Does anyone care about the economy?

[broken iris]

Oops.

Im not an Obama supporter by any stretch, but he obviously wasn't talking about the city.

Obviously not. But the bankruptcy judge that reject Detroit's request cited this when not allowing the city to file.

[@SkitchP]

Oops.

Im not an Obama supporter by any stretch, but he obviously wasn't talking about the city.

Obviously not. But the bankruptcy judge that reject Detroit's request cited this when not allowing the city to file.

That's in all likelihood a formality. That judge pretty much hates the governor.


Also, I thought it was hilarious to read an MSNBC article praising a republican governor. Insanity.

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/michiga ... snhp&pos=4

[4/5]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-07-2 ... ation-need

Fed Tapering Assured As Treasury Projects 30% Slide In Annual Funding (And Monetization) Needs
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 07/29/2013 15:52 -0400

If there was any doubt that the Fed would proceed with tapering its monthly deficit monetization (i.e., $85 billion in POMO/S&P500 flow injection) over the next few months, those were just laid to rest courtesy of the Treasury's quarterly refunding statement which was filed moments ago, and specifically its Marketable Borrowing Estimates.

The release was brief...

The U.S. Department of the Treasury today announced its current estimates of net marketable borrowing for the July – September and October – December 2013 quarters:

•During the July – September 2013 quarter, Treasury expects to issue $209 billion in net marketable debt, assuming an end-of-September cash balance of $95 billion. This borrowing estimate is $14 billion lower than announced in April 2013. The decrease in borrowing relates primarily to changes in cash balance assumptions [1] offset in part by lower receipts and higher expenditures.
•During the October – December 2013 quarter, Treasury expects to issue $235 billion in net marketable debt, assuming an end-of-December cash balance of $80 billion.
During the April – June 2013 quarter, Treasury paid down $11 billion in net marketable debt and ended the quarter with a cash balance of $135 billion. In May 2013, Treasury had estimated $35 billion in net pay-down and assumed an end-of-June cash balance of $75 billion. The increase in the cash balance [1] was primarily the result of $66 billion in dividend payments received on June 28 from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under the Preferred Stock Purchase Agreement Program.
... but informative. It said that as a result of the GSE dividend, cash soared. But not only that: one also must recall that in the second calendar quarter of the year (3rd fiscal quarter of 2013) the original cash need was expected to be $103 billion only to become a $11 source of cash finally, as a result of the Treasury hitting the debt ceiling early and being forced to collapse its spending far earlier than previously expected.

But the punchline appears when one compares the LTM marketable borrowing needs from calendar Q4 of 2012 when the Fed announced the monthly Open-Ended $85 billion in monthly monetization, and compares it to what the TBAC and the Treasury now expect Q4 LTM borrowing needs will be in Q4 of this year. Bottom line: a 30% drop from $1134 billion to $782 billion.

This is a 31% drop in net funding needs, but more importantly to the Fed, the annual amount of Treasury issuance monetized soars from the pro forma 48% in December 2012 ($540bn of $1134bn) to a whopping 69% where it will be if all goes according to plan in calendar Q4 of 2013 when if the Fed did not Taper, it would monetize a record 69% of all issuance (and well over 100% of all issuance with notable duration).

In summary: a 30% drop in funding needs means a ~25% in monetization need (to avoid destabilizing the already illiquid bond market even more), or QE taper QED.

Of course, that the GSE dividend is a non-recurring event and will end as soon as housing resumes its downward path once the Fed lowers its monthly liquidity injection from $85 to $65 billion (or even $60 billion which is a 30% reduction and matches the funding need) is tangential, and is the reason why shortly after the Fed proceeds with tapering, it will very soon unleash far more funding needs once again, and be forced to Untaper.

Worst case, there is a Syrian war for that, and by "that" we mean sending declining defense spending surging and thus giving Bernanke the carte blanche he will need to monetize much more.

We give the Fed 4-6 months before the reduced monthly flow of $65 billion, most likely starting in September, reverts to its original number of $85 billion or even rises above it.

