Doom du Jour No. 11

My assumption is that this is more of the same: Putting off immediate pain for a severe bite in the ass, at a later date. Sales may have been higher on Friday, but my thinking is that fourth quarter retail profits will be lower because of discounted merchandise. The market will do OK today, based on a better-than-expected Friday. The market will do crappier in another two months, based on a worse-than-expected earnings report.

I'm still just disgusted beyond belief at the Wal-Mart fiasco. When did we become "consumers" and not "humans?" About the time we began trampling each other to get at a discounted television, I'm thinking.

Enough of the rant. Here's the sales story, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal:

The holiday shopping season got off to a better-than-expected start, as retailers reeled in cautious shoppers with massive discounts like "buy one get one free" sweaters at Gap Inc. stores, $200 iPod Touch music players from Amazon.comInc., and 26-inch LCD TVs at Target Corp. sites for $299.

In a survey of 3,370 shoppers, the National Retail Federation estimated shoppers spent an average of $372.57 over the weekend, up 7.2% over last year's $347.55.

Although unprecedented discounts lured shoppers into stores, momentum ebbed Saturday, raising concerns that shoppers were merely exploiting the "door-buster" deals and then walking out of stores. Indeed, as many as 70% of consumers purchased only deeply-discounted merchandise Friday, according to Charleston, S.C.-based America's Research Group, which polled 700 shoppers over the weekend.

"They didn't stay if they didn't get the deals," says Britt Beemer, the firm's founder.

In the NRF survey, which was conducted by BIGresearch and includes spending data for Thursday, Friday and Saturday and estimates for Sunday, more than 172 million shoppers visited stores and Web sites over Black Friday weekend, up from 147 million shoppers last year. Black Friday traditionally marks the day when retailers turn a profit for the year.

But in a sign that sales over the next several weeks are likely to slow, shoppers said that by the end of the weekend they had completed a greater portion of their holiday shopping -- 39.3% compared to 36.4% last year, according to the NRF survey.

A different survey, performed by ShopperTrak RCT Corp., found sales on Friday were up 3% over last year, to $10.6 billion. The gains marked a deceleration of growth compared with 2007, which posted 8% sales gains. ShopperTrak will release data for Saturday and Sunday on Monday.

Online, sales on Friday were relatively flat, rising 1% to $534 million, according to comScore Inc., a Reston, Va., market-research firm. When Thanksgiving and Black Friday were combined, online sales rose 2% over last year. Online sales from Nov. 1 through Friday totaled $10.41 billion, down 4% from last year.

Following two months of sharply declining sales, many retailers moved to dramatically mark down merchandise, despite facing lower profit margins. "The main goal was to work through inventory," says Brendan Hoffman, chief executive of Lord & Taylor, where traffic was slower on Saturday than on Friday but better than the chain originally predicted.

Best Buy Co. President Brian J. Dunn said it was unlikely that prices would go much lower than they did over the weekend, when the retailer advertised products like a 40-inch Sony HDTV for $899.

At Macy's Inc.'s upscale Bloomingdale's chain, shoppers turned out for the heavy discounts including 40% off contemporary sportswear, 50% off men's shoes and $15 gift cards for every $100 spent. Bloomingdale's Chief Executive Michael Gould noted that traffic Friday was down slightly from the year earlier, but stronger than he expected it to be.

Crowds were visibly thinner in many areas by Saturday. At Gurnee Mills, an outlet mall in Gurnee, Ill., hundreds of parking spaces remained open Saturday, just two hours after the mall's 9 a.m. opening. "I wasn't really expecting a huge turnout today," Randy Ebertowski, general manager of Gurnee Mills, said midday Saturday. "I think people came out in force yesterday and maybe they are taking a little break now." Still, Mr. Ebertowski said later he believes traffic picked up later in the day and sales at some stores may have exceeded last year.

Similarly, a Dallas Wal-Mart supercenter that had been packed with shoppers early Friday was practically deserted by Saturday afternoon. All the electronics door busters -- such as a $388 42-inch television -- were sold out by Saturday morning, save for a few Kodak cameras priced at $149.

A number of Taubman Centers Inc.'s malls -- in Connecticut, New Jersey and Virginia -- reported that sales at stores surveyed on Saturday were flat or decreased slightly on average, the company said.

Many consumers said they couldn't pass up the steep discounts offered by retailers. But they didn't plan to splurge much beyond the sales. Candace Adeszko, 25 years old, was buying a sweater, five shirts and corduroy pants at J.Crew in the Chicago Premium Outlets in Aurora, Ill., on Thanksgiving that she estimated cost $75 to $100 total. "If I can get stuff cheap now, I will," said the graduate student from Downers Grove, Ill., who was at a Midnight Madness event for the first time. She has cut her spending to all but necessities in recent months due to worries about whether she will have student loans in the future.

Across the country, discount retailers continued to get a boost as cash-strapped consumers traded down. "Wal-Mart is like my best friend now," said Stephanie Fasulo, a special-education teacher from Southington, Conn., while admiring the silver jewelry at a Tiffany & Co. store in New York. Ms. Fasulo, 23 years old, says she usually does her holiday shopping at Saks Fifth Avenue and Macy's but this year she was skipping Saks and shopping at Target and Wal-Mart.

Luxury retailers, which last year benefited from tourist traffic and the weak dollar, were pulling out all the stops to get shoppers to buy designer ensembles, shoes and handbags. Since orders are typically placed six to nine months before products hit stores, many upscale retailers were caught off guard by the dramatic change in consumer sentiment.

The women's shoe departments of Saks and Bergdorf Goodman in New York, where footwear was marked down 40% to 70%, were packed with shoppers. Saks had to install a velvet rope to control crowds hungry for an additional 50% off already discounted designer shoes. By Saturday afternoon, Saks's flagship store was mobbed with shoppers rummaging through the bargain bins in the first-floor handbag area, where Dolce & Gabbana and Chloé bags were being sold for an additional 50% off.

