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U.S. Stocks Drop Most Since February on European Debt Concerns
April 27 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. stocks tumbled, sending benchmark indexes down the most since February, as credit-rating downgrades of Greece and Portugal spurred concern Europe's debt crisis will derail the global economic recovery.
It seems like only yesterday that Jim Cramer told us why we should be bullish on stocks. Oh wait. It was yesterday.
ICE: Mortgage Delinquency Rate Increased Year-over-year in October
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From ICE: ICE First Look at Mortgage Performance: Serious delinquencies hit
17-month high while foreclosure activity remains historically muted
• At 3.45% ...
2 hours ago
8 comments:
Here's something for you Mark, et al. I had two people I only occasionally correspond with rattle my cage in email today. On one of the stock blogs I follow, the two guys that run it had a bizarre public blow-up over what everyone else thought was nothing. The market is off 3% in two days, wiping out almost the entire month of gains. Tomorrow is a full moon.
What do you make of all that?
AllanF,
For what it is worth, I got my oil changed today. The place went bankrupt recently. I didn't recognize anyone. They were amazingly forthcoming on the details. "It got ugly" was said more than once. It is now under new management.
While my car was being worked on, I went for a walk. I saw TWO Starbucks in the very same small strip mall. How is that supposed to work? Across the street the movie theater's billboard showed discount prices for those who watch before noon, seniors who watch on a particular day of the week, and students on another. No idea what was playing there though. The discounts replaced the movie times. And lastly, the mall nearby advertised free live piano music.
People want to believe we're in a sustainable recovery. It sure doesn't feel like it to me.
Stag,
Pimp your ride:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Rich-Chinese-driving-growth-apf-4269568946.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=8&asset=&ccode=
In the new (e)CONomy, the secret to success is to buy long term appreciating assets like real estate at any price and then re-invest the cash on depreciating bling.
In all seriousness, I'm starting to warm up to the China growth story. It's a greater fool eCONomy. A billion and a half Chinese is a huge pool of greater fools! What could go wrong?
I just noticed that I had mis-spelled the word "depreciating". I had omitted the letter "i"! Oddly, the sentence still made sense. Go figure.
mab,
From your link...
BEIJING (AP) -- The businessman climbed into the Rolls Royce Phantom with the gold-plated Spirit of Ecstasy hood ornament and sank his feet into wine-red carpet. He says he has a Mercedes S600 sedan and a Jaguar sports car at home but needs something for work.
Forehead. Desk. Whack.
Stag,
Forehead. Desk. Whack.
My forehead has been taking a serious beating lately. Check out the headline on this forehead thumping article:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/JetBlue-reports-surprise-1Q-apf-3626470713.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=7&asset=&ccode=
There is no such thing as a "surprise" loss for an airline.
Thud, thud thud.....
Well, I'm reading Econned by Yves Smith. It's very good, and I now have even less resprect for economists than before, which was effectively zero.
I love it when an author totally destroys a prevailing mythology. One of my favorite books, The Mysterious William Shakespeare by Charlton Ogburn, Jr., does just that, although in an unrelated area of concern. There is absolutely no question that the true poet/playright was Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford. The evidence is so overwhelming as to remove any and all doubt.
But you won't find an English professor at a major university that will acknowledge it. The idea that Guillermo Shagspur, an illiterate, wrote the poems and plays is too firmly entrenched in the curricula, so much so that Shakespearan "scholars" won't even admit to the possibility that everything they think they know is wrong.
I call this petrified thought. Yves Smith demonstrates that it is endemic in the economics "profession." These people's minds are trapped in false assumptions, flawed models and failed theories to such an extent that they are blind to reality. Yet they hold positions of much power and influence in academia, business and government.
Go figure. It's sort of like some idiot trying to interpret Hamlet without knowing, or even recognizing that, it's largely autobiographical. Economists can no more explain the workings of an economy than an "expert" in Shakespeare can read a play.
I highly recommend Econned. It is a prescient and important book.
mab,
From your link...
That's the same situation JetBlue had the first quarter -- costs increasing more than revenue. But the airline also plans to expand its capacity, or the number of available seats, and fill those new seats with more passengers.
This is the answer to the unsustainable airline profit model problem? More capacity? More seats? Forehead. Desk. Whack.
SNL: First Citywide Change Bank
All the time our customers ask us, "How do you make money doing this?" The answer is simple, "Volume."
GawainsGhost,
Looks like an interesting book.
ECONned
Here, Yves Smith looks at how economists in key policy positions put doctrine before hard evidence, ignoring the deteriorating conditions and rising dangers that eventually led them, and us, off the cliff and into financial meltdown. Intelligently written for the layman, Smith takes us on a terrifying investigation of the financial realm over the last twenty-five years of misrepresentations, naive interpretations of economic conditions, rationalizations of bad outcomes, and rejection of clear signs of growing instability.
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