From the NJ Department of Workforce and Labor Development:
NJ Employment Losses Slowed in June; Unemployment Rate, Over the Month, Rose to 9.2 Percent
New Jersey employers trimmed payrolls once again in June, however, the monthly decline was the smallest since February 2008. While job losses have moderated during the past two months, New Jersey’s June unemployment rate rose by 0.4 percentage point to 9.2 percent and remained below the national rate of 9.5 percent.
According to preliminary estimates from the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development’s monthly survey of employers, nonfarm wage and salary employment in the Garden State decreased by 2,100 jobs in June, to a total of 3,931,200. Based on more complete reporting, the previously released May estimate was revised lower by -1,800 for a revised April-to-May loss of 8,000. Since the beginning of the recession in December 2007, New Jersey has lost 155,000 jobs (-3.8%). Nationally, employment has declined by 5.3 million jobs (-4.7%).
…
The largest over-the-month losses occurred in leisure and hospitality (-2,600), professional and business services (-2,300), and financial activities (-1,400). In leisure and hospitality, the majority of the drop occurred in the accommodation and food services segment (-2,400). The job losses in professional and business services were largely attributable to decreased payrolls in the administrative support/waste management/remediation services component (-3,700). The decline in financial activities occurred in both the finance and insurance (-800) and real estate/rental and leasing categories (-600).Job gains were concentrated in other services (+3,700), education and health services (+1,200) and transportation, trade and utilities (+900). The gain in other services was due to higher payrolls at employers such as nonprofit groups, grant-making organizations and industry associations. Gains in the educational services component (+1,600) of education and health services overshadowed a slight loss in the healthcare and social assistance component (-400). Hiring in transportation and warehousing (+1,500) and retail trade (+200) were responsible for the advance in trade, transportation and utilities, while wholesale trade contracted by 800.
Over the month, the unadjusted workweek for manufacturing workers increased by 0.1 hours to 41.3 hours, average hourly earnings increased by $0.06 to $18.57 and weekly earnings were increased by $4.33 to $766.94. Compared with June of last year, the unadjusted workweek was lower by -1.2 hours, average hourly earnings increased by $0.74 and weekly earnings were higher by $9.16.
From the Record:
NJ unemployment rate at highest level in 32 years
New Jersey’s unemployment rate rose to 9.2 percent in June, the highest level in 32 years, as the state lost 2,100 jobs, state figures show.
Unemployment, which increased from 8.8 percent, remained below the national rate of 9.5 percent, according to the monthly jobs report of the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development.
The June job loss is well below the 11,500 average monthly loss this year and the year’s highest decline of 18,700 in April. State Labor Commission David J. Socolow said the loss is the smallest since the recession began in December 2007.
Patrick O’Keefe, director of economic research at Roseland accounting firm J. H. Cohn, called the relatively small job loss “encouraging” but said the overall jobs picture is still “troubling.”
He noted that the state’s unemployment level has now doubled, from 4.6 percent, since the start of the recession.
Do we have an unemployment ETF out yet? That chart looks bullish.
From Bloomberg:
Manufacturing in New York Area Shrank at Slower Pace
Manufacturing in the New York region shrank this month at the slowest pace in more than a year, bolstered by the largest gain in orders since the recession began.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s July general economic index climbed to minus 0.6, the highest level since April 2008, from minus 9.4 the prior month, the bank said today. Readings below zero for the Empire State index signal manufacturing activity is contracting.
Today’s report, one of the first regional factory measures of the month, indicates that a tumble in inventories has set the stage for an end to the manufacturing rout. Even so, analysts see little momentum for a production surge as companies such as General Motors Corp. and Chrysler Group LLC struggle with the impact of rising unemployment and falling household wealth.
“This is signaling an end to the manufacturing-sector recession in this one region,” said Zach Pandl, an economist at Nomura Securities International Inc. in New York. “You’re seeing evidence that manufacturing is turning” across the country.
Economists projected the Empire State index would improve to minus 5, according to the median of 53 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. Forecasts ranged from 2 to minus 10.
Duh!
“It should not take a genius to conclude job training cannot possibly work. There are so many qualified, experienced, out of work individuals that few if anyone would hire a GM welder retrained in JAVA programming for a programming position. Moreover, no one would hire a banker as a welder. Nonetheless, president Obama and colleges are both touting such retraining as a way to get a job.
