This morning I read that the man who killed his family in Baltimore "may" have been in debt, which means that he also "may" have been just a sick fuck who beat and then suffocated his family before killing himself.

Being in real estate, I have to tell you that I couldn't believe how bad things were. I could go WEEKS without a voice mail, and if it wasn't for Spam, I wouldn't have gotten any emails either. I have noticed a surge in activity. While many of the calls and showings are with bottom-feeders looking to snap up a bargain from a desperate seller, at least the phone's ringing again. I actually even had a bidding war on one of my listings!

Although I sell only commercial real estate, which is very, very different from residential, a resurgence in consumer confidence is what it often takes. I think that part of this recession is in people's minds. They're afraid to spend.

You're right Babe. People are being cautious. Of course, even if they are willing to spend, overall there's less disposable cash with which to spend. I still maintain that unemployment will hit 10% this year and that will further drain disposable income. We already know that GM is planning a 9 week holiday for its employees. The impact of that is going to be significant.

The state of NJ has an 99 month housing surplus (not exactly sure what that means, but it doesn't sound good). The shore towns in Cape May county are the worst. Avalon, which is an high-end summer resort town has the highest at 120 month. I guess that means at the rate people are buying homes, it would take 10 years to buy all the homes that are for sale in Avalon.

It's already at 8 or 9, so 10% is no big prediction.

I stated in January that the unemployment rate would exceed 9% in 2009. At the time the unemployment rate was 7.2%. It's currently 8.5%, not 8% or 9%.

Long, you ought to stick to criticizing predictions about the Colts - including your own.

I heard on the radio that GM will still be paying the emplyees even though they are out of work for 9 weeks. I don't know if this is true or not.

Workers will receive 70%-80% of their regular pay. That will be significant. However, there's no guarantee that they will be recalled. Thus, they may cut back on spending, put off credit purchases, etc.

It's 8.5%, not 8 or 9. Very good. Take your self righteous attitude and stick it up your ass.

The UK had our budget this week where the government basically told us we would be in recession longer than they predicted and our economy will be in debt for the next 30 years or something like that. We now look forward to tax hikes and cuts in public spending,at least until i retire,whereupon they will probably try to rob me of my pension

Bastards!!!

Foul language and expressions - the refuge of the unintelligent mind.

But maybe you can be forgiven since you support an NFL team with declining prospects and an aging quarterback.

I own a gift shop and obviously things like that, gifts are often the first to go.....sales are down around 30%. It started around October for me... right before the election and the big banks failing...and just progressed into winter and now spring has seen a slight improvement here at least. I'm hoping people will want to buy a little something in my store instead of taking a trip overseas or something....I am optimistic that in a short time things will be better. We also have our regulars who come in for our teas ~ Irish and British teas are the best! After they try them, they won't go back to American brands.....

California is hit hard too. We are having an increase in sales tax here supposedly for only 3 years. Yea right. Also, our license tab renewal fees are going up too. Just what we all need in the sucky economy.



TIS

Angela Marie, I remember when you announced you were opening (or had) a gift shop. I hope things turn around for you and for everybody.

What is the sales tax rate in CA now? Do they tax food too? Here in Tenn its 9.5 % and Food is 8%. (Each county varies a little bit). They also tax clothes here....9.5 %

thanks a bunch. Its been hard, I tried getting a part time job for awhile but it wore me out. I was ok through the holidays and then things started piling up the last couple months. My family is helping me out at this point, but they can't forever..... I think it will turn around soon. I'm really optimistic. I mean people shouldn't buy what they can't afford, but the economy needs to get back on track...

Angela Marie, Do you have employees working for you or are you the sole owner/employee? Must be a lot of responsibility running your own business, big or small. I give you credit.


TIS

Well, I cut it down to just one occassional helper every other Saturday. One person can usually handle it unless there is a festival. But we're open 6 1/2 days per week so I kind of need a day "away" to recharge or I get cabin fever and its not pretty, so one of my friends is helping out when she can. I really really really want a vacation!!! Just 3 or 4 days at the beach would work wonders!

It's so hard to own your own business. It's wonderful to be your own boss, but the responsibility can be overwhelming, and you're often the only one burdening it all.

I do see encouraging signs of the turn-around you're referring to, Angela. I think we have seen bottom, and the months ahead should be much better.

