Empiric Student Property Share Discussion Threads

[briarberry] 13/2/2009 20:56

Things still deteriorating in Eastern Europe...


Fitch Ratings-London/Moscow-13 February 2009: Fitch Ratings has today downgraded by one notch the Long-term Issuer Default Ratings (IDRs) of nine Ukrainian banks: Forum, Pravex, ProCredit Ukraine, Swedbank Ukraine, UkrSibbank, Ukrsotsbank, VTB Ukraine, Oschadny and Ukreximbank. The ratings remain on Negative Outlook. The rating actions follow yesterday's downgrade of Ukraine's Long-term foreign and local currency IDRs to 'B' from 'B+'.



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Ukrainian Finance Minister offers resignation over budget deficit

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Economic or political "emergency" in Ukraine could result in "a knock-on effect in terms of economic difficulties throughout the European Union - warned the Vice-Chancellor of Austria Josef Proell.

[briarberry] 10/2/2009 22:52

US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has unveiled a comprehensive bank bail-out plan worth at least $1.5 trillion (£1.02 trillion).

Under the plan, the size of a key Federal Reserve lending program will be expanded to $1 trillion from $200bn.

In addition, a public-private investment fund of $500bn will be created to absorb banks' toxic assets and could be expanded to $1 trillion.

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Meanwhile, the US Senate has backed an $838bn economic stimulus package which will now have to be reconciled with the House of Representatives version.



(jail not bail)

[briarberry] 08/2/2009 23:42

The Government Finance Bubble
by Doug Noland

There is hope that massive government reflation will reinvigorate the asset markets and resuscitate Wall Street finance. I view this as highly unlikely - and these lofty goals incredibly dangerous. It is more likely that the historic Bubble in private-sector Credit creation - with its focus on myriad sophisticated instruments, structures and leveraging - will recover little of its former power and glory.

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It is in this context that I fear that the Trillions of Government Finance spent to save the world from "deflation" will, in the end, require perpetual needs for Trillions more. There will be no kick-starting asset Bubbles or a return of private-sector Credit excess. Instead, it will be a case of throwing repeated doses of government-directed finance/purchasing power at the system. Temporary but fleeting economic boosts will then require only stronger doses of artificial stimulus.

[briarberry] 08/2/2009 23:37

US Treasury admitts that it might need $2 trillion this year and that tax receipts were down 15% in January y-o-y.


Those outsized funding needs reflect the dismal outlook for economic growth and Congress and the Administration's efforts to bolster the economy through policy action. Tax receipts are declining at a brisk pace given the climb in unemployment, reduced wealth and slowing corporate profits. Receipts were down by nearly 10% in the first three months of the new fiscal year and the pace of decline appears to have accelerated in January. Individual nonwithheld tax receipts in the month plunged by almost 15% versus a year ago. Meanwhile, outlays are surging at a breakneck pace as automatic stabilizers (unemployment compensation, food stamps, etc.) kick in and the government puts in place programs to try and stabilize the financial sector.

The deterioration in the budget outlook, combined with expenditures associated with the TARP, potential FDIC guarantees, and expected additional stimulus spending have increased private forecasts for total funding needs of the U.S. government for fiscal year 2009 to approximately $2 trillion. This is likely to stress the existing auction schedule and consequently warrants tangible adjustments to that schedule.

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Actual and potential funding needs for financial sector stabilization programs already announced are considerable. Guarantees made on select assets of systemically critical financial institutions could require Treasury to raise hundreds of billions of dollars in the event that these assets continue to deteriorate. Similarly, guarantees made by the FDIC on select bank-issued debt could catapult government borrowing needs further should the issuing bank(s) default on its FDIC-insured paper. Any additional guarantees on future losses to assets held by financial institutions would further increase net borrowing needs by Treasury. The size of any such borrowing would hinge on the type and size of assets backstopped.




chart of the unemployment figures since 1994 and the SPX

[briarberry] 08/2/2009 21:06

Today's chart illustrates that S&P 500 as-reported earnings have declined over 60% over the past 17 months, making this the largest decline on record (the data goes back to 1936). In fact, earnings are currently lower than they were back in the mid-1960s.

