Green Shoots Reports From All Over

Tim Cavanaugh | August 13, 2009

Weekly initial unemployment claims are ascending again, up 4,000 from previous week, to 558,000. Details.

July retail sales declined 0.1 percent, short of "consensus estimates" prophesying a 0.6 percent gain. Details.

As Radley Balko noted earlier today, foreclosures are up, Way up. (Calculated Risk cautions that previous RealtyTrac figures have been questioned by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.)

By the way, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 has been the law of the land for 25 weeks. So if we posit Economic Policy Institute's claim that 720,000 total jobs have been neither created nor destroyed neither out far nor in deep waxed and topped saved or created, that would mean the jobless claims would have been 28,800 higher -- 586,800 -- without ARRA.

Comments

William|8.13.09 @ 5:10PM|#

Geez, the market is falling apart.

EJM|8.13.09 @ 5:35PM|#

FWIW, Germany and France are now officially out of recession. (In particular, see "Six of world's top 10 economies out of recession".)

|8.13.09 @ 6:13PM|#

Are we sure it's not "green chutes", ie, places to throw money away?

mark|8.13.09 @ 6:16PM|#

Win, Tulpa.

It must be admitted that absent a bank bailout/stimulus, all of these negative news stories would have been clustered into a 3-month period starting in August. It would have been scary but we'd be well on our way to recovery by now.

dfd|8.13.09 @ 6:32PM|#

It would have been scary

Mostly it would have been scary to Paulson's friends on Wall Street. Regular bankruptcy would have consolidated and turned over the failing investment banks to their creditors. Big deal. Life would have gone on for the vast majority of us all the same, just without putting us on the hook for trillions to bail out these fucktards. Fuck every sinlge one who went along with the bailouts, including the current dufus in the White House.

|8.13.09 @ 6:52PM|#

Let's see: We still have the second half of the residential foreclosure storm to hit, according to the widely published graph of mortgage resets by Credit Suisse. The commercial real estate crash is just revving up. And apparently the TARP program might const $23,700 billion, instead of "only" $700 billion, according to TARP Inspector General Neal Barofsky.

All these banking system ills are to be treated by creating new money and pumping it into the bankrupt organs of finance.

But what are we going to do about the $700,000 billion of derivatives that are surely underwater by now? How can we fix something a thousand times bigger that the bust of Long Term Capital Management a couple decades ago?

When this last issue is finally addressed, I'll be convinced we are beginning to see the light at the end of this tunnel.

|8.13.09 @ 7:11PM|#

From the third foreclosure link, 57% of the nation's foreclosures are occurring in these four states: CA, NV, FL, AZ. In Nevada, 1 out of every 56 housing units is in foreclosure right now, while in the other three states it's between 120:1 and 150:1.

Feel free to take back your digs at the Rust Belt any time, fellas. We should start calling you guys the Foreclosure Belt.

anonymous|8.13.09 @ 7:29PM|#

"CA, NV, FL, AZ"

All very hot states. So... it must be due to air conditioning costs. Which are up because of... global warming? Al Gore, if only we had listened to you!

Kris|8.13.09 @ 7:33PM|#

We should start calling you guys the Foreclosure Belt.


As a life long Californian, I say go for it. It has a nice ring to it.

Ebeneezer Scrooge|8.13.09 @ 9:20PM|#

But nobody mentioned the fact that California its very own self is on the verge of foreclosure.

|8.13.09 @ 10:30PM|#

I think issuing IOU's in lieu of cash payment pretty much says that it were...

Foreclosure Belt...pound sand belt...heaven's waiting room Belt

|8.13.09 @ 10:37PM|#

If 1933 is an indicator, I disagree. Some major creditors would have likely been wiped out...and the banking system would seriously fit the shan while a few major processing / payment system firms shut down for a few days or weeks to figure it all out.

Major insurance companies would be on the brink even more than some are now. New York's financial industry would be a ghost town.

Life would have continued of course...as long as that debit / credit card wasn't necessary to every day life. There would be a boom in soup kitchens though...