The discounts are expected to keep up on Monday -- known as "Cyber Monday" because it is the day consumers return to work and start buying on the Internet -- as 83.7% of retailers are planning special promotions, up from 72.2% last year, according to a survey by Shop.org, a division of the National Retail Federation. The aggressive promotions follow a weak October, when online sales grew 1%, the slowest rate since 2001, according to comScore.

Discounter Target, whose sales have declined precipitously in recent months, has high hopes for Cyber Monday, typically its second-highest day for online traffic behind Thanksgiving.

Target, which expects traffic on Monday to be up 40% over last year, will have 1,500 items on sale between Nov. 30 and Dec. 6, including electronics, toys, home decor and apparel; about 500 of the items will be offered at their lowest prices ever, Target says.

Not A Great Deal to Report

... really and truly. Which was fine, considering Friday's mayhem. We spent a very quiet weekend, picking up a couple of our goats from the breeder's place, and doing some general cleaning and scutwork around the house in a fairly nasty snow.

I had a long talk with a college roommate, who's a successful former lawyer in San Antonio. His mom died, left them some property, which he sold last summer for enough to retire. At least, he thought he'd retire. Instead, he's dusting off his law books and thinking about doing some teaching, since his portfolio isn't doing so well. And we talked about growing up on ranches. He was talking to his son about butchering pigs.

"Nobody does that stuff anymore," his son said.

"You may have to, sooner rather than later," my friend said.

The encouraging thing -- or not, it depends -- was that his son just shrugged.

"Yeah, I guess so."

Doom du Jour No. 10

What happens if the Big 3 collapse? Who the hell knows. It doesn't sound very good, though:

Local Pillars, Auto Dealerships Teeter as Big Three Decline

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS

QUINCY, Fla. — Bruce Thomas washed cars at his father’s General Motors dealership here at age 12, changed oil in high school, and sold his first Pontiac during college.

His commitment to a famed American industry, part business and part romance, never waned. He took over his family’s two dealerships, building a small fortune. In turn, he showered generosity on local churches, school athletic teams, charity golf tournaments and a group that helps women find jobs out of prison.

But suddenly, all of Mr. Thomas’s success appears to be melting away.

Days go by without a sale. His debts are mounting. His friends offer him cash to get by. “I’m trying to survive as a car dealer,” said Mr. Thomas, now 59, “and I don’t know if I can.”

Top executives of the Big Three automakers are preparing to return to Washington this week with business plans they hope will lead to a federal bailout. But any government help will probably come too late for thousands of dealers like Mr. Thomas who sell American brands.

They have been struggling for years, as Detroit’s fortunes waned, but what remains of their sales is evaporating along with consumer confidence and credit.

The National Automobile Dealers Association predicts that roughly 900 of the nation’s 20,770 new-car dealers will go out of business this year, and automobile analysts say the number of failed dealerships could rise into the thousands next year.

Even if Ford, Chrysler and G.M. survive, many believe a comeuppance is inevitable among dealerships; indeed, for years the nation has had more dealers for domestic brands than warranted by the sales volume of the Detroit automakers.

The economic toll of a mass failure of dealerships around the country has already begun to harm the broader economy. In October alone, 20,000 employees of auto dealerships lost their jobs nationwide, more than half of those who were newly unemployed in the retail trade, according to the Labor Department.

The auto dealers association estimates that new-car dealers produce a $54 billion annual payroll for 1.1 million workers and nearly 20 percent of the retail sales and sales taxes in small and large communities alike.

The auto dealers are not just businesses, of course. Most of them are deeply rooted in their communities, and each is a slice of Americana — their big flags flying, their radio advertisements compelling attention and their Little League sponsorships and other charity helping to improve the lives of local people.

In this small town outside Tallahassee, Mr. Thomas had 50 employees only two years ago when his two dealerships sold an average of 24 new vehicles a month. But now Mr. Thomas is lucky if he sells three new vehicles a week, and he has had to dismiss 10 of his remaining 40 employees in recent days.

Salesmen at Mr. Thomas’s two dealerships — one selling Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep cars and the other General Motors models — are so idle, they spend their time doing Sudoku puzzles, reading sports magazines and calling and writing old clients. They repeatedly implore the mail carrier to buy a car on mornings when he is the only one to come in the door.

Calmly resolute, Mr. Thomas spends his days talking to lawyers and bankers, trying to keep his business alive. Mr. Thomas has lost a lot of money in an investment in a cousin’s Georgia dealership, but many of his problems appear to be not of his making.

The last couple of years of rising gasoline prices took the steam out of the market for his Dodge Ram 2500 heavy pickup trucks and GMC Yukon sport utilities. In recent months, gasoline prices came down, but unemployment began rising here. The weak economy has hurt farmers, government workers and others. Quincy’s middle class is hurting because of plummeting values for homes and stocks.

And now the credit market — the lifeblood of any car dealership — is frozen. Finance companies have tightened credit both for car buyers and for dealerships like Mr. Thomas’s that stock their showrooms with vehicles bought on credit. The car companies are delaying some payments to dealers because of their own problems.

Mr. Thomas has gotten behind in payments to GMAC, G.M.’s financing arm, so the company sent a representative to his dealerships two weeks ago to take control of the keys of new cars on his lots to guarantee that GMAC is paid when any vehicles are sold.

Mr. Thomas has stopped ordering new vehicles, and he is relentlessly cutting costs, including his own salary. He is slashing medical benefits and matching funds for the retirement accounts of his remaining employees. He has stopped giving free oil changes and tires to charities, stopped offering coffee to customers and even canceled janitorial services for the bathrooms.

Gathering workers for a pep talk in the service garage of his G.M. dealership the other day, Mr. Thomas said, “We are going to fight hard to keep everything going we can, but there are things that could go out of control.” As the employees fidgeted, he added, “Let’s try our best to sell a car today.”

Salesmen are passing out their résumés to visitors, and they say they are not sure they will get paid from one week to the next.

“You have to laugh to keep from crying these days,” Lynn Mayo, the office manager at the G.M. dealership, said as she wiped away tears. “The whole mess is hard.”

