China: Overcapacity – Commodity Stockpiling

http://urlet.com/schedule.anything

http://www.rgemonitor.com/emergingmarkets-monitor/257856/chinas_september_data_suggest_that_the_long-term_overcapacity_problem_is_only_intensifying

Bank failures hit 106 on year

By Greg Morcroft, MarketWatch

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Seven more banks failed Friday, pushing the 2009 total to 106 and marking the first year since 1992 that at least 100 have gone under

Experts suggest we could be no more than 10% of the way through this cycle of bank collapses, which is sure to be the worst run of closures since the Great Depression.

http://urlet.com/len.man

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bank-failures-hit-100-for-year-2009-10-23

Matt Taibbi on Wall Street Criminals

Like all the great merchants of the bubble economy, Bear and Lehman were leveraged to the hilt and vulnerable to collapse. Many of the methods that outsiders used to knock them over were mostly legal: Credit markers were pulled, rumors were spread through the media, and legitimate short-sellers pressured the stock price down. But when Bear and Lehman made their final leap off the cliff of history, both undeniably got a push — especially in the form of a flat-out counterfeiting scheme called naked short-selling.

The new president for whom we all had such high hopes went and hired Michael Froman, a Citigroup executive who accepted a $2.2 million bonus after he joined the White House, to serve on his economic transition team — at the same time the government was giving Citigroup a massive bailout. Then, after promising to curb the influence of lobbyists, Obama hired a former Goldman Sachs lobbyist, Mark Patterson, as chief of staff at the Treasury. He hired another Goldmanite, Gary Gensler, to police the commodities markets. He handed control of the Treasury and Federal Reserve over to Geithner and Bernanke, a pair of stooges who spent their whole careers being bellhops for New York bankers. And on the first anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, when he finally came to Wall Street to promote “serious financial reform,” his plan proved to be so completely absent of balls that the share prices of the major banks soared at the news.

http://urlet.com/go.caught

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/30481512/wall_streets_naked_swindle

This bubble will burst sooner

This bubble won’t last long

ft.com

We did not need to wait until the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit 10,000. It has been clear for some time that global equity markets are bubbling again. On the surface, this looks like 2003 and 2004 when the previous housing, credit, commodity and equity bubbles started to inflate, helped by low nominal interest rates and a lack of inflation. There is one big difference, though. This bubble will burst sooner.

http://urlet.com/thrown.predicts

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/A-new-crisis-on-the-horizon-pd20091019-WXUVM?OpenDocument

AND THEN WHAT? Prolonged Aid to Unemployed Is Running Out

ERIK ECKHOLM

Published: August 1, 2009

Over the coming months, as many as 1.5 million jobless Americans will exhaust their unemployment insurance benefits, ending what for some has been a last bulwark against foreclosures and destitution.

Because of emergency extensions already enacted by Congress, laid-off workers in nearly half the states can collect benefits for up to 79 weeks, the longest period since the unemployment insurance program was created in the 1930s. But unemployment in this recession has proved to be especially tenacious, and a wave of job-seekers is using up even this prolonged aid.

http://urlet.com/strategies.fair

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/us/02unemploy.html?hp

US and UK on brink of debt disaster

20 Jan 2009, 0419 hrs
 
 
 
LONDON: The United States and the United Kingdom stand on the brink of the largest debt crisis in history. 
While both governments experiment with quantitative easing, bad banks to absorb non-performing loans, and state guarantees to restart bank lending, the only real way out is some combination of widespread corporate default, debt write-downs and inflation to reduce the burden of debt to more manageable levels. Everything else is window-dressing.
 
The proximate trigger of the debt crisis was the deterioration in lending standards and rise in default rates on subprime mortgage loans. But the widening divergence revealed in the charts suggests a crisis had become inevitable sooner or later. If not subprime lending, there would have been some other trigger.

The charts strongly suggest the necessary condition for resolving the debt crisis is a reduction in the outstanding volume of debt, an increase in nominal GDP, or some combination of the two, to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio to a more sustainable level.

From this perspective, it is clear many of the existing policies being pursued in the United States and the United Kingdom will not resolve the crisis because they do not lower the debt ratio.

In particular, having governments buy distressed assets from the banks, or provide loan guarantees, is not an effective solution. It does not reduce the volume of debt, or force recognition of losses. It merely re-denominates private sector obligations to be met by households and firms as public ones to be met by the taxpayer.

BANKRUPTCY OR INFLATION

The solution must be some combination of policies to reduce the level of debt or raise nominal GDP. The simplest way to reduce debt is through bankruptcy, in which some or all of debts are deemed unrecoverable and are simply extinguished, ceasing to exist.

Bankruptcy would ensure the cost of resolving the debt crisis falls where it belongs. Investor portfolios and pension funds would take a severe but one-time hit. Healthy businesses would survive, minus the encumbrance of debt.

http://urlet.com/bingo.angels

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/rssarticleshow/msid-4004567,flstry-1.cms

Its Time to Dump Your Dollars – If You Still Have Cents

Crude Oil Caps Biggest Monthly Gain Since 1999 on Dollar Drop

By Mark Shenk

May 29 (Bloomberg) — Crude oil rose, capping its biggest monthly gain in a decade, as the dollar weakened against the euro, bolstering the appeal of commodities.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=af0H16dCeM_A&refer=home

Bill’s Crisis Garden Feed

In these hard times, nothing will give you a sense of security more than being able to grow your own food, being able to save seeds from one season to another, and sustaining a garden.  It is better than hoarding canned food or bullets.  If we all start growing our own we will all feel more secure and our world will be less violent.  Grow a few flowers too. 

have a peaceful day,

Bill

Bill’s Crisis Garden Feed is at one of the links below:

http://urlet.com/football.check

http://www.google.com/reader/shared/user/17311098055441387575/label/CrisisGarden

Eureka Labor Ready Closed

The downtown office of temporary service company Labor Ready appears to be closed.

The office, on H St. south of 5th across from the Post Office, has not been open for over a week.  Today it appears that the office is being packed in cartons for moving.

There is no further information.

Pink Slips Are The New Black – A Blog for the Unemployed by the Unemployed

Found on the Net:

Pink Slips Are The New Black – A Blog for the Unemployed by the Unemployed

About
We’re broke.
We’re angry.
We’re frustrated.
We’re unemployed…

Like you.

There is strength in numbers. Join us.

We created this blog as way to keep you informed, entertained and enlightened.

Have tips or want to contact us? E-mail us at: pinkslipsarethenewblack@gmail.com

http://urlet.com/numbers.managing

http://pinkslipsarethenewblack.com/about/