"It would have been scary

Mostly it would have been scary to Paulson's friends on Wall Street. Regular bankruptcy would have consolidated and turned over the failing investment banks to their creditors. Big deal. Life would have gone on for the vast majority of us all the same, just without putting us on the hook for trillions to bail out these fucktards. Fuck every sinlge one who went along with the bailouts, including the current dufus in the White House."

|8.13.09 @ 11:10PM|#

Andrew Mellon was Treasury Secretary under hoover. Mellon famously stated that the US govt would just let businesses (banks,farms) liquidate that which needed to do so, and purge the rotten excesses out of the system. Didn't go too well back then,,,so I was told.

By/large, US economy didn't really recover until early 1940's. So, no I really doubt recovery would be at hand just now

Spoonman|8.13.09 @ 11:10PM|#

All very hot states. So... it must be due to air conditioning costs.

Texas's booming economy and population disagree.

Spoonman|8.13.09 @ 11:11PM|#

Griff, Hoover didn't just let things go. His policies were very interventionist.

|8.13.09 @ 11:13PM|#

Some more cheerful thoughts:

- The usual suspects are planting the seeds for another storm of foreclosures, by again telling banks to relax lending standards.

- Our economy is highly dependent on consumer spending. Very soon, the D's will have to raise taxes significantly to pay for the recent spending binge. When taxes go up, disposable income and consumption go down.

|8.13.09 @ 11:25PM|#

It was secretary mellon that I intended to highlight...just so happens that he did serve under Hoover. did the Smoot-Hawley Act pass under Hoover or FDR ?

Would have to start another thread to discuss the potential doom for municipalities that got hooked on property taxes from increasing (no longer) property values. Must...cut...civic services...guaranteed pension benefits to long-term public employees another one

|8.14.09 @ 12:32AM|#

Tulpa...
LMAO @ Foreclosure Belt

Ebeneezer Scrooge|8.14.09 @ 4:44AM|#

I think issuing IOU's in lieu of cash payment pretty much says that it were...

If we could only figure out how to make governments an asset to be bought and sold. Shut it down and reopen under new management.

How to do that without devolving into anarchy?

The age-old, tried-and-true solution is an invasion of barbarians. Or maybe they don't have to be barbarians, they just have to carry bigger sticks.


I can't believe we're still squandering blood and treasure on Afghanistan......on top of everything else.

I'd pull out of Afghanistan with a simple warning: do what you want. But if we catch you allowing terrorist training camps to operate within your borders again, we aren't just going to bomb you back to the stone age, we're gonna nuke your ass off the map. You choose.

Most people probably think I'm a barbarian. But I'll bet you wouldn't have to follow through on that threat very many times to get everybody's attention.

Then again, as messy as foreign policy is in the real world, it's still way easier to deal with than the financial disaster that our jackass leadership in DC has (utterly unnecessarily) created for us.

|8.14.09 @ 7:33AM|#

So if a mad eco-freak fires a .44 Magnum into some polluter before escaping, the headline will be:

Green Shoots and Leaves

;-)

|8.14.09 @ 10:46AM|#

But what are we going to do about the $700,000 billion of derivatives that are surely underwater by now?

The number I've been seeing is closer to twice that . . . .

Craig|8.14.09 @ 12:10PM|#

Thursday: Retail sales down, jobless claims up, foreclosures way up. The stock market gains.

Friday: Consumer sentiment survey down. The stock market falls.

So basically, objective data showing the depression hasn't even bottomed yet are ignored, but a telephone survey asking about people's feelings isn't.

Craig|8.14.09 @ 12:16PM|#

Mellon famously stated that the US govt would just let businesses (banks,farms) liquidate that which needed to do so, and purge the rotten excesses out of the system. Didn't go too well back then,,,so I was told.

By/large, US economy didn't really recover until early 1940's. So, no I really doubt recovery would be at hand just now...

Yes, blame Mellon and laissez-faire for the recovery from the 1929 crash taking more than a decade. If only the government had done something, anything, and given the economy some sort of new deal to rally around during the 1930s!!!!

|8.14.09 @ 3:54PM|#

I'm saying that Mellon's approach was tried before...and when banks/financial entities liquidate it becomes a very different ball game than when any typical industrial or retail corporation is liquidated or goes under a reorg. Maybe that speaks more to the system of fractional reserves...and also the cross-holding of investor interests among banks, large insurers and (gasp) pension / endowment funds

It's a symptomatic reference...not the sole or cheif reason