The downturn has been years in the making. Mr. Thomas’s total sales, including repairs and used cars, fell to $26 million in 2007 from $32 million in 2005. This year he hopes sales will reach $20 million based largely on stronger business during the first half. During the last two months, sales and repairs hit a wall.

It is a big comedown for a business that began with Mr. Thomas’s father, Howard, who came to Quincy after World War II to start a used-car business across the street from a Chevrolet dealer. Howard Thomas was so successful, the Chevrolet dealer bought him out and brought him into the new-car business as a manager.

In 1967 Howard Thomas bought half of the local Pontiac-GMC store, and 12 years later it became a Thomas family operation run by him and his son. The business expanded to two dealerships and became a major benefactor to the local Little League team, theater and other charities. More than 400 people attended Howard Thomas’s funeral in February. The business has long been the biggest retail employer in the town after Wal-Mart, and has produced $1 million in sales taxes annually in recent years.

Local officials say they know Mr. Thomas is in trouble, and they fear the consequences of his going out of business. “It would be a huge tragedy for us,” said Quincy’s mayor, Andy Gay, whose first job after getting married was selling cars at a Thomas dealership.

Mr. Thomas’s business is a microcosm for the whole industry. At least 70 percent of the dealerships that have closed so far this year sell American cars, and better than 60 percent of the remaining dealerships sell the troubled Detroit brands. “A lot of them will go out of business,” predicted Rex Henderson, an auto analyst at Raymond James & Associates.

“We have never seen anything like this,” said Denny Fitzpatrick, owner of a Chevrolet-Hummer dealership outside Oakland and chairman of the California New Car Dealers Association. Having already dismissed 56 of his 114 employees, Mr. Fitzpatrick added, “You lay awake at night trying to figure out how to keep these doors open.”

Car dealers are not entirely blameless for their fate. Auto analysts say they did not push Detroit hard enough to build better-quality, more efficient cars. They note that the dealers lobbied hard in state capitals for laws to protect their franchises from the Detroit manufacturers who wanted to limit their numbers and determine their locations.

Mr. Thomas lays some blame on the unions that drove hard bargains with the automakers, some on a news media that “glorified” imports, and some on the Big Three for being “slow to react to the market and what the public wanted,” especially when gas prices rose in recent years.

To compensate, Mr. Thomas said he had changed his inventory the last couple of years to include fewer trucks and sport utilities, adding more fuel-efficient vehicles like thePontiac G6. He shifted his advertising away from newspapers to the Internet. He gradually reduced his business’ charitable giving, once $30,000 a year, to $1,900 this year.

He has begun a radio campaign offering zero percent financing on all his 2008 Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep vehicles for 36 months, and savings of up to $12,000 on Yukon XLs.

But sales have not budged.

Speaking in an office decorated with antique golf clubs, autographed baseballs and a photograph of his grandfather posing beside a 1952 Buick Roadmaster, Mr. Thomas said he had no major regrets.

“As a kid I dreamed about cars,” he said. “The business has changed and the cars have changed, and it’s been fun to be part of that.”

But he said he saw more trouble ahead.

“At this point, I see no light at the end of the tunnel,” he said, closing his eyes for a moment to think. “I only see it getting worse. Any bailout to Detroit will take a while to get to Main Street.”

Doom du Jour No. 9

From Mish's Global Economic Trends Analysis. Makes sense to me:

Black-Belt Shopping Strategies

Oprah Winfrey offers 10 Black-Belt Shopping Strategies. In contrast, I offer two.

1) Don't buy what you cannot afford.
2) Don't buy what you can afford.

It Just Says Something

Something not so great. I'm not sure what, but you would think that the hyper-consumerism behavior would be dialed back a bit. This is just one of those things that really makes you think the species hasn't evolved all that much.

I took a couple of personal days off from the blog (not to go shopping at Wal-Mart).

Wal-Mart worker dies after shoppers knock him down

By COLLEEN LONG, Associated Press Writer1 hr 32 mins ago

NEW YORK – A worker was killed in the crush Friday after a throng of shoppers eager for post-Thanksgiving bargains burst through the doors at a suburban Wal-Mart, authorities said.

At least four other people were injured, and the store in Valley Stream on Long Island was closed.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in Bentonville, Ark., called the incident a "tragic situation" and said the employee came from a temporary agency and was doing maintenance work at the store.

"He was bum-rushed by 200 people," co-worker Jimmy Overby, 43, told the Daily News. "They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too. ... I literally had to fight people off my back."

Nassau County police said the 34-year-old worker was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead at about 6 a.m. The man's name was not released and the cause of death was not immediately known.

A police statement said shortly after the store's 5 a.m. opening time, shoppers "physically broke down the doors, knocking (the worker) to the ground."

A metal portion of the door was crumpled like an accordion.

Shoppers around the country lined up early outside stores in the annual bargain hunting ritual known as Black Friday. Many stores open early and stay open late, and some of the most dramatic bargains are available in limited quantities.

Among the bargains offered by Wal-Mart for Friday were Samsung 50-inch high definition Plasma TVs for less than $800.

Witnesses told the Daily News that before the store was closed, eager shoppers streamed past emergency crews as they worked furiously to save the worker's life.

"They were working on him, but you could see he was dead," said Halcyon Alexander, 29. "People were still coming through."

A 28-year-old pregnant woman was taken to a hospital for observation, and she and the unborn baby were both reported to be OK, said Sgt. Anthony Repalone, aNassau County police spokesman. Four or five other people suffered minor injuries, he said.

Ellen Davis, a spokeswoman at National Retail Federation, said the group knew of no other incident where a retail employee has died working on the day afterThanksgiving.

Wal-Mart is working closely with police, company spokesman Dan Fogleman said.

"The safety and security of our customers and associates is our top priority," Fogleman said. "Our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families at this difficult time."

