. in Mountain View on Jan. 13.

· Symantec is laying off 55 employees at 20330 Stevens Creek Blvd. in Cupertino on Jan. 19.

· United Industries Corp. is closing down and laying off 50 employees at 4139 Bandini Road in Los Angeles on Jan. 15.

· Vertis Communications is closing down and laying off 88 employees at 1345 Doolittle Drive in San Leandro on April 5.

· Vishay Siliconix is laying off 97 employees at 2201 Laurelwood Road in Santa Clara on Feb. 6.

http://www.costar.com/News/Article.aspx?id=85252C69E5E8E82526A5025799B66AF3

2009 LAYOFF Data

Employment Development Department
Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification
(WARN) Act Notices

Detailed Listing of WARN Information by Company Name (1-A) - 2009

http://www.edd.ca.gov/Jobs_and_Training/warn/eddwarncnda09.pdf

Posted by Jack Davis on September 8th, 2008 at 3:43 pm

Ditech Networks, the Mountain View maker of equipment used to enhance voice quality and cancel echo in phone calls, “undertook a reduction in force” as it tried to “further reduce its operating expenses”, the company revealed Monday when it filed financial results for its fiscal 2009 first quarter.

The company provided no details about how many workers were let go, but in early August, when the company first warned that its first quarter results would be weaker than expected, the company said it was taking steps to reduce expenses by about 20 percent.

This would be the second round of layoffs in the last year. Ditech let go of about 23 percent of its workers in the fiscal 2008 second quarter ended Oct. 31 and finished its fiscal year on April 30 with 148 employees, down by about a third from the year before.

The company reported sales of $4.5 million for its most recent quarter ended July 31, down by more than two-thirds from the year-before quarter. The drop was blamed partly lower sales to its biggest customer, Verizon, which is “shifting focus away from their traditional wireless network deployments, where our product has historically been installed, to newer 3G networks.”

Don't know what Original Bankster's comments about the international situation have to do with this thread, but the sooner we kick Israel in line and get negotiations going with the people who originally lived in that area for hundreds of years, the better.
Behaving like Nazis because the Bush Crime Family gives you permission ain't acceptable.

@The Original Bankster

My take on these highly militant and closed minded societies is that there is too much inbreeding. If their genetic pool was more diluted, it might tone down the violent tendencies that have plagued this part of the world since the beginning of time.

I heard through the grapevine of some people getting principal reductions as well as 30 year fixed refinance rates in the 2.5% range as a loan modification.

Has anyone heard of this? It sounds too far fetched.

Happy King day.

FuzzyMath - I would not be surprised. The main goal of all this is to fuck the savers/renters and reward the speculators. The end solution is for everyone to be piss poor and in debt upto their eyeballs. This is what will guarantee revenue and propped up markets (equity/housing) in our bailout nation. All this is working towards that end solution.

Coretexity,

Very ugly scenario but not all that far fetched. Basically, the powers that be will do anything to get the peons into line. I'm just trying to decide when not to be a peon anymore.

Belkin's Business Development Representative, Michael Bayard, was caught offering money for 100% good reviews about Belkin products at Amazon.com and other e-tailing sites. The Daily Background uncovered this news from Amazon's Mechanical Turk website. After the buzz created on the web, Belkin acted swiftly and removed the postings and reviews. Also, Mark Reynoso, Belkin's President reacted to the incident by writing a letter in which he apologized for the unethical practice.

If you read user reviews of a particular Belkin router at Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN).com recently, chances are it could have been a fake review that was written for money.

This is where the Internet goes bad. Some Belkin employee actually advertised in hopes of finding real-world people to write fake product reviews for money. The advertisement asked for the highest possible review (five stars) and plenty of good comments about the router. The ad also suggested that the fake reviewers mark legit reviews as "unhelpful".

The Belkin employee in question, Michael Bayard, was a business development representative. Mr. Bayard asked reviewers to write reviews even if they didn't own the product, and to make up a narrative about why they bought it and how it was performing. Obviously, this is pretty bad business.

The bad publicity machine reared its head over the weekend as tech blogs all over started reporting on the matter. Good thing for Belkin, management was paying attention and started the spin control machine quickly.

http://www.belkin.com/pressroom/letter.html