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Recession Fears Rise As Economy Continues To Falter

March 9, 2008

The job market’s deterioration comes as oil prices climbed this week to a record $105.47 a barrel. Meanwhile, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported a record number of American homes went into foreclosure the last three months of 2007, and the Federal Reserve said homeowner equity, battered by sliding home prices, fell to the lowest level since World War II. This all means a tighter squeeze on consumers, who are likely to pull back on spending, which drives about 70 percent of the US economy.

Stock prices, too, continued their slide. The Dow Jones industrial average shed 146.70 points yesterday, closing at 11,893.69, the lowest since October 2006.

“It’s a very toxic mixture,” said Nigel Gault, chief US economist at Global Insight, a Waltham forecasting firm. “Things are go ing to get worse in the immediate future.”

President Bush, reacting to the unexpected job losses, yesterday acknowledged economic activity has slowed. But he said the recently approved package to stimulate the economy, primarily through tax rebate checks to most Americans, will provide a “booster shot.” In addition, aggressive interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve will provide a further lift.

Economists expect the Fed to cut rates again, perhaps by three-quarters of a point, when policy makers meet March 18. The Fed has already cut the benchmark rate by 2.25 points since September, to 3 percent, the lowest level in nearly three years. Many economists forecast that the rate, which influences just about every other borrowing rate, will fall to 2 percent or lower before the Fed is done cutting.

Lower interest rates aim to stimulate the economy by reducing borrowing costs, which encourage businesses and consumers to borrow and spend. But the impact of rate cuts has been blunted by the so-called credit crunch as banks, many sustaining huge losses from rising defaults in risky mortgages known as subprime, have become reluctant to lend.

“The rate cuts are setting the stage for better times later, but they can’t deal with the credit crunch going on,” said Allen Sinai, chief economist at Decision Economics Inc., a Boston financial market advisory firm. “We are in a very dangerous situation that the downturn won’t be mild and short, but long and deep.”

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Dollar: It Will Only Get Worse

March 3, 2008

Despite all the pain the U.S. dollar has endured in recent days, the greenback may still have further to fall before seeing any sort of relief, according to currency experts.

Driving much of the dollar’s decline this week were tepid remarks about the U.S. economy by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who hinted that the central bank would cut interest rates once again at the Fed’s March meeting.

Those comments, combined with a number of troubling signs about the strength of the U.S. economy, helped send the dollar tumbling to multi-year lows against a host of currencies including the Swiss franc, the Malaysian ringgit and Japanese yen.

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U.S. Faces Disaster Over Oil Wealth Exodus

February 24, 2008

One of America’s most influential businessmen, legendary oilman T. Boone Pickens, says the nation’s wealth is being plundered by oil exporters and the U.S. faces a potential financial disaster if our energy policy is not reformed.

Pickens, who correctly predicted that oil would top $100 a barrel, also says he expects oil prices to drop sharply in the near term.

Appearing on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Thursday morning, Pickens pointed out that the U.S. is currently sending half a trillion dollars out of the country each year to buy oil, in some cases from people who “are our enemies.”

Said Pickens, “You take 10 years and you’ve got $5 trillion … That’s more than $1 billion a day.

“We can’t stand that. Wealth is moving out of the country…

“Not one presidential candidate has addressed this … The candidates have to get up to speed on what energy cost is doing to our country.” Pickens even turned on his own industry, oil, and called for an increase in alternative energy sources.

“If we do not get on the alternative energy bandwagon and if we don’t have a global recession, we could be sitting on $150 oil in two years,” he told CNBC.

Source

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Oil Hits Record Over $100

February 20, 2008

Oil surged nearly 5 percent on Tuesday to hit a record over $100 a barrel on expectations OPEC will not hike output to ease high prices next month despite the economic woes of top consumer the United States.

U.S. crude settled up $4.51 at $100.01 a barrel after hitting $100.10 a barrel, a penny higher than the previous high struck on January 3. London Brent crude settled up $3.65 at $98.56 a barrel.

News Nigerian oil delta rebel leader Henry Okah had died raised worries about supplies from the OPEC country, but a spokesman for the government later said he was alive and in custody.

Source

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A Credit Card You Want to Toss - Rates To Go As High As 28%!

February 9, 2008

Credit-card issuers have drawn fire for jacking up interest rates on cardholders who aren’t behind on payments, but whose credit score has fallen for another reason. Now, some consumers complain, Bank of America (BAC) is hiking rates based on no apparent deterioration in their credit scores at all.