Doom du Jour No. 8

From James Howard Kunstler:

November 24, 2008
Zombie Economics

    Though Citicorp is deemed too big to fail, it's hardly reassuring to know that it's been allowed to sink its fangs into the Mother Zombie that the US Treasury has become and sucked out a multi-billion dollar dose of embalming fluid so it can go on pretending to be a bank for a while longer. I employ this somewhat clunky metaphor to point out that the US Government is no more solvent than the financial zombies it is keeping on walking-dead support. And so this serial mummery of weekend bailout schemes is as much of a fraud and a swindle as the algorithm-derived-securities shenanigans that induced the disease of bank zombification in the first place. The main question it raises is whether, eventually, the creation of evermore zombified US dollars will exceed the amount of previously-created US dollars now vanishing into oblivion through compressive debt deflation.

      My guess, given the usual time-lag factor, is that the super-inflation snap-back will occur six to eighteen months from now. And the main result of all this will be our inability to buy the imported oil that comprises two-thirds of the oil we require to keep WalMart and Walt Disney World running. At some point, then, in the early months of the Obama administration, we'll learn that "change" is not a set of mere lifestyle choices but a wrenching transition away from all our familiar and comfortable habits into a stark and rigorous new economic landscape.

      The credit economy is dead and the dead credit residue of that dead economy is going where dead things go. It came into the world as "money" and it is going out of this world as a death-dealing disease, and we're not going to get over this disease until we stop generating additional zombie money out of no productive activity whatsoever. The campaign to sustain the unsustainable is, besides war, the greatest pitfall this society can stumble into. It represents a squandering of our remaining scant resources and can only produce the kind of extreme political disappointment that wrecks nations and leads to major conflicts between them. I don't know how much Mr. Obama buys into the current adopt-a-zombie program -- his Treasury designee Timothy Geithner was apparently in on this weekend's Citicorp deal -- but the President would be wise to steer clear of whatever the walking dead in the Bush corner are still up to.

     All the activities based on getting something-for-nothing are dead or dying now, in particular buying houses and cars on credit and so it should not be a surprise that the two major victims are the housing and car industries. Notice, by the way, that these are the two major ingredients of an economy based on building suburban sprawl. That's over, too. We're done building it and the stuff we've already built is destined to loose both money value and usefulness as the wrenching transition goes forward.

      All this obviously begs the question: what kind of economy are we going to live in if the old one is toast? Well, it's also pretty obvious that it will have to be based on activities productively aimed at keeping human beings alive in an ecology that has a future. Once you grasp this, you will see that there is no reason to despair and more than enough for all of us to do, so we can recover from the zombie nation disease and get on with the next chapter of American history -- and I sure hope that Mr. Obama will get with the new program.

      To be specific about this new economy, we're going to have to make things again, and raise things out of the earth, locally, and trade these things for money of some kind that we earn through our own productive activities. Don't make the mistake of thinking this is optional. The only other option is to go through a violent sociopolitical convulsion. We ought to know from prior examples in world history that this is not a desirable experience. So, to avoid that, we really have to put our shoulders to the wheel and get to work on things that matter, and do it at a scale that is consistent with what the world really has to offer right now, especially in terms of available energy.

      In my view -- and I know this is controversial -- a much larger proportion of the US population will have to be employed in growing the food we eat. There are many ways of arranging this, some more fair than others, and I hope the better angels of our nature steer us in the direction of fairness and justice. The prospects of a devalued dollar imply that we very shortly will not be able to get the all the oil-and-gas based "inputs" that have made petro-agriculture possible the past century. The consequences of this are so unthinkable that we have not been thinking about it. And, of course, the further implications of current land-use allocation, and the property ownership issues entailed, suggests formidable difficulties in re-arranging the farming sector. The sooner we face all this, the better.

      As the fiesta of "globalism" (Tom Friedman-style) draws to a close -- another consequence of currency problems -- we'll have to figure out how to make things in this country again. We will not be manufacturing things at the scale, or in the manner, we were used to in, say, 1962. We'll have to do it far more modestly, using much more meager amounts of energy than we did in the past. My guess is that we will get the electricity for doing this mostly from water. It may actually be too late -- from a remaining capital resources point-of-view -- to ramp up a new phase of the nuclear power industry (and there are plenty of arguments from the practical and economic to the ethical against it). But we have to hold a public discussion about it, if only to clear the air and get on with other things, namely the new activites of alt.energy. But I would hasten to warn readers (again!) that we'll probably have to do these things more modestly too (don't count on giant wind "farms"), and that we are liable to be disappointed by what they can actually provide for us (don't expect to run WalMart on wind, solar, algae-fuels, etc).

      In any case, we're not going back to a "consumer" economy. We're heading into a hard work economy in which people derive their pleasures and gratification more traditionally -- mainly through the company of their fellow human beings (which is saying a lot, for those of you who have forgotten what that's about). Our current investments in "education" -- i.e. training people to become marketing executives for chain stores -- will delude Americans for a while about what kind of work is really available. But before long, the younger adults will realize that there are enormous opportunities for them in a new and very different economy. We will still have commerce -- even if it's not the K-Mart blue-light-special variety -- and the coming generation will have to rebuild all the local, multi-layered networks of commercial inter-dependency that were destroyed by the rise of the chain stores. In short, get ready for local business. It will surely be part-and-parcel of our local food-growing and manufacturing activities.

      I hate to keep harping on this -- but since nobody else is really talking about it, at least in the organs of public discussion, the job is left to me -- we have to get cracking on the revival of the railroad system in this country, if we expect to remain a united country. This is such a no-brainer that the absence of any talk about it is a prime symptom of the zombie disease that has eaten away our brains. Automobiles (the way we use them) and airplanes are utterly dependent on liquid hydrocarbon fuels, and you can be certain we'll have trouble getting them. You can run trains by other means -- electricity being state-of-the-art in those parts of the world that do it most successfully. I know that California just voted to create a high-speed rail link between Los Angeles and San Francisco. It's an optimistic sign, but it shows more than a little techno-grandiose over-reach. High speed rail would require a mega-expensive re-do of the tracks. We need to scale our ambitions for this more realistically. California (and every other region of America) would benefit much more from normal-speed trains running every hour on the hour on tracks that already exist than from a mega-expensive, grandiose sci-fi program that might not get built for ten years. The dregs of the Big Three automakers can and should be reorganized to produce the rolling stock for a revived railroad system.