Bear in mind, I am all in favor of education, but the idea that 40-50 year old assembly line workers, home builders, mortgage brokers, etc etc can be retrained and compete against those with 20 years experience and still out of a job is absurd.
President Obama is bright enough to understand this. Yet, instead of telling the truth, Obama is willing to waste billions of taxpayer dollars spreading false hope.”
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2009/07/will-obamas-job-retraining-programs.html
#122 HE –
I figured Rithholtz would enjoy that post. Sounds like he already had a lot of background info. If Barry is right about the “pound of flesh” rather than a settlement, CalPERS has the money/lawyers to see it through. We shall see….
PGC #8 Grim, No big dumps by intrawest.
As the numbers tell use sales are up, but looking at what I know of that sold, deep discounts. looked at a place 2 years ago 379 sold last week 260. Another closed yesterday (a friend of mine). Started out over 3 sold for 235 & he was one lucky SOB. By the way no money down they are in the red the day they move in ! REOs that sell will set the comp for the area forcing prices lower & there are more to come. I know of a few coming down the pike. This will play out for years as today’s bag-holder in trouble will milk it for a year then bank gets it so 12 to 18 monthes to market. As far as those buying in my area, most are getting a bad deal even on some REO’s, more pain to come.
Cartoon of the Day:
http://www.time.com/time/cartoonsoftheweek/0,29489,1905653_1898973,00.html
Can’t believe that they let one get by that criticized the Messiah. Editor’s must have been asleep on that one.
Clot – #108
“A much neater trick will be figuring out how to sustain a population of 300mm+ on an economy that creates nothing other than debt and paperwork.”
ROFL – May I have your permission to reuse this dandy sentence?
BTW, the kids’ names are Graydon and Ellery.
mike (5)-
Whatever is happening up there in Hooterville (Sussex), I just tell my clients we’ll be seeing here in 9-12 months.
I figure by this time next year, the state of NJ will be in a full-out deflationary depression.
mike (5)-
Got any good recipes for roadkill possum?
http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-gary-shilling-still-filled-with-unrelenting-gloom-2009-7
I guess Gary Shilling was a tad gloomy today…
Cindy (7)-
Sure. Only thing is, the next time you’ll probably want to use it, it won’t be nearly so funny.
“Got any good recipes for roadkill possum?”
Just try #14 from Chinese Garden take out.
its listed as the sesame chicken.
Delish…
Listen, last time anything in the markets made sense to me was back in 1997..but then some 23 year old Chicago Business grad explained how “efficient” the markets were as we barrelled into 2000….actually, the last time anything really made sense to me was in 1986…
“A much neater trick will be figuring out how to sustain a population of 300mm+ on an economy that creates nothing other than debt and paperwork.”
Clot,
You forgot press conferences.
Cindy (11)-
Shilling is right. We’re just back onto the “pump” phase of the pump/dump cycle. The lurching market shifts between debt/equity are also occurring with more frequency and are so obvious that they reek of PPT-like market rigging.
When the mortgage apps fall off a cliff, stocks conveniently tank. When it’s time to give Fred & Ethel some 401k relief, GS announces that they trade on tips given them by Jesus (he was a Jew, remember?).
It is all flimflammery & smoke/mirrors bullshit, designed to conceal the fact that the economy is rapidly dying, we’re racking up an unpayable debt…and nobody has any idea of how to address any of this, short of flailing even harder as we sink deeper into the quicksand.
To date, we have had NO capitulation event in the stock market; yet, we are clearly at the beginning of a major deflationary depression.
How long will that remain the state of things? Methinks not much longer at all.
How much of this ramming through healthcare by taxing the rich is being formulated to try and keep the sheeple from showing up with pitchforks in DC when they see there’s no recovery coming.
2,100 jobs lost in June and unemployment jumped 0.4 points up to 9.2%.
Yet the press release is spinning this as positive?
They underestimated May job losses by a whopping 1,800, they can be just as wrong this month. We’ve lost at least 10,000 jobs in the last three months.
Looking at the graph of the unemployment rate, I don’t see anything slowing down at all.
155,000 jobs have gone poof!.
Green shoots indeed.
BC (15)-
I’ll lump that with the Housewives of NJ shows.
Nothing like watching a bunch of botoxed cougars and 40-something coke whores piss away their lives in real time…
Grim,
You didn’t get the memo? It’s all sun-shiny headlines these days.