(inflation adjusted)

The Snpee in the 1960s, it hit a high of 108 in 1968 (not inflation adjusted)

[briarberry] 08/2/2009 19:17

Regulators shut two banks in California and one in the Atlanta area on Friday, bringing the number of U.S. failures this year to nine, while marking the 34th collapse since the recession began.

[briarberry] 06/2/2009 21:52

US Treasury to issue $1,900bn of new treasuries this year...


That raises the prospect that every benchmark Treasury issue will be sold every month later this year.

William O'Donnell, strategist at UBS, said: "It would be unprecedented to see every Treasury security sold each month. We expect $1,900bn in net borrowing for this financial year and this is the only way the Treasury can get there."

This avalanche of supply comes at a time when more than half of the current $5,500bn Treasury market is held by foreign investors. With big holders of Treasuries such as China and Japan facing tough economic times at home, bond dealers worry that they may be left holding plenty of Treasuries at auctions should foreign support dry up.

"There is a lot of concern about who will be there at the end of the day to buy all this debt", said Tom di Galoma, head of Treasury trading at Jefferies & Co.

[briarberry] 05/2/2009 22:06

Stores report dismal January sales, with Wal-Mart an exception

Target Corp. reported a 3.3 percent decline

Macy's, which announced Monday that it would cut 7,000 jobs -- almost 4 percent of its work force -- reported a 4.5 percent decline in same-store sales.

J.C. Penney Co.'s same-store sales fell 16.4 percent

Nordstrom Inc.'s same-stores sales skidded 11.4 percent

Saks' same-store sales tumbled nearly 24 percent, worse than Wall Street's estimate for a 17.1 percent decline.

Neiman Marcus Group Inc. said Tuesday its same-store sales tumbled 24.4 percent

Children's Place suffered an 11 percent decline

Wet Seal Inc. announced a 14.7 percent decline

Gap's sales slid 23 percent

Costco Wholesale Corp. on Wednesday reported a 2 percent drop in same-store sales

[briarberry] 04/2/2009 13:57

Unit sales of North American-made cars and light trucks fell to a 6.8 million annual rate vs. a 7.7 million rate in December. These results, which are far below expectations, are certain to deepen concern over the health of U.S. auto makers.
(from www.nasdaq.com)

www.briefing.com seem to have stopped updating their vehicle sales chart, so I added the last 2 months of domestic car sales

I think this is a record low for the monthly annualised rate of domestic car sales



This chart shows the total sales, including imports


Ford Motor Co. on Tuesday reported a 42.1% decline in January U.S. sales to 90,596 cars and trucks, down from 156,391 vehicles a year earlier.

Chrysler U.S. sales down 54.8% to 62,157 vehicles in January

GM U.S. sales fall 48.9% to 128,198 units in January

Toyota Motor Corp. reported a 32% drop, as the Japanese company sold 117,287 vehicles in the U.S. last month. Its passenger-car sales dropped to 67,263 from 94,586, while its light-truck sales fell to 50,024 from 77,263.

(consumption is 70% of US GDP)

[briarberry] 04/2/2009 13:25

ADP Employment Change Jan -522K

Challenger's layoff count totaled 241,749

[lbo] 04/2/2009 11:51

Blame in Spain falls mainly on the ECB
Spain's unemployed millions will get little comfort from the European Central Bank, which is set to keep rates on hold

[briarberry] 03/2/2009 13:41

Bailout bubble growing around the world...


Australia announced a $26.5 billion stimulus plan and a deep interest rate cut as the Japanese central bank said it would start buying shares held by financial institutions.



China recently announced a $585 billion stimulus plan to deal "pre-emptively" with growing economic problems.

France's Prime Minister Francois Fillon has unveiled a series of measures worth 26bn euros ($33.1bn; £23.5bn) designed to "revitalise" the French economy.

[briarberry] 02/2/2009 18:24

Feb. 2 (Bloomberg) -- South Korean exports tumbled by a record in January and Chinese manufacturing contracted as the global recession sent growth sliding in export-driven economies across Asia.