     Even amidst the financial carnage underway right now, the public is enjoying a respite from high-priced gasoline, but it is due to be short-lived. As I've already said, we are in danger not just of oil prices going way back up again, but of losing access to our supplies from the exporting countries. In other words, we're just as likely to face shortages as high prices, and soon. Oil shortages are certain to produce a political freak-out here unless we get our heads screwed on right -- and this means that Mr. Obama had better prepare quickly for a comprehensive action plan in the face of such an emergency (which has to include a robust public information initiative).

     In the meantime, Mr. Obama must dissociate himself from all activities aimed at the care-and-feeding of zombies. Mr. Obama is correct that there is one president and one government at a time, and since this is the case in reality, he must avoid being contaminated by the choices they make as their clock ticks out. Obviously, world markets might be more disturbed if Mr. Obama were to step up and actively contradict everything that is being done to cultivate zombies right now. He is in a very delicate position. But being a man of intelligence and sensibility, he may successfully navigate this rough passage.

     That this melt-down is building straight into the Christmas holidays is one of those accidents of history that leaves one reeling in wonder and nausea. The cable networks better be prepared to bombard the public with round-the-clock showings of It's A Wonderful Life, because they're going to need all the moral support they can get as zombies stalk through the silent night, holy night.     

It's Just Getting Ridiculous

Bloomberg has an excellent breakdown of the bailout breakdown here.

Bottom line?

Federal Reserve, $4.4 trillion

FDIC, $1.5 trillion

Treasury, $1.1 trillion

Federal Housing Administration, $300 billion

Not including the $25 billion more for Citigroup? Priceless.

Doom du Jour No. 7

A little fond of his own publicity, perhaps. Talk about a doomer, though.

Celente Predicts Revolution, Food Riots, Tax Rebellions By 2012

Posted By admin On November 13, 2008 @ 10:14 am In Featured Stories | 361 Comments

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, November 13, 2008

	Gerald Celente

The man who predicted the 1987 stock market crash and the fall of the Soviet Union is now forecasting revolution in America, food riots and tax rebellions - all within four years, while cautioning that putting food on the table will be a more pressing concern than buying Christmas gifts by 2012.

Gerald Celente, the CEO of Trends Research Institute, is renowned for his accuracy in predicting future world and economic events, which will send a chill down your spine considering what he told Fox News this week.

Celente says that by 2012 America will become an undeveloped nation, that there will be a revolution marked by food riots, squatter rebellions, tax revolts and job marches, and that holidays will be more about obtaining food, not gifts.

“We’re going to see the end of the retail Christmas….we’re going to see a fundamental shift take place….putting food on the table is going to be more important that putting gifts under the Christmas tree,” said Celente, adding that the situation would be “worse than the great depression”.

“America’s going to go through a transition the likes of which no one is prepared for,” said Celente, noting that people’s refusal to acknowledge that America was even in a recession highlights how big a problem denial is in being ready for the true scale of the crisis.

Celente says that by 2012 America will become an undeveloped nation, that there will be a revolution marked by food riots, squatter rebellions, tax revolts and job marches, and that holidays will be more about obtaining food, not gifts.

Celente, who successfully predicted the 1997 Asian Currency Crisis, the subprime mortgage collapse and the massive devaluation of the U.S. dollar, told UPI in November last year that the following year would be known as “The Panic of 2008,” adding that “giants (would) tumble to their deaths,” which is exactly what we have witnessed with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and others. He also said that the dollar would eventually be devalued by as much as 90 per cent.

The consequence of what we have seen unfold this year would lead to a lowering in living standards, Celente predicted a year ago, which is also being borne out byplummeting retail sales figures.

The prospect of revolution was a concept echoed by a British Ministry of Defence report last year, which predicted that within 30 years, the growing gap between the super rich and the middle class, along with an urban underclass threatening social order would mean, “The world’s middle classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest,” and that, “The middle classes could become a revolutionary class.”

In a separate recent interview, Celente went further on the subject of revolution in America.

“There will be a revolution in this country,” he said. “It’s not going to come yet, but it’s going to come down the line and we’re going to see a third party and this was the catalyst for it: the takeover of Washington, D. C., in broad daylight by Wall Street in this bloodless coup. And it will happen as conditions continue to worsen.”

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

“The first thing to do is organize with tax revolts. That’s going to be the big one because people can’t afford to pay more school tax, property tax, any kind of tax. You’re going to start seeing those kinds of protests start to develop.”

“It’s going to be very bleak. Very sad. And there is going to be a lot of homeless, the likes of which we have never seen before. Tent cities are already sprouting up around the country and we’re going to see many more.”

“We’re going to start seeing huge areas of vacant real estate and squatters living in them as well. It’s going to be a picture the likes of which Americans are not going to be used to. It’s going to come as a shock and with it, there’s going to be a lot of crime. And the crime is going to be a lot worse than it was before because in the last 1929 Depression, people’s minds weren’t wrecked on all these modern drugs – over-the-counter drugs, or crystal meth or whatever it might be. So, you have a huge underclass of very desperate people with their minds chemically blown beyond anybody’s comprehension.”

Fuel for Thought

Called in sick today -- needed a mental health day. Also needed, coincidentally, to move five cords of wood from the forest around our house to the dry spot underneath our deck.

Five cords of wood is a lot. One cord is 4 x 4 x 8 feet. So five cords is ... a lot. I started at 7a. My two teen-age sons were home by 4p and helped out for the last hour. At least it's done.

And we only need three more cords to make it through the winter ...

Doom du Jour No. 6

It's one thing to hear about folks in California losing their houses. It's another to hear about people losing their houses and having trouble finding enough food for Thanksgiving. Something about the lack of holiday food really troubles me.

Hard times and long lines for Southern Californians

Thousands turn out for separate offerings of free food and mortgage help. Some leave empty-handed.