HE (17)-
Anyone who thinks that healthcare in the US will change one iota is a fool.
The insurance companies will kill this thing deader that dead once it’s time to deal the river card. They’ve got everybody in DC locked up tight.
All the crap going on now amounts to nothing more than a giant red herring. That way, all the reps and senators can say they “tried” when this whole thing goes down in flames. Again.
If the insurance companies get it really right, the failure of healthcare reform will also be a kill shot to O’s chances for a second term.
You didn’t get the memo? It’s all sun-shiny headlines these days.
Happy days! At this rate we’ll be over 10% unemployment before the Summer is over.
I was actually thinking for going for job retraining. Either that or launching my own business. I am beginning to think I may never earn a decent income again if I don’t try something different.
How long until NJ starts issuing IOUs?
safe (23)-
Might I interest you in a career in distressed real estate?
#25 clot
Actually that would be interesting to me.
Did the board ever agree on the definition of “decent income” on a county per county basis?
Nobody reads news articles, only the headlines.
The attention span of the avg american is no longer than john’s nanosecond.
Anything that needs to be explained slowly and intelligently does not go over very well.
Because if you are not providing fear induced entertainment based on an exciting one-time event, most will switch the channel in a heartbeat.
Once you start talking gdp, unemployment and anything else that is real, the american mind gets bored and becomes overwhelmed with an unexplained desire to spank off to porn.
Nobody reads news articles, only the headlines.
The attention span of the avg american is no longer than john’s nanosecond.
Anything that needs to be explained slowly and intelligently does not go over very well.
Because if you are not providing fear induced entertainment based on an exciting one-time event, most will switch the channel in a heartbeat.
Once you start talking gdp, unemployment and anything else that is real, the american mind gets bored and becomes overwhelmed with an unexplained desire to spank off to p*rn.
#128- From prior post mikeinwaiting: Did you say no money down deals are still getting done??
“grim says:
July 15, 2009 at 1:04 pm
You didn’t get the memo? It’s all sun-shiny headlines these days.
Happy days! At this rate we’ll be over 10% unemployment before the Summer is over.”
And the headline will be “More Americans Enjoy An Extended Labor Day Weekend”
#86 Beach Bum- Last thread. Last comment on the thread for you.
3b (29)-
I can assure you plenty of no-money-down stuff still happens every day.
Honestly, when you look at any FHA deal, those are all no-money-down. Hell, by the time the ink is dry on the HUD-1, the borrower is underwater.
(32)-
BTW, that’s how I’m so sure that cleaning up the mess that is housing will take at least 40 years. We’re still gunning houses down the throats of future deadbeats.
3b Yes, believe it or not. My friend went to closing & I had asked him to check out DP just for kicks. Meet him afterwards for a beer (he was buying! left house by mom)he checked the amount for me. So it would seem, go figure.
“Kelly’s is also a good family place for Reubens and bar fare.”
NJC,
From the last thread.
Not to mention the best Iced Teas, alcohol, on the Jersey Shore.
The 2007-09 vintage deadbeats have a unique characteristic:
They generally don’t make it to three payments before they default.
I will now mix myself a dram of Knob Creek, Romilar and hemlock.
#32 clot; With all that has happened, I cannot believe that nonsense is still going on. Just how stupid are we, or they or whoever is still encouraging this madness.
#34 mikeinwaiting: Incredible!!!
Clot 9 Agreed. By then I may need your grenade launcher up here. Sorry no good road kill recipes.
Nom [120 from previous thread]
>>But I also get sick of these feckada german cars
Nothing livens up a discussion like the use of Yiddish. I think that is what you were going for up there? (And if so, bonus points for using what is essentially German language when discussing cars of the same origin).
The word I think you are looking for is farkakt or farkakte or if you were chased out of the shtetl by the Cossacks, verkakt or verkakte depending on whether you are being predictive or attributive.
I know nothing about Real Estate (especially Westfield RE, clearly) but I am pretty sure about this particular bit of Yiddish dirty-wordness.
Clot,
It is not “false hope.” It is hopium. Get in line, already.
#3 1. Even so, analysts see little momentum for a production surge as companies such as General Motors Corp. and Chrysler Group LLC struggle with the impact of rising unemployment and falling household wealth.
2.“This is signaling an end to the manufacturing-sector recession in this one region,” said Zach Pandl, an economist at Nomura Securities International Inc. in New York. “You’re seeing evidence that manufacturing is turning” across the country.
