Recent comments

  • If you click on the link where I quote the description of the Fed statistic, that will lead you to a page that gives a detailed breakdown of the historical percentages. Also if you go to the St. Louis Fred and search for "loans", that should pull up all the subcategories that were also reported on December 5. Iirc, every single one of them was up similarly.

    Since this is an October statistic, of course it's possible that the number declined in November. But more likely, as I wrote elsewhere, the dramatic collapse of treasury rates to 0 is not inconsistent with this diary. Rather, banks have been the recipient of such a firehouse of money that they have enough to both stuff the proverbial mattresses full of the cash, and also loan some of it out.

    Had the banks already loaned out most or all of the bailout money they received, somehow I doubt people would find that reassuring. Better to dole it out in small slices.

    Reply to: "Banks aren't lending": Oh, REALLY???   15 years 11 months ago
  • H-1 is an older Visa, not around since 1990. Yes, but simply getting the fact they are paid significantly less have a 20% fraud rate and employers do not have to consider a US worker before using one is hard to keep in wikipedia.

    Reply to: Please be a watchdog for Wikipedia pages on 2007-8 crises   15 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • Now Tony Wikrent asked an excellent question. Is the credit for capital investment or buyouts of companies. Now it could be, just possible, that both NDD and I are correct. That in reality, banks are loaning out money for consumers and businesses for goods (though I suspect using stricter guidelines for acceptance). Yet, when it comes to M&A, that's when we see things start to dry up. Banks figure assets or companies outright are worth even less or that any debt issuance as the result of such activities are right now born as too risky.

    And you know, it makes sense, now that I think about it (or it's the Scotch). Who has been complaining most about the credit crisis? Sure some manufacturers (well really, more than just them), I mean we can all agree that for a few weeks a couple months back, it looked like the entire system was going to come to a complete standstill. Yet, that now it seems it was fear gripping the market, something Hank Paulson managed to utilize in pimping for the TARP.

    But now, well people are, sadly, still using their credit cards as a substitute for a paycheck. That companies are making sales. Yet on the Mergers & Acquisitions front, it's as if someone dropped a neutron bomb. And, it isn't just the M&A desk who has been squiling on networks like CNBC, so have companies whose business is that of trading or providing liquidity to markets. Listen to folks like Art Cashin who is on most mornings on CNBC or Bloomberg. So what we have here is a dichotomy on credit.

    Reply to: "Banks aren't lending": Oh, REALLY???   15 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • were leveraged as much as 40:1. But yes, we got a long way to go.

    Reply to: "Banks aren't lending": Oh, REALLY???   15 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • How much of the data is revolving credit or turnover of old debt? I'm not one looking for an argument here, and perhaps NDD has something here. Yet, listening to companies and their earnings announcements, one gets a different picture.

    Now, saying that, I'm going to assume that New Deal Democrat right and that these companies are not. What does that tell us? Now for me, one thing that springs into my mind is that the heads of these companies are using the credit crises as an excuse. Which in turn, leads me to believe that many of these executives actually don't have a clue as to what is going on in their own companies. For what its worth, I think NDD is spot on with M2 and loans in regards to recessions.

    Once more, I'm not disagreeing with NDD, I'm just iffy when I see treasury yields go into near-to-negative territory.

    Reply to: "Banks aren't lending": Oh, REALLY???   15 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • Should we include statistical information of companies who have used these things? Is it widely available, for example, on how many H-1s are employed by Microsoft?

    Reply to: Please be a watchdog for Wikipedia pages on 2007-8 crises   15 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • and why TARP should at this point be considered a failure. Instead of lending money, banks and other major financial institutions are putting their money into treasury securities. Really, it's a major "poker tell" on how they REALLY feel about the economy. To use the now-abused saying, it isn't the return on their money but the return OF their money.

    Reply to: T-Bills hit 0%   15 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • The immigration attorneys and lobbyists, other interested parties constantly try to change that entry so is it not factual on the law.

    This wouldn't surprise me.

    Reply to: Please be a watchdog for Wikipedia pages on 2007-8 crises   15 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • google ... stephen roach "America’s inflated asset prices must fall" head of M.Stanley Asia, or:

    http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5a5419aa-bd47-11dc-b7e6-0000779fd2ac.html

    This is a tectonic shift. Bigger than any new President or the ideas of the "geniuses" that got us here. It's just arithmetic, all you M1-M2 Heads.

    May I offer these I made up (but may contain prior aphorisms inadvertently)...

    "It's the beliefs that die last."

    "The truth cannot be fully understood until all the foundations of the lies are excavated and examined without preconceptions (those beliefs)."

    The excavations shall commence once enough of the beliefs are dead. It's what the future is made of; always has been. And the beliefs will die once we finally pick up the mirror.

    Reply to: "Banks aren't lending": Oh, REALLY???   15 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • I had a meeting I had to get to, so thanks Robert for finding those two additional articles, but I just had to make it my own, see the revision history for timeline of edits. Basically, Robert added the middle two quotes from Seeking Alpha and IHT, and then I added additional quotes and my analysis of what that meant: there are people who are more bearish than I am out there (which is a scary thought).

    Reply to: T-Bills hit 0%   15 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • The first question that comes to my mind: What about auto loans? Since that would impact what to do about the auto industry. If auto loans are getting back to normal, then the automakers just need enough to tide them over.

    What I think is more likely is that banks are applying more critical analysis, and a lot of people who were able to qualify for an auto loan two years ago, no longer do. This would indicate a more fundamental problem: the stagnation of income for working and middle classes. In which case, loan standards either have to be lowered, or we have to back the auto industry for a very long haul, and begin to frontally attack the conservatives' anti-labor ideas.

    Secondly, what are these loans for? Are businesses buying money to purchase new equipment (good) or to buy other companies (bad)? I believe the fundamental problem of the past three decades has been lack of investment into industry and infrastructure; the loss of good paying jobs is largely a consequence of that.

    Reply to: "Banks aren't lending": Oh, REALLY???   15 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • Debt deflations are nothing new. Unfortunately, our in-depth statistics do not include any of those past periods. I have finally found a graph that includes monthly M1 and M2 statistics from the 1920s on, but no cite as to where the data came from, and too noisy to be of much help.

    One hopes that on Wall Street, in Washington, and in academia there are many hours being spent creating that data. I would like to know how those debt deflations were resolved "by the numbers."

    Reply to: "Banks aren't lending": Oh, REALLY???   15 years 11 months ago
  • I figure the entire US economy is overleveraged at least 13:1, just based on the ratio of M1:M2.

    That's what got us into trouble in the first place.

    Taking on more debt won't help, it will only delay the inevitable.

    Reply to: "Banks aren't lending": Oh, REALLY???   15 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • Banks have been stuffed with so much gobs and gobs of money that they can (1) stuff the entire world's supply of mattresses with it, and (2) lend some of it out.

    Reply to: T-Bills hit 0%   15 years 11 months ago
  • One of the most glaring examples is the comparison of The Theory of Comparative Advantage to actual trade patterns over the last 40 years- and yet plenty of Ricardo worshipers still exist, and still believe in specialization by country.

    It's gotten to the point where even economists I have a tendency to trust, like Paul Krugman, that we give Nobel Prizes to, are subject to the biases of the people who made them famous- and ignorant of basic personal economics like "you can't borrow your way out of debt".

    Reply to: Psychologist concludes economists need a code of ethics   15 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • Another myth blown up by someone bothering to look at the data. Nice job!

    I hope this post gets a lot of readers, for the current religion is banks are refusing to lend and this should make a few faces blush.

    Reply to: "Banks aren't lending": Oh, REALLY???   15 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • Anything in the sciences these days needs some ethics. I've noticed this generally, an erosion of accurate data, sticking with what the data tells you, scientific methods.

    How many people will bother to read a paper from someone, go into their data, their assumptions and thus see the flaw?

    We do on here and is one of the reasons we exist but your average reporter? Your average congressional staffer? They do not have the time.

    Reply to: Psychologist concludes economists need a code of ethics   15 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • Since they are doing final deliberations on the aid. My question is when was the expansion planned?

    Reply to: Bush - "We Don't Want to Throw Good Money After Bad"   15 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • When the admin was losing hundreds of millions in Iraq
    on pallets under the Viceroy Paulie Coreleone Bremer
    no one batted an eye. The Wall St mobsters got bailed out without a hitch. Paulson shorted and made 3 billion
    Now the Americans are told good money after bad?

    The whole GM story is not being accurately told

    to the American people

    GM to Hire 500 in India

    Submitted by Robert Oak on Tue, 12/09/2008 - 13:29. GM India Insourcing/Outsourcing jobs
    Who says hypocrisy isn't in full swing on the hill?
    Indian Newpapers are reporting GM to hire 500 new workers for their new India plant and look at the glow of GM hiring while in the United States GM goes begging to not declare immediate bankruptcy:
    It may be laying off factory workers in its troubled home market US, but General Motors will be hiring new workers in India at its new plant at Talegaon in Maharashtra as the company expands .
    "Recruitment is on at full swing in India and we plan to hire as many as 500 new workers for our Talegaon plant in the coming months," GM India president and MD Karl Slym told TOI.
    GM India is a GM subsidiary and GM has already poured $8.1 Billion into India and China.
    Please remember that Citigroup, all of the financial institutions, have offshore outsourced heavily also and Bank of America was so rude towards workers, one of them committed suicide in the BoA parking lot after being fired so his job could go to India.
    http://www.economicpopulist.org/?q=content/gm-hire-500-india#comment-3224

    Reply to: Bush - "We Don't Want to Throw Good Money After Bad"   15 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • We give them they money and they hand it to the Indians. Citigroup and AIG handed it to Tata while poor me a programmer cannot find a job and competing with H1Bs.

    Reply to: GM to Hire 500 in India   15 years 11 months ago
    EPer:

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