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Tuesday, May 26, 2009

And Nastier Yet

Uggh. Went to do retail checks again today. It just keeps getting worse.

What an awful set of correlations. I feel like stabbing my eyes out with a rusty fork to stop the pain.

The worst of it is that I decided to check my sample sites (hoping that they were biased badly) against the Fed maps of bank card and mortgage delinquencies. They were biased on the high side. Shoot me! Just shoot me!

Next up I'll pull call reports, but this ain't looking good. The number of banks doomed to fail has to have risen to at least 500.

The remarkably dismal rail reports agree well with primary retail.

I have a number of really strong ways I know to measure economic potential over the next 16 months, but none of them come up positively.

Comments:
Is that 500 in addition to the ones which have already failed, or 500 in toto?
 
"I have a number of really strong ways I know to measure economic potential over the next 16 months, but none of them come up positively."

So, more negative growth? How negative?
 
Gordon - 500 in all, but last year the bottom range was about 300, so it's a bad change. I'll see what it looks like when I go through the call reports.

Part of the problem is rapidly worsening loan quality across all sectors. The chargeoff rates in general are harrowing.
 
Neil - quantifying the situation is part of the reason why I go through call reports and do a lot of the statistical stuff. The next thing after this would be to go through the 2007 survey and adjust from there to come up with household reserve estimates.

However the government is meddling so much that any future projections have to be as dependent on assumptions about what the government does as much as the baseline economics.

I'm not saying that the government shouldn't try to intervene at all - just that choices the government is making are having a progressively bigger impact upon the real economy.
 
Economic downfall...it's still moving south, yet! I'm teaching my boys the basics of financial planning, the value of hard work and earning your pay. It's all neat and tidy, in a website called, kids-save.com. I am THRILLED! It's both parent/child involved (perfect, as I'm hesitant to let them go online w/o my probing eyes) and daily they review their chores (set up by me) and upon completing them watch their allowance grow (also set up by me). They accrue points which enable them to build an online kingdom. So, based on their work habits, spending/saving habits, their city has a wonderful economy or a crashing one. My boys are 5 and 8 and have a better grasp on knowing what's expected of them, how much they earn and how to use their money wisely, more than some adults I know! I'm a pleased mama, the website is free too! It's www.kids-save.com.
 
I'm having an interesting time watching how life works in a more normal family ;) I'd suggest you factor in a heavy dose of career deflation. Basically, anyone laid off this year is unlikely to find a job paying anywhere near what they were making before. And it's likely their future. The teenagers just starting out are making about what I was paid to start out in my current job, despite all those years of experience. Thanks to minimum wage, we have the inexperienced making as much as the experienced. This is another one of those train wrecks you see coming, that those in power seem clueless about. Yes, it may help the bottom line for businesses now. The problem is that people don't buy houses and big ticket items on those wages. Clearly, we can't be the driver of the world economy if all the good paying jobs are eliminated.
 
Did you see the bond market today? Throw some higher interest rates in the mix.
 
CF - right on schedule - Mortgage Apocalypse Now. Or is it a remake of Deliverance?
 
I'm thinking "Weekend at Barry's"
 
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