South Korea's shipments fell 32.8 percent from a year earlier, the Ministry of Knowledge Economy said. Manufacturing in China shrank for a sixth month, the CLSA China Purchasing Managers' Index showed.

[briarberry] 29/1/2009 16:12

Continental Airlines Inc. said Thursday it lost $266 million in the fourth quarter

Eastman Kodak Co. said Thursday it is cutting 3,500 to 4,500 jobs, or 14 percent to 18 percent of its work force, as it posted a fourth-quarter loss of $137 million

Drugmaker Eli Lilly & Co. said Thursday it swung to a fourth-quarter loss on charges from buying cancer-drug maker ImClone Systems Inc.

Ford Motor Co. said Thursday it lost $5.9 billion in the fourth quarter and burned through $5.5 billion in cash as sales slumped

Sony said Thursday its net profit plunged 95 percent in the October-December quarter

Altria Group Inc. said Thursday its fourth-quarter profit fell 69 percent from year-ago results

[briarberry] 29/1/2009 16:05

The number of people receiving unemployment benefits has reached an all-time record, the government said Thursday, and more layoffs are spreading throughout the economy.

[briarberry] 29/1/2009 15:37

Sales of new homes plummet to a record low in December, falling 14.7% to 331K the lowest level since the government began keeping track of the activity in 1963.

[briarberry] 28/1/2009 23:09

More plunging profits, I hate to think what this is doing to PE ratios...


Allstate Corp., the largest publicly traded U.S. home and auto insurer, will cut 1,000 jobs after the falling value of investments caused the company's first annual loss as a public firm.

Starbucks Corp., the world's largest chain of coffee shops, said it will cut 6,700 jobs and close 300 more stores after reporting first-quarter profit that fell 69%.

Chip maker Qualcomm Inc. slashed its forecasts for revenue and operating income Wednesday as it reported its fiscal first-quarter income plunged 56 percent.

[briarberry] 28/1/2009 16:25

Japan, some stats from the Economist...

Exports account for almost half of Japan's manufacturing output, which as a consequence is seeing its biggest falls since records began: November's output was down by 13% on a year earlier. Orders for machine tools in December, an early indicator of things to come, were 72% lower than a year before.

In November the value of exports fell by 27% year on year. The picture only worsened in December with a year-on-year fall of 35%. Recession in the United States was the main cause, with exports there down by 36.9% from a year earlier. In turn, the global slump has also knocked supply chains in Asia, sending Japan's exports to China down by 35.5% in December, with exports to Asia's "tigers" (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan) falling by even more than those to America.

[briarberry] 28/1/2009 13:10

The other side of the coin to post 1944 above...

Ron Paul Talks About the Economy on Morning Joe 1-27-09

[briarberry] 28/1/2009 13:08

Boeing posts $56 million quarterly loss

Wells Fargo reports Q4 loss of $0.79 per share on quarterly net loss of $2.55 billion

[briarberry] 28/1/2009 01:27

Richard Koo: GREAT RECESSIONS - LESSONS LEARNED FROM JAPAN

October 29, 2008

audio

slides

video

Richard C. Koo, the world-renowned chief economist of Nomura Research Institute, discussed the lessons learned from Japan's "lost decade" during a presentation at CSIS. During his discussion, Koo suggested that government stimulus can play a key role in alleviating the problems of a balance sheet recession. Koo's recent book, The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics: Lessons from Japan's Great Recession, discusses these issues in greater detail.

Richard C. Koo, a U.S. citizen and World-Renowned Chief Economist of Nomura Research Institute, has been an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (1981-84) and a doctoral fellow of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (1979-81).



(The advice seems to be for the government to spend lots and lots of money for years and years. Any debt that is paid down, ie the money gets paid to the banks, the government should borrow that money and spend it).

[briarberry] 28/1/2009 00:29

US job cuts...

Caterpillar - 20,000
Home Depot - 7,000
Pfizer/Wyeth - 20,000
Texas Instruments - 3,400
Sprint Nextel - 8,000
General Motors - 2,000
International Business Machines 2,800

Last week Microsoft said it would cut 5,000 jobs, while Intel said it would eliminate 6,000

The economy lost 2.6 million jobs last year, the most since 1945