By Ruben Vives, Bob Pool and Rong-Gong Lin II

November 23, 2008

Some sought a cart of groceries the week before Thanksgiving, others sought a way to keep from losing their homes in the new year. By the thousands, a diverse group of Southern Californians converged on two events Saturday aimed at helping families in hard economic times.

The problems, and the aid offered, were vastly different. But both reflected the worries and needs of many.

In Montebello, nearly 5,000 turned out for a food giveaway, a number that stunned organizers who had tried to keep it a low-key event, targeting publicity to several churches and schools. But word of mouth proved stronger than a few fliers, and crowds inundated Montebello Park. A diverse mix of people stood in a six-hour-long line -- families from middle- and working-class communities, including Pico Rivera, Montebello, Norwalk and Whittier. No one left empty-handed, though.

In Van Nuys, about 2,000 homeowners attended a workshop promoted as Home Preservation Day. But this was not about how to lay tile or install plumbing. A bank had mailed notices to homeowners in trouble with their mortgages, and Saturday offered them a chance to rework the terms of their loans. Bankers had hoped 100 would turn out, and planned for 200. Loan counselors had time to meet with a fraction of homeowners and some were turned away.

Filling empty cupboards

Just a few paychecks ago, Betty Gillis, 44, was volunteering at a food pantry, handing out food to the needy. Saturday, she found herself on the receiving end of a food giveaway.

Last month, the Whittier pharmacy technician was juggling two jobs to support her disabled husband, mother-in-law, and college student daughter. But her full-time employer cut her hours because there were too few customers. Her bosses also required her to work on weekends, forcing her to quit her second job -- and the money ran out.

So on Saturday, Gillis stood in a block-long line at Montebello Park and accepted a cart-full of groceries for Thanksgiving week.

"My daughter asked me the other day, 'Are we so poor that we have to stand in line for food?' And I said, 'Yeah,' " Gillis said.

The scene in Montebello reflected the crisis confronting local food banks struggling to keep up with demand that has surged more than 40% since last year, according to Los Angeles Regional Food Bank. New to food lines are middle-class families -- including some that until recently earned $70,000 a year.

"We're used to seeing low-income people and seniors on a fixed income coming in. Now we're seeing more and more middle-class people coming in -- people who just lost their job, are trying to pay their mortgage, or tapping into their 401(k) because of the huge financial losses," said Darren Hoffman, a spokesman for the regional food bank.

Saturday's event was sponsored by Heart of Compassion, a Montebello faith-based nonprofit food bank. Organizers were surprised by the large turnout -- more than double than expected -- because they did not heavily advertise the event.

But before dawn, a line of 500 had already gathered in the park for the 10 a.m. opening. By noon, thousands of people stood in the warm November sun. Those in line hardly spoke, gazing into the park or holding on to restless children.

When they approached the makeshift food bank -- a collection of blue-and-white tents in a parking lot -- each family took a metal shopping cart and steered it down a line of volunteers, receiving bags of oranges, cantaloupes, celery, cereal, tomatoes, pumpkin pies, yogurt, bottles of cooking oil and loaves of bread, among other items.

Natalie Gomez, 25, held her purse and a single balloon for her 4-year-old daughter, who fidgeted during the five-hour wait. The Montebello woman said her husband's employer, a printing company, cut his hours because of decreasing business.

"It's my first time here at an event like this," said Gomez in a quiet, tired voice.

Martha Garcia, 36, of Pico Rivera, said she needed the donated food to offer some semblance of a feast this week. Garcia said most of her money is being saved for her 10-month-old son, who needs surgery.

The donated food will help, she said. But there were no turkeys available.

"On Thanksgiving," she said, "I won't have enough food."

Looking for breaks

Homeowners in Van Nuys received food for thought Saturday for their most nail-biting problem: making the monthly mortgage payment.

In a move designed to help troubled homeowners, IndyMac Federal Bank, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and Los Angeles Neighborhood Housing Service sent letters to 4,000 local residents inviting them to attend a so-called Home Preservation Day. The FDIC, which took over troubled IndyMac in July, launched the loan modification program in August.

The program's goal is to reduce monthly mortgage costs to a maximum of 38% of the borrower's pretax income. IndyMac officials calculate that can save the typical borrower $380 a month.

Saturday's event drew thousands -- husbands and wives and children -- and was so large that organizers began the workshop an hour early and continued it longer than planned. Still, about half of those who showed up were turned away and advised they would be contacted later by phone.

Inside a large room at the San Fernando Valley municipal center, homeowners huddled with counselors, talking in hushed tones about private family finances.

Making a stressful situation worse, those waiting outside filled out long forms and voiced frustration over the complexities of modifying a home loan.

Only about a third of the 300 customers who were able to meet face-to-face with counselors were offered a loan modification.

To the dismay of many, property owners discovered that they have to be behind at least two months with their mortgage and facing foreclosure before they can restructure their home loan.

David Kimes, 74, of North Hollywood, was among those who made the cut. He is a general contractor whose work has shriveled 92% this year because of the economy.

"I have an adjustable rate mortgage coming due in 2012. I want to stay in my house until I die," he said. "They told me they'd see what they could do."

But some of those not yet behind in their payments complained that bankers need to do more to prevent looming loan defaults and home foreclosures.

"Why do you want to screw up the people who are making their payments and trying to avoid foreclosure?" demanded Constantine Metallinos, a 59-year-old real estate broker from Agua Dulce. "You are forcing us into default before you'll help us. People who are good citizens get penalized."

IndyMac spokesman Evan Wagner was sympathetic. But he said his Pasadena-based thrift is limited in its flexibility to rework loans.

"We're stuck enforcing existing contractual agreements" with outside institutions that own about 93% of IndyMac's loans, Wagner said.

"The program is evolving. We're helping people today who we couldn't help a month ago," he said. But loan modifications are "not about a better deal. . . . There's no principal reduction."

Those who qualify can have their loan interest rate lowered or the terms of the loan changed to stretch payments out 40 years instead of 30.