The major credit-card lender in mid-January sent letters notifying some responsible cardholders that it would more than double their rates to as high as 28%, without giving an explanation for the increase, according to copies of five letters obtained by BusinessWeek.

Fine print at the end of the letter—headed “Important Amendment to Your Credit Card Agreement”—advised calling an 800-number for the reason, but consumers who called say they were unable to get a clear answer. “No one could give me an explanation,” says Eric Fresch, a Huron (Ohio) engineer who is on time with his Bank of America card payments and knows of no decline in the status of his overall credit.

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US Recession Will Dwarf Dotcom Crash

February 6, 2008

The recession facing the United States is of a scale that dwarfs the dotcom slump.

The slowdown will cause a damaging regulation backlash as governments attempt to compensate for the financial pain facing families. Britain faces a similar plight, though it may avoid as deep a slowdown as the US.

The views of Stephen Roach, one of the world’s leading economists, now heading the Asian wing of Morgan Stanley, would have seemed outrageous at last year’s World Economic Forum.

It is a sign of the times that they are now close to the consensus. This year’s event has been dominated by discussions of the stock market slump on both sides of the Atlantic, the Federal Reserve’s emergency interest rate cut and the SocGen fraud disaster.

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Finance Executive Suggests Buying A Remote Farm And Being Prepared For The Worst

January 31, 2008

Barton Biggs has some offbeat advice for the rich: Insure yourself against war and disaster by buying a remote farm or ranch and stocking it with “seed, fertilizer, canned food, wine, medicine, clothes, etc.”

The “etc.” must mean guns.

“A few rounds over the approaching brigands’ heads would probably be a compelling persuader that there are easier farms to pillage,” he writes in his new book, “Wealth, War and Wisdom.”

Biggs is no paranoid survivalist. He was chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley before leaving in 2003 to form hedge fund Traxis Partners. He doesn’t lock and load until the last page of this smart look at how World War II warped share prices, gutted wealth and remains a warning to investors. His message: Listen to markets, learn from history and prepare for the worst.

“Wealth, War and Wisdom” fills a void. Library shelves are packed with volumes on World War II. The history of stock markets also has been ably recorded, notably in Robert Sobel’s “The Big Board.” Yet how many books track the intersection of the two?

The “wisdom” in the alliterative title refers to the spooky way markets can foreshadow the future. Biggs became fascinated with this phenomenon after discovering by chance that equity markets sensed major turning points in the war.

The British stock market bottomed out in late June 1940 and started rising again before the truly grim days of the Battle of Britain in July to October, when the Germans were splintering London with bombs and preparing to invade the U.K.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average plumbed “an epic bottom” in late April and early May of 1942, then began climbing well before the U.S. victory in the Battle of Midway in June turned the tide against the Japanese.

Berlin shares “peaked at the high-water mark of the German attack on Russia just before the advance German patrols actually saw the spires of Moscow in early December of 1941.”

“Those were the three great momentum changes of World War II — although at the time, no one except the stock markets recognized them as such.”

Biggs isn’t suggesting that Mr. Market is infallible: He can get “panicky and crazy in the heat of the moment,” he says. Over the long haul, though, markets display what James Surowiecki calls “the wisdom of crowds.”

Like giant voting machines, they aggregate the judgments of individuals acting independently into a collective assessment. Biggs stress-tests this theory against events that shook nations from the Depression through the Korean War, which he calls “the last battle of World War II.”

Biggs has read widely and thought deeply. He has a pleasing conversational style, an eye for memorable anecdotes and a weakness for Winston Churchill’s quips. His book works as a brisk refresher course.

What really packs a wallop, though, is his combination of military history, market action, maps and charts. It’s one thing to say that the London market scraped bottom before the Battle of Britain. It’s another to show it.

In May and June 1940, some 338,000 British and French troops had been evacuated from Dunkirk by a flotilla of fishing boats, tugs, barges, yachts and river steamers. The French and Belgian armies had collapsed; the Dutch had surrendered. Britain stood alone, as bombs shattered London and the Nazis prepared to invade. Yet stocks rallied.

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Jerome Kerviel - Single Trader Loses $7.1 Billion In Biggest Bank Scam In History

January 27, 2008

Just a week ago, when global markets from Bombay to Wall Street were tanking, few investors had ever heard the name Jérome Kerviel. Why would they? The 31-year-old from small-town Brittany in France was a low-level futures trader.