Read section 1, than read section 2, makes no sense to me.
Clot,
Possum is, by a long way, the worst-tasting thing I have ever eaten. It may well be that roadkill would taste better. Possum ala Goodyear.
clot, 38
dont do it.
the economy is not as bad as you think
now get a hold of yourself
and put down that butter knife
NJC,
I assume you are talking about a little establishment on Rt 35 across from Avon?
NJC,
I assume you are talking about a little establishment on Rt 35 across from Avon?
Here is a good one.
‘Recession is over,’ BofA Merrill Lynch tells investors
“Investors sitting with loads of cash on the sidelines should be moving that money into stocks”
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2009/07/clients-of-bank-of-america-merrill-lynch-yes-that-mouthful-is-the-brokerages-official-name-now-shouldnt-have-any-doubt-w.html
3b You want more insanity, the USDA will give me a 100% loan 4.76% 30 or 40 yr fixed & if it goes over 26 to 29% of income they pay dif. That is PITI by the way.
Clot
A dram- why not a bucketful?
Are we really sure the recession started in December 2007?
NJ Nonfarm Employment
Annual 2000 – 3,994,500
June 2009 – 3,931,200 (annualized)
NJ Nonfarm Employment (Private sector)
Annual 2000 – 3,405,700
June 2009 – 3,280,500 (annualized)
Safe 23 Same here.
Fighting the wrong fire. Hedgies will set up shop elsewhere, in a second. How about more details regarding IB’s off balance sheet exposure?
“WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – The Obama administration on Wednesday plans to send a proposal to Capitol Hill that would require hedge fund managers and private equity managers with more than $30 million in assets under management register with the Securities and Exchange Commission and open up their books to periodic examinations, according to remarks by Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions Michael Barr on regulatory reform. The White House proposal, which is backed by the Treasury Department, will also require hedge fund managers to disclose to regulators and investors more information about the characteristics of their hedge funds. Fund managers will need to provide more details about asset size, borrowings and any off-balance sheet exposure.”
What is with the market today up like 200. I have not been following closely,
more green sh*ts?
BC 53 these guys could f up a wet dream.
Seneca:
Ich darf gehn pishen!
SRS getting taken to the woodshed. Patience patience, note to self.
#49 mikeinwaiting: Why???
repost….
chicagofinance says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
July 15, 2009 at 11:40 am
d2b says:
July 15, 2009 at 8:34 am
So I need life insurance advice. I want to get out of a bad variable life policy into a 20 year term.
A call to my accountant led to a transfer to one of his peers who thinks that I may need a whole life policy instead. He thinks that when I’m 59 and the term policy expires I will probably want insurance but it will be impossible to get.
He says that the cost of insurance on a term and a whole life policy are the same but the investment portion of the whole life is better because it’s based on the insurance company and not individual mutual funds.
At 38 I have no problem getting a term policy. What’s it going to be like at 58?
I’m middle class with no special tax requirements. Assuming that I will never be uber-rich is there an upside to whole life that I don’t see?
d2b: You’ve got plenty of good info here, and you also had Noah who responded and provided some balance. I don’t want to overload the topic, but I will chime in a bit.
I am in Bost’s camp….find your risk exposure and hedge it. So the real question is not what kind of policy to buy, but rather….what is my risk and what do I want to hedge?
There are plenty of really complicated ways to do a great job of figuring out the answer to the question, but they essentially fall into two camps:
(1) function of income potential;
(2) function of expense profile
The easiest is (1)…look at what you make; your spouse if they work; and any other income streams that would be eliminated should death occur. Recognize that if you make $100,000 a year, each year that you survive and make the $100,000, your risk is lowered. So eventually, as people have stated, the risk is eliminated. Now mitigating this factor is that you get raises through the time period and also inflation occurs, but simply maintaining the face amount of the insurance probably does the trick just fine. You can always buy more insurance and eventually flip over to 10-year level term at some point.
Please make sure to review your employer’s insurance coverages first. However, it has been my experience that while the rates tends to be attractive at your age and it is nice that there are no question asked (no underwriting – just sign up and pay), suddenly you start hitting 43, 44, 45 years of age, and you regret not locking in something much earlier. Group Term Life through employers for the most part are really one-year renewable policies that ramp up premiums year to year.