[shinkdew]

Bad real-estate bets hurt Detroit pensions
July 30, 2013, 1:42 PM
By Matthew Heimer

Detroit’s public-sector retirees will go to court later this week to argue that the city’s Chapter 9 bankruptcy filing shouldn’t lead to cuts in their pension benefits. But the pension funds, which are underfunded by anywhere from $700 million to $3.5 billion, depending on who you ask, wouldn’t be in such a mess to begin with if it wasn’t for some extraordinarily bad real-estate investments they made in the middle of the last decade.

In a recent article for Bloomberg Businessweek, Martin Z. Braun and Chris Christoff report that Detroit’s general-employee pension fund and its police-and-firefighter fund saw the value of their real estate investments drop by 47% and 33%, respectively over the four years ending June 30, 2012. The losses totaled $521.5 million, about 10% of the funds’ current value. More embarrassing, the funds took huge losses in an otherwise rising market – an index of property owned by pensions and nonprofit investors nationwide was up 3.6% over the same span.

How did the pensions blow it? Their failed investments include housing developments in Sarasota, Fla., and Dallas, both of which imploded during the housing-market crash, and a loan guarantee for a hotel-and-condo project in downtown Detroit. As for how the funds chose those duds, Braun and Christoff recreate the giant sucking sound of politically connected but under-qualified “consultants” convincing the funds’ boards to funnel money into dubious projects. Many of the investments were made during the tenure of then-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who has served time for perjury and will soon be sentenced on a separate corruption conviction. The authors also note that one of the pension funds’ real-estate advisers has pleaded guilty to bribery charges related to a trip he arranged for Kilpatrick.

The bigger question—and one that haunts public-sector workers in other struggling cities – is whether and how much rank-and-file retirees should suffer for boneheaded moves like these. In an interesting new wrinkle, Michigan’s attorney general, Bill Schuette, filed papers on Monday to represent Detroit retirees in federal bankruptcy court, joining the case on the grounds that Michigan’s constitution bars cuts in public pension benefits. Regarding the Detroit retirees, Schuette told the Wall Street Journal on Sunday, “They are getting stiffed in the process…They are not the ones who may have mismanaged the funds.”

Schuette has previously defended Detroit’s overall bankruptcy process, which Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder also supports; it’ll be interesting to see how he juggles those two competing briefs.

[broken iris]

I wish thodoks was still here to explain this, but can someone tell me why on earth the fed bought MBS's and didn't just start paying off the underlying mortgages with $100+ billion per month? Or maybe I am way off base here. I dunno. I'm tired and have had about 5 shots worth of Jack and no food since getting home from the gym.

[simple schoolboy]

I wish thodoks was still here to explain this, but can someone tell me why on earth the fed bought MBS's and didn't just start paying off the underlying mortgages with $100+ billion per month? Or maybe I am way off base here. I dunno. I'm tired and have had about 5 shots worth of Jack and no food since getting home from the gym.

A cynic might point to the high profile former Goldman Sachs employees currently working at the fed and the treasury having much more clout than the typical distressed mortgage holder.

[shinkdew]

The stock market is broken. I wonder if they were hacked.

NASDAQ OPTIONS MARKET IN COMPLETE UNPRECEDENTED SHUTDOWN
MATTHEW BOESLER 11 MINUTES AGO 402 1

Trading on the Nasdaq options market has been halted as of 12:22:26 PM ET, reports Bloomberg.

The Nasdaq OMX PHLX halted options trading as of 12:20:18.

Nasdaq says the trading halt is due to a UTP SIP quote dissemination issue.

Meanwhile, stocks that trade on the NASDAQ, like Apple and Facebook, have completely flatlined since shortly after noon.

According to CNBC, this sort of exchange-wide issue is unprecedented.

More to come as we get it...

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/nasdaq-o ... z2ciXLVEC4

[Alex]

I wish thodoks was still here to explain this, but can someone tell me why on earth the fed bought MBS's and didn't just start paying off the underlying mortgages with $100+ billion per month? Or maybe I am way off base here. I dunno. I'm tired and have had about 5 shots worth of Jack and no food since getting home from the gym.

did thodoks not re-register an account here? i thought he was malloy.

