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I was at the Department of Licensing today and thought I'd share my latest round of doom and gloom. It's a three part anecdotal evidence story. I overheard exactly three conversations pertaining to money.
1. The guy in front of me was a dollar short. I gave him a dollar. I almost always do this not so much for the other guy but for me. I told him it would improve my karma. In fact, I can even prove it. It cost me a dollar to feel pretty good. I may be miserly, but that's a good return on investment! Everyone should try it. I'm serious.
2. As I was sitting there waiting for my number to come up, I overheard part of another conversation. An employee said, and I quote from memory, "...that doesn't mean he has money. I have two Mercedes but I don't have any money."
3. The woman sitting next to me was on her cell phone. She was saying that she doesn't have $15 to pay the fee and that she wasn't quite sure what she was going to do. There's one dollar karma and then there's fifteen dollar karma. Sigh. Further, it would have been rude to admit I overheard what she said. Right?
Care to ask me how confident I am that our economy will soon robustly rebound? A rich philanthropist could make a killing at the DOL it seems. I may not be rich, but I was given two opportunities in just 40 minutes.
Real Estate Newsletter Articles this Week: Existing-Home Sales Increased to
4.15 million SAAR in November
-
At the Calculated Risk Real Estate Newsletter this week:
[image: Existing Home Sales]*Click on graph for larger image.*
• NAR: Existing-Home Sales Increase...
11 hours ago
9 comments:
Stag,
That seems a bit more than anecdotal. More like a preponderance of evidence. Heck, three's a crowd!
Guilty as "charged"! We're in serious trouble.
Mark,
"Care to ask me how confident I am that our economy will soon robustly rebound?"
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told The New York Times Obama intends to use the news conference as a "six-month report card," to talk about "how we rescued the economy from the worst recession" and the legislative agenda moving forward, including health care and energy legislation.
http://tinyurl.com/mecmqp
Now don't you feel better?
Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Kevin
NEW YORK, July 22 (Reuters) - The U.S. consumer will not drive a global economic recovery and the United States is still at risk from high unemployment and souring commercial real estate loans, said Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Wednesday.
http://tinyurl.com/lm7j9b
Oh really, when did that light bulb come on Ben? Guess it might be because they are in debt up to their eyeballs because of the FED's policies and unlike your banking pals who are getting bailed out to the tune of trillions of dollars they will be paying for this fleecing for generations.
This guy is a piece of work.
Kevin
mab,
Want more anecdotal evidence? Check out my "Playfair" reply in the last post. Playfair was the horse track I gambled at in college! It apparently did not survive our 2000 prosperity wave and was one of its first victims.
Kevin,
Well, at least Ben isn't telling us that there is no consumer bubble to go bust. The balloon blew apart. Ever try to reflate a popped balloon? There's NEVER enough duct tape! Ha!
Stag,
So much for the "sure thing":
http://www.krem.com/topstories/stories/krem2-060909-playfair.6555776c.html
From rags to riches to sewage. Always the same.
Get this. I come from a family of ardent recreational gamblers. For about a decade, my parents were big track people. How big? Well, I had my 15th birthday at the track (I nailed a trifecta too - boxed, so the payout was only a few hundred). Was that my first under age gambling experience? Heck no! I'd sat at the tables in Atlantic City numerous times starting at age 13. No joke.
People misunderstand gamblers - they start off with the assumption that it's about winning and losing. It's not, it's about playing. I never got the bug.
mab,
Thanks for the link! What a trip down memory lane THAT was!
I hear you on the gambling bug. People would have assumed that I was seriously bitten by the bug. I spent most of my summer at the track one year. That said, I'm not a gambler. Once my system broke (due to the jockey scandal I strongly suspect), I had no problem walking away permanently.
Come to think of it, perhaps it wasn't so permanent. I gambled in the stock market too. Perhaps the real reason I walked away in 2004 was that I was once bitten by scandal and twice shy. The ultra-low interest rates certainly seemed scandalous anyway.
Come to think of it, I wasn't exactly once bitten. I was many times bitten, including the company where I worked (Cendant). Heck, it sends shivers down my spine to think how well Citigroup had down for me as an investment over the years. Using hindsight to today, it was a horrible long-term investment though.
Come to think of it, it's a miracle that I still have any faith at all in the casinos, um, I mean the markets (the gambling/investment markets).
Come to think of it, I don't. You are right. I have no desire to play any longer. This is especially true in a "trader's market". The thought of going head to head against the Goldman Sach's of the world using nothing but an old personal computer and/or Sony Playstation sounds more like financial suicide than my idea of gambling fun.
Stag,
This is a neat graph.
http://www.clevelandfed.org/research/data/credit_easing/index.cfm
I still can't decide if all that fed cash creation is printing or not. Some no doubt is. But for the rest, I guess it depends on how permanent it is. Even with the fed buying mortgage debt, someone is on the other end taking on (or refinancing) debt. And mortgage debt is falling so I suspect the fed is just acting as a lender of last resort to bailout banks and the GSEs. The consumer will get no such lifelines.
One thing of note is the change in the duration of the fed's treasury holdings. By moving to longer durations, I definitely think the fed believes it is influencing the yield curve. If the fed was competing for short term durations, yields would be negative.
It's pretty easy to see how Goldman had a big Q2 - swap trash for cash and buy during a panic! Who knows, maybe Goldman was insolvent and made a giant Hail Mary bet with taxpayer cash. That's what most gamblers do when they are down to their last chip! Heck, I'm not even a gambler and that's what I would have done. What do you have to lose?
The fed is the easy button for financial mischief.
Stag,
I hate to keep haunting old threads, but here is some more "anecdotal" evidence from my area that we are in "serious trouble":
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/nyregion/24jersey.html?_r=2&hp
Another person, Levy-Izhak Rosenbaum of Brooklyn, was accused of enticing vulnerable people to give up a kidney for $10,000 and then selling the organ for $160,000.
Corruption and influence pedaling are common around here, but the kidney episode really makes me think we're almost at our destination - candy mountain!
mab,
Real life Candy Mountain? Well, they say good humor almost always has at least a hint of reality in it. Good taste is optional though. Sigh.
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