(2) Expenses take into account issues such as lifestyle, mortgages, school tuition for kids, funding retirement for surviving spouse etc.
I have forced myself to stop being reserved about giving a sales pitch. I offer this stuff, so if you want a quote to compare to the Internet pricing, let me know. I think sastry was out there last month and had a bad experience with a little bait and switch from a junky company. It is not my primary business, so I only know that I get multiple quotes and use the best version of low premium and least likely to bait and switch…….check out this stuff that I may have previously posted but do not remember….
Are You Sure Your Client Will Qualify for the Rate Class Quoted?
Review this list with the client before proposing any rate class—you will set better price expectations and close more cases.
1. When quoting Super Preferred or Preferred rate classes, be sure to inform the client less than 25% of the population qualify for Super Preferred and less than 50% qualify for Preferred rates.
2. Always quote a “standard” rate classification to provide a price range to your customer.
3. Inform the client you are their advocate in obtaining the best price and underwriting class. Let the client know you use a firm that represents over 50 different Insurance markets.
4. Common items that disqualify applicants from obtaining Super Preferred or Preferred rate class:
-Family History (incidence of heart disease, cancer in parent or siblings prior to age 60)
-Driving Record (more than 2 moving violations within the last 3 years)
-Build (example: 5′11″ 200 Ibs—max limit for Super Preferred / 5′11″ 215 Ibs max limit for Preferred / 5′11″ 260 Ibs for Standard.-there is a huge difference!)
-Prescription Medications for (Biood Pressure, Cholesterol, Anxiety, Diabetes, Asthma, etc) will almost always exclude the client from qualifying for Super Preferred or Preferred rate classes
-Cholesterol levels above 220 and/or cholesterol HDL ratios above 5.5
-Blood Pressure readings above 135/85 to 140/90
-Hazardous Activities such as Scuba diving, piloting and/or racing
-Tobacco Use (no pipe, cigar, chewing tobacco or nicotine gum—also important to know insured must be free of nicotine use for up to 5 years in order to qualify for best class}
When Super Preferred or Preferred rates are requested, Standard rates are automatically illustrated.
For faster policy issue, complete the non-medical portion of the application on all submissions.
Mikeinwaiting,
Intel beat their lowered earnings forecast and NY MFG index declined at a lower rate than the month before so now it’s RALLY TIME!!!!
Stu [56]
My grandmother’s response whenever I complained about anything when I was a kid: Gai shlog dein kup en vant
I didn’t understand most of what she said when she broke into Yiddish but I always knew what she meant.
DOH!
New York Post
US MAN CHARGED 23 QUADRILLION DOLLARS FOR PACK OF SMOKES
ASSOCIATED PRESS
July 15, 2009 —
MANCHESTER, New Hampshire — A New Hampshire man says he swiped his debit card at a gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes and was charged over 23 quadrillion dollars.
Josh Muszynski checked his account online a few hours after the purchase and saw the 17-digit number — a stunning $23,148,855,308,184,500 (twenty-three quadrillion, one hundred forty-eight trillion, eight hundred fifty-five billion, three hundred eight million, one hundred eighty-four thousand, five hundred dollars).
Muszynski told WMUR-TV that he spent two hours on the phone with Bank of America trying to sort out the string of numbers — and the $15 overdraft fee.
The bank corrected the error the next day.
Bank of America said the card issuer, Visa, could answer questions. Visa, in turn, referred questions to the bank.
Seneca,
My mom still spouts a few phrases on occasion. She also uses the common words such as tuchus, schmotza, schlep, etc.
Always liked:
schtup
schmata
JJ Putz
[41] seneca
oy gevalt. Enough with this chazzerai. You’re making me meshuggah.
Did this idiot really say this?
Sen. Ricky Ricardo?
Sen. Tom Coburn evoked a 1950s TV show in a quip responding to Sonia Sotomayor’s scenario about what he might do if she — hypothetically, of course — attacked him.
“You’ll have a lot of ‘splainin’ to do,” Coburn said, to laughter from the crowd and Sotomayor. What he said — and how he said it — was a riff on a Hispanic television character, Ricky Ricardo, whose accent is now widely considered a broad parody.
[62] chifi.
“A New Hampshire man says he swiped his debit card at a gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes and was charged over 23 quadrillion dollars.”
Meanwhile, in the West Wing, Rahm is on the phone with POTUS, telling him “Mr. President, I have a heck of an idea here. . . “
[66] chifi
splaining is a riff on Ricky??? That’s news to me, I always thought it was Brooklyn-speak (or southern speak) for “explaining.”
FOMC minutes came out. Very rosy. All is well. Second half of year we grow like gangbusters.
3b 58 Why ,because I am out of work, laid off , out of benefits. With just my wife working & 3 kids in Sussex county I qualify. Go to there site go to direct loans & check out. Now it would seem insane to give me a loan under these circumstances but that is our gov for you.
[69] HE
“Remain calm. All is well”
Nom 71 Picture in head, band playing on the Titanic.
HeHe 60 Thanks for info.
This douche has been kicked to the curb, but you can safely say the damage is done…..
WSJ
FUND TRACK
JULY 15, 2009
Black to Exit Janus After Stormy Tenure
By ELEANOR LAISE
Gary Black resigned as chief executive of Janus Capital Group Inc., which had a volatile fund performance under his watch.
At the helm of the Denver firm, Mr. Black oversaw a turnaround of fund performance and investment research but also sparked controversy. A number of top executives and fund managers have lately left the firm.
“The firm is in a much stronger place than when I joined, and the time is right for a change,” Mr. Black said in a statement.
The departure of Mr. Black “was a mutual decision between Gary and the board,” says Janus spokeswoman Shelley Peterson. Mr. Black had accomplished the long-term goals that were set for him when he took the post, Ms. Peterson says, such as improving distribution and drawing in more investor assets.
Mr. Black, chief executive since 2006, also beefed up stock research and elevated the role of research analysts.
But some of Janus’s biggest, highest-profile funds were hit particularly hard in last year’s market downturn. The Janus Contrarian fund, for example, declined 48% last year, while the Janus Overseas fund fell 53%. “A lot of their funds took it on the chin last year,” says Andrew Gogerty, analyst at investment-research firm Morningstar Inc., though the firm’s value-oriented and fixed-income funds performed relatively well.
Mr. Black’s tenure also saw some staff upheaval, thanks in part to his attempts to rein in fund-manager compensation and tie it more closely to performance. “He made dramatic changes to fund-manager compensation and I think that contributed to a lot of the manager departures,” Mr. Gogerty says. Top executive posts, including general counsel and chief financial officer, also turned over under Mr. Black’s watch.
Mr. Black first joined Janus in 2004, after the firm had been through a period of disastrous fund performance thanks largely to big bets on tech and telecom stocks in the dot-com bubble. He previously served as chief investment officer at Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s global equities business and as an analyst at Sanford Bernstein.
Tim Armour, a Janus director, was named interim chief executive.
Janus on Tuesday announced second-quarter net income of $15.8 million, down 76% from a year earlier. The company also announced a capital raise and tender offer, saying it intends to offer $150 million in common shares and $150 million in convertible senior notes and is offering to repurchase about $400 million of the principal amount of outstanding debt.
As of June 30, Janus’s total assets under management were $132.6 billion, down more than 30% from a year earlier.
““The firm is in a much stronger place than when I joined, and the time is right for a change,” Mr. Black said in a statement.”
Well with that kind of statement I think there’s a position for him in the administration.
Clot…we may make a last ditch effort on a house before moving to the lower priced rental in Sept. We asked the realtor to get a verbal..no go. Write it up…we did with a pre-qual, $1,000 check and statement we were putting over 20%down. That was Monday after noon…we asked it be returned Weds by noon. still no answer. Our realtor stated “the owner doesn’t have e-mail” what a joke. What do you think of that?
clot: if you cook, I’ll bring the ingredients…..
Booya
WSJ
LIFE & STYLE
JULY 15, 2009
Prime Time for Steak Lovers
By KATY MCLAUGHLIN
For years, Brian Wong, a 25-year-old technology consultant in San Jose, Calif., longed to buy USDA prime beef. He had tried it at an expensive steakhouse, but whenever he looked in supermarkets or at Costco for the beef with the Department of Agriculture’s highest grading, he was told they didn’t carry it.
So when Mr. Wong saw a cut labeled USDA prime at Costco—selling for $9.99 a pound—he was so startled that he knocked on the window of the butcher department. “I asked them, ‘Is this a joke? Is it really prime?’ ” Mr. Wong says. The rib eyes he bought were the real thing: They were “more tender, more juicy” and more “delicious” than any other steaks he has cooked, Mr. Wong says.