[doug rr]

I wish thodoks was still here to explain this, but can someone tell me why on earth the fed bought MBS's and didn't just start paying off the underlying mortgages with $100+ billion per month? Or maybe I am way off base here. I dunno. I'm tired and have had about 5 shots worth of Jack and no food since getting home from the gym.

did thodoks not re-register an account here? i thought he was malloy.

I'm thodoks but I dont care about the economy anymore

[---]

.

[spike]

I wish thodoks was still here to explain this, but can someone tell me why on earth the fed bought MBS's and didn't just start paying off the underlying mortgages with $100+ billion per month? Or maybe I am way off base here. I dunno. I'm tired and have had about 5 shots worth of Jack and no food since getting home from the gym.

did thodoks not re-register an account here? i thought he was malloy.

I'm thodoks but I dont care about the economy anymore

thodoks is puttermesser and/or alex

okay, but who brought that dickfor?

[E.H. Ruddock]

I always see this thread title and want to come in here and say, no. No I don't care about the economy. I don't plan on selling my house soon, I am happy with my pay and our cost of living and I get sick of hearing about the economy on the news. So no, I don't care. Also, I am secretly hoping for an apocalyptic-esque economical crash so I can fortify my house and hunker down.

[Norah]

If that happens I'm coming to your place, dude.

[---]

.

[Fuck You Jobu]

Goldman Sachs, Visa and Nike to the Dow???

Nike?

[broken iris]

Nike?

The perfect synergy of the Asian economy (slave laborers) and the US economy (mindless consumerism).

[shinkdew]

Am I the only one that finds this incredibly bizarre?

Should You Bring Mom and Dad to the Office?

Employers Are Embracing the Involvement of Parents to Attract and Hold On to Talent

By ANITA HOFSCHNEIDER

The Millennial job interview prospect brings a resume, a crisp suit... and parents. Francesca Donner discusses why companies are letting millennials bring parents into salary negotiations. Photo: Alyssa Schukar for The Wall Street Journal

Paul From was used to meeting the spouses and children of employees at company events. As chief executive of Central Wire Industries, a manufacturing firm based in Perth, Ontario, he has long held regular baseball games to get to know his employees better.

But in the past five years, he has noticed his 20- and 30-something employees have started bringing new guests to company socials: Mom and Dad.

Millennials—people born between 1981 and the early 2000s—are much closer to their parents than previous generations, and they have gained a reputation for being coddled by so-called helicopter parents, say researchers who study Millennials. But when they started joining the workforce in the early 2000s, managers balked at parents getting involved in their kids' workplace struggles or job searches.

That was then. Now, some firms have begun embracing parental involvement and using it to attract and hold onto talent and boost employee morale.

One of them is Northwestern Mutual. Michael Van Grinsven, field-growth and development director at the Milwaukee-based financial firm, says the company does everything it can to accommodate the parents of college-aged interns, including regularly inviting them to the office for open houses.

"It's become best practice," Mr. Van Grinsven says, noting that parents can influence their children's career decisions. Some Northwestern Mutual managers call or send notes to parents when interns achieve their sales goals and let parents come along to interviews and hear details of job offers. They may even visit parents at home.

Mr. Van Grinsven says the efforts have paid off: The number of interns meeting the company's benchmark for success in sales has risen more than 40% since 2007, a productivity improvement that he attributes in part to more parental support.

In May, Google Inc. GOOG +0.84% held its second annual "Take Your Parents to Work Day," hosting more than 2,000 parents at its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters. Participation numbers showed that the event was valuable to employees, the company says.

It may be on the rise, but parental involvement in the U.S. doesn't begin to match countries in Asia and South America, according to a 2013 study from the global accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.

The study, which surveyed 44,000 people from more than 20 countries, found that just 6% of recent college graduates surveyed in the U.S. wanted their parents to receive a copy of their offer letters. That's well below the global average of 13% and much less than some other countries, where it was as high as 30%. The study also found that just 2% of young employees in the U.S. want their parents to receive a copy of their performance review, compared with the global average of 8%.