One week later, Kerviel the rogue trader who has lost Société Générale $7.1 billion) now has 347,000 hits on Google, 14 groups dedicated to him on Facebook, and a Wikipedia biography and the mounting political scandal over how he pulled off the biggest scam in banking history is only just beginning.

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Global Markets Continue To Plunge

January 22, 2008

Global stock markets extended their shakeout into a second day Tuesday, plunging amid worries that a possible U.S. recession will cause a worldwide economic slowdown. The dramatic declines were expected to spread to Wall Street, where stock index futures were already down sharply hours before the trading day began.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 index, the benchmark for Asia’s biggest bourse, skidded 4.4 percent in morning trading to 12,738.31 points, after dropping 3.9 percent Monday. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was down 5.2 percent after plunging 5.5 percent the day before.

“Unless we get some positive ’shock effects,’ such as drastic measures from the U.S. government, there is almost no hope for a recovery in stocks,” said Koji Takeuchi, senior economist at Mizuho Research Institute in Tokyo.

U.S. markets were closed Monday for a holiday commemorating civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. But Wall Street future prices were down sharply, portending a plunge when trading begins at 9:30 a.m. Eastern time.
Dow Jones industrial average futures were down 436 points, or 3.6 percent, at 11,670, while Standard & Poor’s 500 futures were down 57.1 points, or 4.3 percent, at 1,268.

Markets have been plunging amid pessimism about the ability of the U.S. government to prevent a recession. The Federal Reserve has indicated it will lower interest rates further, and President Bush has proposed an economic stimulus package that includes $145 billion in tax cuts, but investors around the world are doubtful that the measures will lift the economy quickly.

Yahoo! Finance

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The Panic Begins - Market Drops Another 300 Points

January 18, 2008

There is no doubt the Fed and the PPT are meeting right now. A drop of over 300 points on the Dow after the Chairman of the Federal Reserve speaks publicly presages a 1000 point break in the Dow Jones Industrial Average coming quite quickly, if not tomorrow.

Unless the equity markets can be calmed, a panic is about to happen, making the statement “This is it” a horrible reality.

If the equity markets cannot be calmed then:

Recognize this is the Formula happening like everything else much sooner and much bigger in its implications than anticipated.

Gold will rise to $1650 as an almost immediate effect of what will be done to attempt to fend off a total panic starting to take place in general equities, therein threatening to be followed by all credit markets of all kinds.

The funds and hotshot short term traders in gold shares will be killed by the upward explosion of the gold price about to occur.
The PPT and the Fed will step out of gold’s way because gold is one of the tools used in 1930 by Roosevelt and in 2000 by Bush. It will be used again now on the upside.
Gold is the only insurance there is against what all this means because a panic in equities will blow the financial system, already coming apart, to smithereens.
All country funds would shut down on any further investments in “at the wall” financial institutions.

The rollover in credit and default derivatives would exceed the entire foreign debt of the USA.
The rest of the $450 trillion dollar mountain of derivatives would start a disintegration like nothing you have every seen in your lifetime.
Consumer demand would slam shut.
The auto industry might as well go into liquidation this coming Monday, avoiding the June 2008 rush.
The US dollar would burn a hole in the floor going directly to .5200 or lower.
As the dollar disintegrates gold would rocket to and through $1650 in days.
The markets for general equities would all have to institute total trading halts every 100 points on the downside for 30 minutes each.
All commercial call loans would be called.
All debtors one day late on any payment, lacking grace period, would be liquidated. All debtors over one day of the grace period would be liquidated.
Itis clearly visible to anyone with eyes or a mind to think that the PPT has lost all semblance of control in the equity markets and will soon in all remaining markets.
The commercial paper credit market which is almost dead will die totally.
Should no emergency action take place soon, you will see an old fashioned panic of the 1929 variety.
Just as emotional fools sell gold and gold shares, be assured that more emotional general equity fools will unload and bring the averages down more than ever in history in one day.
Recognize this is the Formula happening like everything else much sooner and much bigger in its implications than anticipated.
Emergency action will be all splash and theatrics but truthfully the cat is out of the bag. It buys some time but corrects nothing. It makes the Formula 100% correct.
There now must be EMERGENCY ACTION because the Chairman of the Fed has BOMBED OUT PUBLICLY and a PANIC is about to occur. Expect EMERGENCY ACTION in days, not weeks.

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