Evans said a second Home Preservation Day is planned for Dec. 2 in Riverside. He said the hundreds who walked away without any sort of loan modification offer Saturday should call IndyMac and try again.

Northridge resident Michael Sharp might want to take that advice after being told he and his wife, Susan, did not qualify.

Sharp, a 48-year-old carpenter, owes $620,000 on the home the couple bought four years ago for $565,000. The monthly mortgage of $4,000 will jump in two years when an adjustable rate kicks in.

His wife is employed as a communications technician, but his work is drying up, Sharp said. "It would be foolish to say I'm not afraid," he said. Added his wife: "In two or three months it will be a disaster. Right now we're holding on, but the future doesn't look like it's going to be any better than it is right now."

Vives, Pool and Lin are Times staff writers.

ruben.vives@latimes.com

bob.pool@latimes.com

ron.lin@latimes.com

Scary Times

I should let this story speak for itself. I'm just saying: 40,000 hungry people? It's not good.

Thousands pick up free vegetables on Colorado farm

Sun Nov 23, 2:46 pm ET

PLATTEVILLE, Colo. – A farm couple got a huge surprise when they opened their fields to anyone who wanted to pick up free vegetables left over after the harvest — 40,000 people showed up.

 

Joe and Chris Miller's fields were picked so clean Saturday that a second day of gleaning — the ancient practice of picking up leftover food in farm fields — was canceled Sunday.

 

"Overwhelmed is putting it mildly," Chris Miller said. "People obviously need food."

 

She said she expected 5,000 to 10,000 people would show up Saturday to collect free potatoes, carrots and leeks. Instead, an estimated 11,000 vehicles snaked around cornfields and backed up more than two miles. About 30 acres of the 600-acre farm 37 miles north of Denver became a parking lot.

 

Some people parked their cars along two nearby highways to take to the field with sacks, wagons and barrels.

 

"Everybody is so depressed about the economy," said Sandra Justice of Greeley, who works at a technology company. "This was a pure party. Everybody having a a great time getting something for free."

 

Justice and her mother and son picked 10 bags of vegetables.

 

Miller said they opened the farm to the free public harvest for the first time this year after hearing reports of food being stolen from churches. It was meant as a thank you for customers.

Farm operations manager Dave Patterson said that in previous years the Millers allowed schoolchildren and some church groups to come to the farm during the fall to harvest their own food.

 

He estimated some 600,000 pounds of produce was harvested Saturday.

 

Weld County sheriff's deputies helped direct traffic and the Colorado State Patrol issued citations for cars illegally parked on the side of the road.

___

Information from: The Denver Post, http://www.denverpost.com

Doom du Jour No. 5

Obama Targets 2.5 Million Jobs With Stimulus Plan

President-elect Barack Obama said he aims to save or create 2.5 million jobs in a two-year plan to stimulate an economy facing a “crisis of historic proportions.”

“It’s likely to get worse before it gets better,” Obama said today in his weekly radio address. He said that this week “financial markets faced more turmoil,” potentially leading to a “deflationary spiral” that may plunge the nation further into debt and cost millions more jobs.

“We have now lost 1.2 million jobs this year, and if we don’t act swiftly and boldly, most experts now believe that we could lose millions of jobs next year,” Obama said.

“It will be a two-year, nationwide effort to jumpstart job creation in America and lay the foundation for a strong and growing economy,” Obama said. “We’ll put people back to work rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, modernizing schools that are failing our children, and building wind farms and solar panels; fuel-efficient cars and the alternative energy technologies that can free us from our dependence on foreign oil and keep our economy competitive in the years ahead.”

It's What We Call "Good Timing"

... Michael Lewis' new book is also an example of the phenomenon known as "playing the tuba when it rains gold coins."

Watching U.S.'s Growing Insanity

Editor of 'Panic' Anthology Finds He Underestimated Latest Financial Crisis

By JEFFREY A. TRACHTENBERG

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Michael Lewis is probably best known on Wall Street for "Liar's Poker," his first-person account of trading bonds at Salomon Brothers during the 1980s. He also is the author of one of the most influential baseball books in many years, "Moneyball," a tale of how statistical analysis enabled the Oakland Athletics to compete successfully despite a modest payroll.

W. W. Norton & Company

Michael Lewis

Now Mr. Lewis, 48 years old, has taken a turn at editing. The result, "Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity," examines five recent downturns, starting with the crash of 1987 and ending with today's economic crisis.

The timing appears particularly apt because the global economy continues to dominate headlines. Of course, if bookstore sales collapse this holiday season, "Panic" may end up as one more victim of the crisis it partially chronicles. In addition to including some of his own published work, Mr. Lewis picked articles from some of the country's leading financial journalists, including some at this newspaper.

Mr. Lewis, who lives in Berkeley, Calif., is now at work on a Wall Street nonfiction book. Here are excerpts from a recent phone interview:

The Wall Street Journal: What prompted this book?

Michael Lewis: A pal of mine, Dave Eggers (author of "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius"), came to lunch and asked if I'd put together an anthology for him, with the author's proceeds going to charity. This was in February 2007. I said that I was intrigued by the series of recent cataclysmic financial panics, starting in 1987, that seemed not to have any significant consequences. None of them ended capitalism as we knew it. The last piece in the book was written earlier this year during the subprime collapse.

Doom du Jour No. 4

The daily dose of doom. It's helping temporarily, but this is a long term problem

Gas Prices Spiral Down to Near $2
Soft Economy Saps Driving Demand, Upends Debate Over Alternate-Energy Policy
By ANA CAMPOY

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Crude-oil prices sank below $50 a barrel, and the average cost of a gallon of gasoline at the pump hovered just above $2, a free fall in prices that is reverberating through the economy.

The sudden reversal -- the fastest and sharpest since 1980, when the government began tracking monthly gasoline prices -- is bringing relief to some and complicating business for others. Tumbling energy prices led October's 1% decline in consumer prices, deepening concerns about a long recession.
[Gas Prices Spiral Down to Near $2] Associated Press

A customer pumps gas at the Speedway convenience store on State Route 4 in Monroe, Ohio.

