The secret is out and the consumer is listening. The Conference Board has the latest consumer confidence figure out this morning.
The secret is out and the consumer is listening. The Conference Board has the latest consumer confidence figure out this morning.
17 comments:
some couple in Pittsburgh is offering the house for sale....when they die you get the house for free. I guess the estate reimburses you. what the hell??
oh and first
link:
http://www.eveningecho.ie/news/bstory.asp?j=15380422&p=y538x468&n=15380510
it was on the today show this am as well.
This is partly my fault. I have been surveyed twice in the last two months and I have only yhrown negative answers out.
Has anyone driven through Fillmore lately? The whole damn town is for sale/lease. Seriously, there is a sign on every lot or building declaring "space for lease" or "build to suit". Personally, I think the town is a s*@%hole and I am sure that at best it could support a few thrift stores.
Heck Metro, you already know I blame urbanists for everything anyway. ;-)
But are you still spending? Your money is almost as good as we exurbanist's filthy lucre.
Rob,
We are saving alot but we did go for a 40 inch flat screen lcd HD this year. We figured while the Japanese would still take our worthless dollars we would splurge a little.
BTW, I live in the exurbs with mostly 5 to 10 acre zoning, some places nearby have 25 and 88 acre.
I closed all of my options positions today. The GOOG run up to 698 was too much for me to resist so I sold all those calls for a tremendous gain, and at the same time I sold all of my calls in AAPL, RIMM, etc. and took my profits off the table so that I am unexposed going into the FOMC meeting tomorrow.
Todays run up in GOOG was due to the news about the Gphone which I mentioned a few months ago. I am betting that this news-pop was a bit premature, that the stock will retrace a bit, and that I can again go long GOOG at a cheaper price. But regardless I needed to take my gains out of play.
Funny Circus Bears:
Just out of curiosity, do yoour eyes track independently left to right and right to left from watching the stock ticker-crawl?
I knew a part-time ship's Bosun/ part-time day-trader back in the 90's who had developed the "CNBC Disease".
It was always a hoot watching him forget "port" and "starboard" when the pilot gave him rudder commands...
(Oh, I ran into him a few years ago, apparently his day-trade empire went "poof!". He was throwing in for an AB job on a slow boat pushing novelty rubber dogshit from Shanghai.).
I hate to nit pick dawg, but the bag should read: "Buy now, pay never".
"Buy now, pay never".
That's next. Once the proles catch the moral hazard disease that's being spread around all that revolving credit card debt is gonna land on the banks books too.
I've been ignoring housing and may have missed a really sweet deal and perfect house in the process. I wonder if those in escrow know it is haunted? I love haunted houses.
In case anyone has contemplated it, don't bother with the Nigelcast unless you want to hear Casey refer to himself in the third person for half an hour.
If you think things are bad, well just wait.
Read the Oct 30th version of
http://paper-money.blogspot.com/
Look at those charts.
More scary than any haunted house. Turnaroudn in early 09 by butt..
Man is this ever going to get ugly. A lot of idiots in overpriced condos with ARMs and tapped out plastic are going to see their Lexus SUVs repo'ed before the dust has settled.
Looks like W is going to be this century's Hoover...
H.
According to Ben Stein, there will be no recession, because Fed will not let it happen.
My trolls, is it not obvious that Ben doesn't get it? The Fed is running out of tools - they can only lower interest rates so far; they can only punish savers and reward borrowers only so much.
And doing so only staves off the day of reckoning a little while longer.
I don't know what all this doom and gloom here is about.
Economy indicators going strong, inflation indicators low, plenty of plastic left out there to charge stuff to, interest rates going down, Walmart slashing prices, house prices low for super sweet dealz(tm).
So lets celebrate with some of this non-inflationary "Champagne" from California. Yeah, can't afford the real stuff anymore....
I've actually been spending a bit more than in the past, but that's mainly because I'm transitioning away from graduate school mode into career mode. But none of it is going on the plastic, it's all cash, and I'm still making big payments on the student loans, which I'll be out of sooner rather than later. I know, the Fed is doing everything it can to encourage me to increase my debt rather than decrease it, but I'm sticking with my silly old-fashioned ways. Good-bye, sweet leverage™.
As for today, I'm not expecting any earth-shaking moves from the Feds or from the markets. I think what will be notable will not be the market's reaction to the Fed, but rather the lack of reaction to the Fed. At some point it will become clear that the Fed just isn't in control the way that it used to be, and at that point, the fear will start creeping back in.
Of course, the Fed could reassert control by holding rates or even raising them, but . . . yeah, they're not going to do that. Wall Street's running this show, which, ironically, is bad news for Wall Street.
to bad Bernanke won't listen to this guy
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/30/AR2007103002092.html
The final exam begins today, when Bernanke will either show that he is capable of standing up to the insatiable demands of Wall Street, or that he is so spooked by the prospect of being blamed (unfairly) for triggering a financial meltdown that he puts the short-term interests of big banks and investment houses before the long-term interests of the global economy.....
So now, if the Bernanke Fed wants to retain its credibility and independence -- if it wants to have the flexibility to cushion the coming downturn without stoking inflation or creating a new set of bubbles -- then there is only one thing to do today:
Look Wall Street in the eye and just say no.
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