Mr. Wong experienced a phenomenon steak lovers are observing across the country: High-end beef that was once available mostly at steak houses and fine-dining restaurants is increasingly showing up in retail butcher cases. Two years ago, the only way most home cooks could get their hands on beef varieties such as USDA prime was to buy them in a gourmet store or by mail order, which could be as expensive as a steak-house dinner. But now, not only is steak-house-quality beef easier to find; in many cases, it is selling for little more than standard supermarket meat.
The cause: a severe contraction in steak-house dining. Many top steak houses specialize in serving beef that’s ranked USDA prime, a grading given to between 1% and 3% of the country’s beef that designates the meat with the most marbling—the tendrils of fat running through meat that enhance its flavor and texture. As steak houses expanded over the past decade, they and other high-end restaurants bought nearly all the prime beef available. Amid growing competition in the past few years, many restaurants branched out into serving other specialty steaks, including Wagyu, from the breed of cattle used for Japan’s highly marbled Kobe beef, grass-fed beef, which has a reputation for being healthier, and brand names such as Niman Ranch.
But this year, high-end steak houses, which depend largely on expense-account dining, have suffered single- and double-digit declines in same-store sales, according to restaurant consultant Technomic. So restaurants are buying a lot less fancy beef, leaving more of it for home cooks.
Two weekends ago, Ray Juskiewicz was at Seattle’s Metropolitan Market when a special caught his eye: Snake River Farm’s Wagyu beef, on sale for $14.99 a pound. That struck Mr. Juskiewicz, a 47-year-old computer hardware salesman and avid weekend cook, as quite a deal: The only other time he had bought Wagyu beef, he had paid more than $40 a pound. He bought the steaks, seasoned them with coarse salt and black pepper, and grilled them over high heat.
“They were amazing. Very juicy, with a very buttery flavor to them, incredibly tender. You didn’t really need a steak knife,” says Mr. Juskiewicz. Though he usually finishes a steak with a pat of compound butter, which has herbs or other ingredients mixed in, he didn’t garnish the Wagyu, preferring to let its flavor stand alone, he says.
Other people cooking extremely marbled beef would do well to follow Mr. Juskiewicz’s approach, says Steven Raichlen, host of public television’s Primal Grill and author of “The Barbecue Bible.” Such meat needs little adornment: just a sprinkling of coarse salt and freshly ground, coarse black pepper and quick cooking on a hot grill.
By contrast, grass-fed meat, which comes from cattle that haven’t been fattened on grain towards the end of their lives, rarely earns the prime grade because it tends to be less marbled. But it can have a more complex flavor, with herbal notes that reflect the grass diet, and it is also healthier than corn-fed beef, with more omega-3 fatty acids and less saturated fat. This meat benefits from a sprinkling of melted butter or olive oil. For the ultimate garnish, Mr. Raichlen recommends making a cup of aluminum foil, filling it with a piece of beef fat, and placing it over a cooler part of the grill until it melts. Pour a little liquid fat over a cooked steak for a beefy enhancement, he recommends.
Given a choice between cuts of USDA prime beef, Mr. Raichlen says he would choose a New York strip or a T-bone in order to take advantage of the firm meat, which tastes lush and juicy when well-marbled. But take a page from top steak houses and don’t bother buying prime tenderloin, or filet mignon. This cut is only slightly marbled, so buying prime barely changes the eating experience.
Rib eyes, which are very rich, can be too fatty when they come from Wagyu beef, but they are the perfect choice for grass-fed beef, Mr. Raichlen says. The best way to showcase the concentrated, beefy quality created by dry-aging is to choose a T-bone or porterhouse. These cuts include a piece of filet, which becomes more flavorful through the dry-aging process.
Other factors have contributed to the wealth of fancy beef at stores today. For one thing, specialty ranches expanded their herd sizes during the steak-house boom. Three years ago, Snake River Farms in Boise, Idaho, decided to enlarge its herd of 7,000 cattle. Back then, more than 90% of Snake River’s Wagyu beef was sold to restaurants. Today, the herd is 10,000 strong, and retail stores account for a third of sales.