Earlier this year, skyrocketing oil prices pulled gasoline to its highest inflation-adjusted level ever, surpassing prices reached during the oil crisis in the early 1980s. The jump, arriving in tandem with soaring food prices, hit consumers hard and stoked fears of inflation.

The price shock began to change Americans' behavior. Cost-conscious drivers gave up solo commutes to ride buses and trains, made fewer trips to stores and restaurants, and started buying smaller cars.

But the global economy, roiled by a spreading credit crisis and falling demand for goods and services, has worked to deflate energy prices even faster than they rocketed upward early this year. In July, crude oil settled, at a peak of $145.29 a barrel and retail gasoline peaked at an average of $4.114 a regular gallon. Now, prices are less than half those levels.

The price for crude-oil futures dropped $4, or 7.5%, to $49.62 a barrel Thursday on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the lowest settlement level since May 23, 2005. Gasoline-futures prices fell to their lowest level in their traded history, shedding 10 cents a gallon to $1.007. And at the pump, the average national gasoline price dropped to $2.02 a regular gallon, according to auto club AAA. In 23 states, gasoline already is selling for less than $2 a gallon, and is down to $1.72 a gallon in Missouri.

The last time consumers paid less than $2 at the pump was March 2005, when a regular gallon cost an average $1.99, based on AAA data.

Some government officials and environmentalists are worried the plummeting prices are reversing any energy-conservation gains realized in the past year, when high prices forced Americans to cut back. The economic case for investing in renewable energy, which was looking cheaper, compared with soaring fossil-fuel costs, now is less compelling.
[Gasoline] Associated Press

Suddenly, public debate has shifted from trying to find ways to lower prices and give consumers a break to wondering whether federal gasoline taxes should be raised to support higher prices.

President-elect Barack Obama said this week it is even more important to curb Americans' appetite for oil now that prices are cheaper. "Oil prices go up, gas prices at the pump go up, everybody goes into a flurry of activity. And then the prices go back down and suddenly we act like it's not important," he said during a television interview. "As a consequence, we never make any progress."

So far, though, the worsening economy appears to be an even stronger curb on driving as consumers hunker down and businesses contract. The U.S. Energy Information Administration expects full-year gasoline demand to fall 3% this year, which would mark the sharpest annual decline since 1980. And though gasoline prices continue to sink, forecasters expect demand to fall again next year.

Even those who can afford to drive more are holding back over fears of a prolonged recession, or the possibility that prices will ricochet upward again.

"It seems like [prices] dropped like a rock overnight," said Kristin Cartwright, as she filled up her Ford Expedition in Dallas Thursday. The 42-year-old stay-at-home mom said it worried her that she can't figure out what is causing the wild price swings. So she is keeping her driving to a minimum.

Unquestionably, the lower gasoline prices are a relief amid an otherwise grim outlook for households and businesses that consume fuel, as well as the retailers that rely on consumer spending. The drumbeat of dire economic news has sharply curtailed consumer spending as people worry about their jobs and conserve their money.

Javier Amador, a 36-year-old carpenter in Dallas, where regular gasoline is selling for about $1.85 a gallon, said spending less on gasoline will help him afford a nicer Christmas for his family. But after the holidays, one of Mr. Amador's New Year's resolutions is to save money. Although he has a steady job, talk of layoffs among other construction workers is making him nervous.

"It's like a chain: If one company doesn't have work, then there's less work for others, and it could trickle down to my company," he said.

Mark Perry, a professor of economics at the University of Michigan in Flint, sees lower energy prices as a continuing stimulus for the economy. Adjusting for inflation, consumers are paying less for gasoline now than they have paid throughout much of the past century.

He estimated that at current consumption rates, Americans save $1.38 billion a year for every penny gasoline prices drop. That is about $290 billion since gasoline prices peaked in mid-July, and more than the tax rebates Americans received in the mail earlier this year.

"Everybody is saving whenever they fill up, and this will free up additional funds and resources they can use instead of just putting gas in their car," Mr. Perry said.

Discount retailers, which have many low-income customers who cut back on purchases as gasoline prices rose, are now seeing a rebound effect. Though overall retail sales fell 2.8% in October, cheaper gasoline helped Wal-Mart Stores Inc. post a 9.8% jump in profit for the third quarter ended Oct. 31, sharply outpacing its peers.

But cheaper energy is hurting others. Refiners are getting squeezed, because gasoline prices fell faster than prices for the crude oil they use to make the fuel. In an effort to pare losses, many refiners have cut back gasoline production and are delaying expansion projects.

Ethanol producers also are suffering. Like refiners of oil-based gasoline, they face weaker demand for their products as drivers pinch on fuels.

Analysts have been slashing 2009 profit forecasts for global oil companies, as falling energy prices quickly deflate recent record-setting revenue. Oil companies will be rethinking certain high-cost development projects to see whether they still make sense at $50-a-barrel oil.

Most immediately, companies will likely cut back spending on hefty share-buyback programs. Exxon Mobil Corp., for one, has been spending about $8 billion a quarter buying up its own shares.

The companies also are expected to delay signing contracts for steel, engineering and oil-field equipment in order to push down prices that were inflated along with crude oil in the past couple of years. "The more they defer projects, the quicker they deflate these costs," says Fadel Gheit, an oil analyst at Oppenheimer & Co.

Eroding demand for fuel contributed to crude oil's fall below $50 a barrel Thursday, as U.S. crude inventories rose more than expected this week, requiring oil companies to leave millions of barrels of oil in storage.

Economists have found that, in the short run, a 10% reduction in gasoline prices boosts consumption by a slender 0.2% to 0.5%, says John Cook, director of the petroleum division at the EIA. But when hit with a 10% decline in gross domestic product -- a measure of a nation's economic health -- consumption falls a much steeper 4% to 6%.

As consumers spend less, companies see their business shrink, which also lessens demand for fuel. Lower sales mean fewer trucks are needed to transport goods across the nation.
[Gasoline]

Write to Ana Campoy at ana.campoy@dowjones.com: