Show-me Account Talk

[alevin]

One thing for sure, which ever direction we break to will be a wild ride.

The unemployment picture shows that the .gov continues to tell bold lies and spin corrupt data. Net losses of jobs continue but unemployment is down, :suspicious::notrust:. BHO has a party to show the country we are doing better. NET JOB LOSSES CONTINUE TO BE NEGATIVE! DUH! Could it be that people are GIVING UP LOOKING FOR WORK! Maybe?

What until the construction job supported by the stimulus get eliminated. Temporary workers are showing up but what does that do? Census jobs will show up but that is more taxpayer stimulus that are not real jobs. Fake job to fool the dumb investors into the market.

People laugh a Peter Schiff but he is right in some aspects. The economy is not shedding jobs in the right places and building job in the right places due to the artificial .gov intervention. The country can not support our economy with medical, education, government, and government contracted jobs.

The bubbles are forming and the mortgage resets are coming. Credit card defaults are breaking new records and it is the spending season. People will use their CC to charge what they can not afford and then default. It is the old new game. Everyone is playing it in the mortgage sector.

Here is a new epiphany I had listening to Clark Howard this week. Employers will not hire back laid off employee's as regular employee's. Why? Because if they hire them back as "contract employee's" they do not have to pay payroll tax or benefits and they are not considered a employee for the new health care reform. Contract employee's pay all their own taxes and benefits.

What is the broader implications? Social Security. Now there will be less money going into SS thus bringing the critical mass date closer than we think. Contract employee's pay in less SS tax than would be brought in if they were a regular employee.

The street has figured out how to get out of pay more taxes. Can't blame them, its a black hole. Problem is that more people are opting to retire early because they are discouraged and we are collecting much less SS revenue to support the folk already on the rolls and the new ones too.

Just keep in mind that we need to create 250K jobs a month for 10 years to get to 5% unemployment and add another 40K to that number to get to 4% unemployment. We have 3 million new workers entering the work force every year.

Am I discouraged, yes. Am I in the market, yes. The trend is your friend until it ends. As dollar weakness continues, the market keep climbing just like commodities. Dollar weakness is inverse to commodities and US indices.

Take a look at the article that James posted about P/E ratio's. They are ridiculous. I have it here, eleven posts back.

Be cautious folks the bubbles are forming. Watch the banks. The big boys made themselves to big to fail and are not lending money out for a reason. They are squirreling cash away for the rainy day fund. Look at the banks failing and the FDIC can not give them away. WSJ did a article on that. That is likely why we are not seeing the FDIC dismantling more than 6 or 7 banks a week. They have no one willing to take the really bad ones so they are letting them float with taxpayer backing.

Thanks, Show. This is what I see as well. And I am following Kevin DePew (Minyanville) at this point, with his TD DeMark monthly indicator analyses. This month or next will tell the story on where intermediate trend will likely head in 2010. I'm waiting til that story gets unveiled before I make any major move in TSP. I bumped my % biweekly a couple months ago through year end thanks to temporary promotion (that is now officially ended this week), so I'll have a little more cash to move when I do finally make a move.

 

[Scrappy]

http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=$USD&p=D&yr=0&mn=6&dy=0&id=p51972347693

NET JOB LOSSES CONTINUE TO BE NEGATIVE! DUH! Could it be that people are GIVING UP LOOKING FOR WORK! Maybe?
Temporary workers are showing up but what does that do? Is it possible that some are anticipating getting Obamacare and will no longer desire and/or require full time or permanent work?

Here is a new epiphany I had listening to Clark Howard this week. Employers will not hire back laid off employee's as regular employee's. Why? Because if they hire them back as "contract employee's" they do not have to pay payroll tax or benefits and they are not considered a employee for the new health care reform. Contract employee's pay all their own taxes and benefits. Until we pay for their Obamacare?

The trend is your friend until it ends. Great info in this post! I see a lot of "handwriting on the wall" and am hoping that I can somehow avoid or at least be better prepaired for the next October 2008.

 

[Show-me]

Just found out Wiese USA is quietly laying off sales and service personnel. I have a family member working there. They sell and service forklifts in the central US.

 

[Gumby]

Just found out Wiese USA is quietly laying off sales and service personnel. I have a family member working there. They sell and service forklifts in the central US.