I feel for you! I am a pick-up and deliver truck driver and I have made some good friends on my route over the years. In the past 6-8 months I no longer get pickups at some places because they have gone out of business. It's the furniture business' I have seen get hit the hardest, but I imagine gift shop's are on the same plane. I wish you the best of luck!

Jobless rate hits 9.4 percent in May; layoffs slow
Jobless rate jumps to 9.4 percent in May, even as layoffs slow to 345,000
Jeannine Aversa, AP Economics Writer
On Friday June 5, 2009, 3:41 pm EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) -- With companies in no mood to hire, the unemployment rate jumped to 9.4 percent in May, the highest in more than 25 years. But the pace of layoffs eased, with employers cutting 345,000 jobs, the fewest since September.

The much smaller-than-expected reduction in payroll jobs, reported by the Labor Department on Friday, adds to evidence that the recession is loosening its hold on the country. It marked the fourth straight month that the pace of layoffs slowed.

What a wonderful world it would be.

Don't know much about algebra
Don't know what a slide rule is for.

I saw a demo of the new XBOX 360.
The future looks scary. Put me in box now.

I'm laid off. The last day I worked was Nov.26th. They took my health and dental insurance on Nov.30th and they didn't send me a letter in the mail until March saying that they cancelled my benefits and it stated that I could pay $284 a month for COBRA or whatever. I'll pass.lol. I'll get a new job once I get my new car.

The Dow finished over 10,000 for the first time in over a year!! WOO HOO!!!

So when are my IRAs going to get back to where they should be?....instead of 35% lower than they were three years ago.

Hey, it's two days in a row now!! This could be a trend!

This is the time of year when companies report their annual earnings, making market surges common, but uncertainty has loomed for months about the market reaching the 'psychological' 10,000 mark - a level it first reached in 1999. It's worth noting that this year's national GDP is 14 trillion compared to 10 trillion a decade ago, signaling substantial growth in 10 years. This growth is however offset by debt and borrowing--which has DOUBLED since '99--and when adjusted for inflation, the market is down about 10% over the decade.

Any growth is overshadowed perhaps though by the unstable future of the dollar, as this rebound could be a 'V' shaped recovery in which 'reflation' turns into inflation. There's a lot of rumbling on 'The Floor' right now amongst brokers about various limitations and taxes imposed by the Obama administration that hinder activity and trade, i.e short-sale limitations and other regulations. But the era of 'supply-side economics' vs. 'Keynesian economics' is over, as Wall Street undoubtably supported this President and his 'Keynesian' market theories. We're still recovering from the housing and credit bubble created by the 20 year Greenspan era.

However, if/when America approves a nationalized health care system, it's likely that the upper-level tax rates for investors and businesses will increase from 35 to 40 percent, which could deter companies from investing in new business growth and job creation.

Jobs report shows economic rebound may be stalling

By CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER (AP)

WASHINGTON — A weak June jobs report offered the latest evidence that the economic recovery is slowing.

Employers cut 125,000 jobs last month, the most since October, the Labor Department said Friday. The loss was driven by the end of 225,000 temporary census jobs. Businesses added a net total of 83,000 workers, the sixth straight month of private-sector job gains but not enough to speed up the recovery.

Unemployment dropped to 9.5 percent — the lowest level since July 2009 — from 9.7 percent. But the reason for the decline was more than 650,000 people gave up on their job searches and left the labor force. People who are no longer looking for work aren't counted as unemployed.

The latest figures suggest businesses are still slow to hire amid a weak economic recovery. Many economists were hoping to see more private-sector job growth, which would fuel the economy by boosting consumers' ability to spend.

"It could have been worse, but it wasn't good," said Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight, an economic forecasting firm. "It's adding to the evidence that growth has slowed."

People left the work force "because they think there's nothing out there," he added.

In a separate report, factory orders fell by 1.4 percent in May, the Commerce Department said. It was the first decline after nine months of gains and the biggest drop since March 2009.

The reports follow a slew of data and developments this week that point to slower growth in the months ahead.

In May, home sales plunged and construction spending dropped after a popular homebuyers' tax credit expired on April 30. Consumer confidence has fallen sharply. The European debt crisis has sent U.S. financial markets downward, lowering household wealth. And more than a million jobless Americans have been cut off from unemployment benefits after Congress adjourned for a weeklong Independence Day recess without extending federal aid.

President Barack Obama said the economy is moving in the right direction, but not quickly enough. He seized on the latest data to push for more government stimulus — including the extension of jobless benefits — to aid the recovery.