Nate Kruse, a financial representative and college unit director at Northwestern Mutual, says that including his parents in the hiring process made them more supportive of his career choice. His mother, Deb Kruse from Hildreth, Neb., says she met her son Nate's intern coordinator at Northwestern Mutual when he stopped by her house to introduce himself in 2008.

Since then, she has attended several company events, including the company's annual meeting for employees and their families. Once she attended an intern open house to answer questions from other parents.

"My parents were unsure at first," Mr. Kruse says. "But seeing the office firsthand allowed them to be that much more confident with the company."

PwC also hosts receptions for interns' parents at some of its offices. And Enterprise Holdings Inc., a car-rental firm, provides information packets for the parents of interns and new employees in its management-training program and lets the parents listen in when managers describe job offers.

Marie Artim, vice president of talent acquisition at Enterprise, says that involving parents can help with the hiring process, but she acknowledges that "you don't want to step over the line of over involving them." The company expects that it will bring in more than 8,500 college graduates for its management training program in the coming year, many of whom are young people.

A 2012 survey of more than 500 college graduates by Adecco, a human-resources organization, found that 8% of them had a parent accompany them to a job interview, and 3% had the parent sit in on the interview.

Meanwhile, some high-profile tech companies are turning the traditional "Bring Your Daughter/Son to Work Day" holiday on its head in a bid to boost morale.

LinkedIn Inc. LNKD +1.55% will host its first "Bring In Your Parents Day" in November at its offices in 14 countries, and it plans to roll out how-to guides for businesses hoping to host similar events. Following a successful pilot in Dublin, spokeswoman Danielle Restivo expects the event to boost employee morale. Plus, she says, employees who have their parents' backing are happier workers.

Still, the attention paid to parents has put some employers in an awkward position. "This is a situation that's odd and uncomfortable to say the least," says Jaime Fall, a vice president of the HR Policy Association.

For example, HR executives have to follow privacy policies that prevent them from sharing information with parents. That can be a problem when a parent calls asking why their offspring didn't get a job or wants to negotiate salary, Mr. Fall explains.

Parental involvement also isn't for everyone. Lauren Bailey, a 22-year-old graduate of the State University of New York at Albany, says that if a company gave her a letter to take home to her parents, "I would almost feel like I was back in high school."

Nor can she imagine taking her parents to an interview or a company recruiting event. "I'd be worried that they'd be speaking for me," she says. "I know I'm young, but at some point I have to make my own decisions."

As for Central Wire's Mr. From, he says he is trying to keep an open mind. He worries that bringing parents to company events interferes with the social dynamic, but a bigger concern is whether the company will have enough fresh talent.

[broken iris]

The Millennial job interview prospect

Something we are trying to avoid now because they jump ship as soon as someone offers them a few grand more. Honestly, anyone who is younger than 26 and older than 50 is basically fucked in this economy unless you have an established network.

[simple schoolboy]

don't think this is exactly breaking news, but maybe underemployed young people can claim the title of bohemian. Guess I'd better move to a more urban area to take part.
http://www.npr.org/2013/09/12/221425582 ... -get-worse

[broken iris]

don't think this is exactly breaking news, but maybe underemployed young people can claim the title of bohemian. Guess I'd better move to a more urban area to take part.
http://www.npr.org/2013/09/12/221425582 ... -get-worse

From that link:
"I think what will happen is, because we measure better and more over time, people who are truly talented will become millionaires much more easily. So I think we'll move from a country where instead of talking about the one percent, it will be the 15 percent, for instance."


This is already true to a large extend around DC. So much money flows from the federal government / DOD that there is a distinct upper middle class (households w/ net worth of $500k-$1m) west of the Capitol extending out to about Dulles airport and north about 5 miles above the beltway that is completely isolated from everything going in the country and the rest of their states, much like the 1%ers we heard so much about during the "Occupy" movement. I would call them the start the "15%" that Tyler speaks of here as they are your doctors, lawyers, and engineers.

One thing I didn't see mentioned, and it's probably in the book, is the power of inheritance. As the baby boomers die off, we are going to see a massive shift in wealth as their life insurance and property flows down to their Gen-X kids.