I am starting to see more and more construction equipment auctions as work for contactors seems to have dried up. One contractor told me that Caterpillar has repossesed dozers and excavators stacked on sales lots like cordwood. Prices have been marked down also.

I don't see the earthwork construction turning around any time soon. Grading for parking lots and new stores has come to a standstill. Many shopping mall spaces are vacant all over Missouri.
Seen any new shopping malls open lately?

Jobless recovery? ...... Equivalent to trying to breathe life into a corpse.

 

[Bullitt]

250K jobs a month for 5 years to get to 5%. Yea! When do we start?

The brutal truth is, I really don't think people like Christina Romer understand the reality here.

 

[Bullitt]

This link is about a month old, but if traffic is down over 20% YOY, then what are those extra truck drivers doing? Probably not driving anymore.

Year to date, total truck crossings are down 20 percent from the first 10 months of 2008.

http://www.todaystrucking.com/newscenter.cfm?pageaction=story&intNewsCenterID=1&intDocID=22818

I can't imagine where we'd be right now without all this job creation and jobs saved by the record stimulus. LOL.

 

[Show-me]

Re: Welcome to the New Normal

What's wrong with these pictures. I told you they are not lending because they know what is coming. Man your life boats!

3) Options Arm and Alt A. Loan Programs: The third leg of the trifecta issues gaining momentum is something I wrote about concerning the conversion of payment structures on Option ARMs and Alt. A. loan programs. Below is a chart of when they begin to convert and by home much.

Beginning in the 4th quarter of 2009 and going well into 2011, we'll see a sharp increase in the number of homes receiving adjustments on mortgage payments, and by a wide margin (40-80% increases). Many of those mortgages where written as a way for someone to buy a house they couldn't afford on traditional home financing terms, and when the payment adjusts they will not be able to afford that home.

If you can't afford the mortgage payment, and the house is worth less than what's owed, it's not rocket science, it's just a matter of when the bank gets to own it. The re-pricing of mortgages should cause another wave of bank owned homes and more financially distressed real estate. This sub-segment problem might take until the end of 2010 to actually hit bank balance sheets (as real estate owned by the bank) given the timing of the payment change and foreclosing process of properties.

One of the more interesting notes about these exotic mortgages is it seems like they were highly concentrated in the higher end real estate markets. As a commercial banker, I see a lot of people who have these types of mortgages on higher end homes. In California I see these types of mortgages on loans typically $700,000 or higher. So, as the mortgage re-pricing occurs we might see this problem concentrated in the higher end real estate markets, as those assets flow into bank owned and then back onto the market as distressed real estate, we should expect compression in real estate values from the top down.

Another unique note is that slightly more than 50% of these types of mortgages were underwritten in California, so the intensity of the problem should be felt in California, "The Bubble State". If so, it should negatively impact CA real estate values and those banks specializing in this lending product in California. Hmmm, I can't remember, but who bought Wachovia?

http://www.safehaven.com/article-14795.htm

http://seekingalpha.com/article/163553-welcome-to-the-new-normal

Welcome to the New Normal

September 27, 2009 John Mauldin

And What We Don't See
Those are the facts. Now it's time to look at what we don't see, and what you don't read or hear from the mainstream media.
We saw above that we are adding about 1.5 million workers to the workplace every year. That means over the next five years we are going to need 7.5 million jobs just to maintain that growth, or about 125,000 a month. That is on the low side of what economists normally estimate, which is around 150,000 per month. If we used the 150,000 estimate, it would mean we need 9 million jobs.
There are at least 1 million (and probably more like 2 million) discouraged workers who would take jobs if the economy got better. You can derive that number by going back to early 2007 and seeing the level of discouraged workers. That means, by the end of 2014 we are going to have 163 million people in the work force (see table above).
Today we have 139.6 million jobs, and that number is likely to slip at least another half million (last month the economy lost 216,000 jobs, with a very suspicious birth-death ratio accounting for a lot of job creation). So let's call it 139 million current jobs.
Let's assume that we would like to get back to a 5% unemployment rate. That would not be stellar, but it would certainly be better than where we are today. Five percent unemployment in late 2014 will mean 8.1 million unemployed. To get to 5% unemployment we will have to create 14 million jobs in the five years from 2010-2014. (163 million in labor pool minus 8 million unemployed is 155 million jobs. We now have 139 million jobs, so the difference is roughly 15 million.) Plus the equivalent of 3 million jobs that Rosenberg estimates, just to get back to an average work week. And maybe the extra 1.5 million a year I mentioned above.
But let's ignore those latter jobs and round it off to 15 million. Let's hope that by the beginning of next year we stop losing jobs. That means that to get back to 5% unemployment within five years we need to see, on average, the creation of 250,000 jobs per month. As an AVERAGE!!!!!