"We're not headed there fast enough for a lot of Americans," Obama said. "We're not headed there fast enough for me, either."

The disappointing jobs report added to investors' concerns about the economy. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 97 points in midday trading.

The unemployment rate and payroll figures can sometimes move in different directions because they are calculated from different surveys. The jobless rate is derived from a survey of households, while the payroll calculation is drawn from a separate survey of businesses.

The nation still has 7.9 million fewer private payroll jobs than it did when the recession began. The private sector has added an average of 98,000 jobs per month since the beginning of the year. At that rate, it would take nearly seven years to regain the jobs lost during the recession.

It takes about 100,000 new jobs a month to keep up with population growth. The economy needs to create jobs at least twice that pace to quickly bring down the jobless rate.

All told, 14.6 million people were looking for work in June. Counting those who have given up their job searches and those who are working part time but would prefer full-time work, the underemployment rate edged down to 16.5 percent from 16.6 percent in May.

Manufacturers, which have been a key source of job growth in the recovery, are hiring fewer people. Factories added 9,000 jobs in June, down from 32,000 in May and the lowest gain this year.

The leisure and hospitality industries, temporary staffing agencies, and education and health services providers also added jobs. Retailers, construction firms and financial service providers cut payrolls.

Private employers added only 33,000 jobs in May, the department said, below an earlier estimate of 41,000. April private-sector payrolls were revised up to show a total gain of 241,000 jobs, higher than the earlier estimate of 218,000.

The Census Bureau added more than 400,000 workers in May to assist with the 2010 employment count, but most of those jobs lasted only six to eight weeks. Economists expect that census layoffs will impact the payroll data for several more months, but not by nearly as much.

The average work week shortened to 34.1 hours from 34.2, the government said, a disappointing drop after three months of gains. Hourly wages also fell by two pennies to $22.53. The declines mean workers earned less money in the last month.

In addition, the drop in hours is a bad sign because employers are likely to cut hours for their current workers before reducing payrolls.

The employment report comes after Congress adjourned Thursday for the weeklong Independence Day recess without extending jobless aid. That has already left 1.3 million people without benefits. Senate Republicans blocked the extension, citing concerns over the federal deficit. That total number of Americans cut off from benefits could grow to 3.3 million by the end of this month if the impasse isn't resolved when Congress returns.

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

I'm almost convinced that it's going to take tax cuts to get things moving in the right direction. If the Congress doesn't estend the current federal tax rates by the end of the year, I think we're in for more of the same in 2011.

I can't figure out what is going on. We seem to take three steps forward and two steps back. The Dow was up, home sales were up, and then nothing. Our office is so dead that my boss changed the 4th to a 4 day weekend. Every broker I speak to says the same thing - dead, dead, dead. Nobody's moving, so none of us are making any money. I feel bad for the residential brokers. It's been bad for them for even longer.

As I've said, I think some companies are taking advantage of the economy and forcing their workers to do more with less because they're afraid of losing their jobs.

I like Krugman a lot and not just because his politics somewhat align with my own. If you ever have seen him on television he has a diffident deer-in-the-headlights style and querulous verbal tone which is pretty much at odds with his much more aggressive sardonic written style. In a world full of people that are sure that they are among the smartest people in a given room, Krugman is one of the few who would be justified in thinking so. Lately his annoyance with what he views as dumb policies has become much sharper and more apparent.

Punishing the Jobless
By PAUL KRUGMAN
There was a time when everyone took it for granted that unemployment insurance, which normally terminates after 26 weeks, would be extended in times of persistent joblessness. It was, most people agreed, the decent thing to do.

But that was then. Today, American workers face the worst job market since the Great Depression, with five job seekers for every job opening, with the average spell of unemployment now at 35 weeks. Yet the Senate went home for the holiday weekend without extending benefits. How was that possible?

The answer is that we’re facing a coalition of the heartless, the clueless and the confused. Nothing can be done about the first group, and probably not much about the second. But maybe it’s possible to clear up some of the confusion.

By the heartless, I mean Republicans who have made the cynical calculation that blocking anything President Obama tries to do — including, or perhaps especially, anything that might alleviate the nation’s economic pain — improves their chances in the midterm elections. Don’t pretend to be shocked: you know they’re out there, and make up a large share of the G.O.P. caucus.