A Double-Dip Recession?

​

Wow.

 

[Show-me]

Here is a refresher for those of you that missed it.

U.S. Foreclosure Rates Surge as Unemployment Continues to Rise



http://www.americanbankingnews.com/2009/10/28/u-s-foreclosure-rates-surge-as-unemployment-continues-to-rise/

Really look at the balances and how much the payment are going to jump. Look at how the middle and top tiers are moving up. The top tier is spiking. Look at the cash Wells has on hand. What does that tell you?

 

[Show-me]

100% F fund

 

[mayday]

100% F fund

Show can you give us a reason for your move to safety?

 

[Birchtree]

Probably related to too much snow in Missouri.

 

[Show-me]

Show can you give us a reason for your move to safety?

Just a hunch play. Bonds have pulled back a bit and is less risk.

Trans, C fund and S fund charts look like they are ready to explode after all the sideways movement, but which way? S fund has a lower high put in and is not looking as good as C and I, but if we break to the up side the S will have the most potental to perform.

I fund is at the bottom of its channel too after the dollar rallied. It is due a move up due to dollar being over bought.

I figure if I'm on the fence and have mixed feelings right now, join the F fund that way if the market down I don't get too hurt so much. Risk is very high right now, IMO, but the dollar is looking to go down again and that could fuel equities.

I'm cautious here because the market has moved up alot this year. That and the lack of snow here.

I have another transfer to go before the end of the year.

USO looks like a nonTSP buy right now.

 

[mayday]

I can relate to capital preservation yet my bet is that the market will not have a major correction until after Christmas.

 

[Show-me]

I can relate to capital preservation yet my bet is that the market will not have a major correction until after Christmas.

I can see that too, but I not going to get to greedy and chase the leaders. I'm at 20% and while it is below my goal of beating the C fund I feel this sideways range we are in is trying to tell us something like "Hello this is the top speaking."

Jim Rogers did a great interview on CNBC. He is staying out of stocks and US bonds. Loves silver and agriculture.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVFxCEAqIgg&feature=sub

 

[Bullitt]

Long the dollar. I'd love to know what percentage of his net worth is tied into that trade. Probably just 1%, enough to say he called a rally if he's right and enough to say it doesn't matter if he's wrong.

Oh well. I'm starting to think the next big thing is agriculture too. The media has everyone so brainwashed about global warming, meanwhile we're only one crop failure away from a food crisis overseas. Look at how that ETF MOO is diverging away from the general market. It keeps running away from me. All my buy orders on it have fallen short and I'm not going to chase.

 

[grandma]

Oh well. I'm starting to think the next big thing is agriculture too. The media has everyone so brainwashed about global warming, meanwhile we're only one crop failure away from a food crisis overseas.

Earlier this year we had the Agri bill presented; among other things there was a section that said all home produce had to be labeled with ingredients - the Mom-Pop roadside stands, the Farmer's Markets across the nation... The rationale was that since the Fed Agri Inspection Teams had employees who couldn't do their work properly (peanut butter crisis, to name one), that All products had to be labeled,. Was there a section on inspecting them? Anyway - the way I understood it, (and didn't we have posters on that here?) was it was one more nail in our coffin - government controlling all food supplies....:suspicious:

 

[Bullitt]

You gotta be sure OBL isn't hiding in any of our roadside corn stands. :laugh:

 

[Show-me]

GLD, SLV, USO, and UNG.

http://www.safehaven.com/article-15256.htm

 

[Show-me]

Looks like we could break out. Going back into the pool.

 

[Show-me]

PPI was a blow out number.

http://www.briefing.com/Investor/Public/Calendars/EconomicCalendar.htm

Rick Santelli almost beat Steve Liesmen to a pulp. lol

Pandora Radio is my new favorite radio site.