By the clueless I mean people like Sharron Angle, the Republican candidate for senator from Nevada, who has repeatedly insisted that the unemployed are deliberately choosing to stay jobless, so that they can keep collecting benefits. A sample remark: “You can make more money on unemployment than you can going down and getting one of those jobs that is an honest job but it doesn’t pay as much. We’ve put in so much entitlement into our government that we really have spoiled our citizenry.”

Now, I don’t have the impression that unemployed Americans are spoiled; desperate seems more like it. One doubts, however, that any amount of evidence could change Ms. Angle’s view of the world — and there are, unfortunately, a lot of people in our political class just like her.

But there are also, one hopes, at least a few political players who are honestly misinformed about what unemployment benefits do — who believe, for example, that Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, was making sense when he declared that extending benefits would make unemployment worse, because “continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work.” So let’s talk about why that belief is dead wrong.

Do unemployment benefits reduce the incentive to seek work? Yes: workers receiving unemployment benefits aren’t quite as desperate as workers without benefits, and are likely to be slightly more choosy about accepting new jobs. The operative word here is “slightly”: recent economic research suggests that the effect of unemployment benefits on worker behavior is much weaker than was previously believed. Still, it’s a real effect when the economy is doing well.

But it’s an effect that is completely irrelevant to our current situation. When the economy is booming, and lack of sufficient willing workers is limiting growth, generous unemployment benefits may keep employment lower than it would have been otherwise. But as you may have noticed, right now the economy isn’t booming — again, there are five unemployed workers for every job opening. Cutting off benefits to the unemployed will make them even more desperate for work — but they can’t take jobs that aren’t there.

Wait: there’s more. One main reason there aren’t enough jobs right now is weak consumer demand. Helping the unemployed, by putting money in the pockets of people who badly need it, helps support consumer spending. That’s why the Congressional Budget Office rates aid to the unemployed as a highly cost-effective form of economic stimulus. And unlike, say, large infrastructure projects, aid to the unemployed creates jobs quickly — while allowing that aid to lapse, which is what is happening right now, is a recipe for even weaker job growth, not in the distant future but over the next few months.

But won’t extending unemployment benefits worsen the budget deficit? Yes, slightly — but as I and others have been arguing at length, penny-pinching in the midst of a severely depressed economy is no way to deal with our long-run budget problems. And penny-pinching at the expense of the unemployed is cruel as well as misguided.

So, is there any chance that these arguments will get through? Not, I fear, to Republicans: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something,” said Upton Sinclair, “when his salary” — or, in this case, his hope of retaking Congress — “depends upon his not understanding it.” But there are also centrist Democrats who have bought into the arguments against helping the unemployed. It’s up to them to step back, realize that they have been misled — and do the right thing by passing extended benefits.

*********************************************************
A quick note on David Brooks’s column today. I have no idea what he’s talking about when he says,
"The Demand Siders don’t have a good explanation for the past two years"

Funny, I thought we had a perfectly good explanation: severe downturn in demand from the financial crisis, and a stimulus which we warned from the beginning wasn’t nearly big enough. And as I’ve been trying to point out, events have strongly confirmed a demand-side view of the world.
But there’s something else in David’s column, which I see a lot: the argument that because a lot of important people believe something, it must make sense:

"Moreover, the Demand Siders write as if everybody who disagrees with them is immoral or a moron. But, in fact, many prize-festooned economists do not support another stimulus. Most European leaders and central bankers think it’s time to begin reducing debt, not increasing it — as do many economists at the international economic institutions. Are you sure your theorists are right and theirs are wrong?"

Yes, I am. It’s called looking at the evidence. I’ve looked hard at the arguments the Pain Caucus is making, the evidence that supposedly supports their case — and there’s no there there.
And you just have to wonder how it’s possible to have lived through the last ten years and still imagine that because a lot of Serious People believe something, you should believe it too. Iraq? Housing bubble? Inflation? (It’s worth remembering that Trichet actually raised rates in June 2008, because he believed that inflation — not the financial crisis — was the big threat facing Europe.)
The moral I’ve taken from recent years isn’t Be Humble — it’s Question Authority. And you should too.
Krugman Link

Despite weak consumer demand and other variables, more and more I believe that the only thing that will get us out of this mess is tax cuts across the board. So, Obama needs to state his support for extension of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. That's the only thing that may spur investment and hiring and, consequently, increase demand.