Niman Ranch beef was one of the first ingredients to be identified by the name of the rancher or farmer on top restaurant menus in the 1990s. Its cachet derived from the beef’s taste and the company’s humane ranching methods, as well as the product’s rarity at the time. Two years ago, the company expanded its herd size fourfold, says executive vice president Jeff Tripician. Now the beef is in “thousands of retail stores” around the country, Mr. Tripician says.
Whole Foods Market Inc. has been able to lower the price of its beef because home cooks looking to save money have started buying more ground beef, roasts and other cuts from various parts of the cow, says Theo Weening, head of meat purchasing for Whole Foods. That enables the company to buy more whole animals, allowing it to sell all the parts for a lower price, he says. In the Rocky Mountain region, Whole Foods recently had a sale on grass-fed ground beef for $3.99 a pound, Mr. Weening says. He also says the store has sold New York strip steak for $8.99 and $9.99 a pound in recent months, about $5 per pound cheaper than normal for the store’s standard beef.
Indeed, across the spectrum of beef varieties and grades, prices for “steak-house cuts” such as tenderloin, porterhouse and rib eyes are down by 3% to 12%, depending on the cut, from last year, according to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. Wal-Mart, under the Genuine Steakhouse label it rolled out to all stores last April, is selling USDA choice-grade meat. Prior to Genuine Steakhouse, Wal-Mart sold mostly select-grade meat, a less marbled variety.
Food aficionados around the country have been buzzing online about steak-house beef at retail. Frank Deis, a 64-year-old biochemistry professor in Highland Park, N.J., found it “terribly frustrating” to hear from his friends in wine-appreciation discussion groups that they were finding USDA prime beef at Costco when he couldn’t. He dropped notes in the Costco suggestion box asking for the meat and complained to the store’s butchers. Then, one day in December, Mr. Deis found prime beef—at $8.99 a pound.
“At that price, why should I buy anything else?” says Mr. Deis, who puts his biochemistry background to use by aging whole loins of beef. He cuts it into steaks, grills it to rare, and serves it with a selection from his 1,000-bottle wine cellar.
“Man, oh man, it couldn’t be any tenderer” he says. “You chew it with your tongue.”
#52 mikeinwaiting
It’s frustrating isn’t it.
Not sure if this link will work but a good read – comparing 01 and 09 recession:
http://tinyurl.com/l3q25g
Snip
“What we are seeing unfold currently is eerily similar to the events that transpired in late 2001 and into 2002, though there are two critical differences: i) deflation
pressures are far more acute now even with the dramatic government efforts to
stem the tide, and ii) this wasn’t just a cycle solely dominated by asset deflation,
but a cycle that was also defined by the end of a secular credit expansion.”
stocks surging over 3%
I’ve made this kind of comment in the past. The article in itself is fine, but what is more telling is that fact that such an article is even published. To the extent that such topics are seen with greater frequency across multiple formats, then a societal trend can be observed….we wait for more examples…..
WSJ
WORK & FAMILY
JULY 15, 2009, 2:55 P.M. ET
Weighing Price and Value When Picking a College
By SUE SHELLENBARGER
Facing shrunken savings and borrowing options, parents and students are making some tough trade-offs in choosing and paying for college, suggesting some shifting attitudes toward higher education may endure beyond the recession.
Old dreams of adult children earning degrees from elite, door-opening colleges or “legacy” schools attended by relatives are falling away in some families, in favor of a new pragmatism. Other parents and students are doing a tougher cost-benefit analysis of the true value of a pricey undergraduate degree. As parents wrestle privately with such emotional issues, many say they wish they’d begun years earlier to assess their values and priorities, long before their children’s college-decision deadline was upon them.
Throughout her childhood, Sarah Goldstein imagined attending New York University, says her mother, Rose Perrizo of Sharon, Mass. Sarah’s grandmother is an NYU alum; Sarah lived near campus with her parents when she was small. “In her mind, Sarah was always headed there,” Ms. Perrizo says.
But as Sarah’s college choice loomed last year, Ms. Perrizo, a real-estate appraiser, and her husband, Richard Goldstein, an attorney, “were agonizing over whether to pay $52,000 for one year at NYU, or $18,000” at their state university, Ms. Perrizo says. Both regard a bachelor’s degree as “only the beginning” of higher education for students like their daughter, who is interested in international studies; they hope to help with her graduate-school costs.
Finally, they sat down with Sarah and gave her a choice: They’d pay her way at the University of Massachusetts, or half her costs at NYU and she could borrow the rest. Sarah chose the debt-free route, but she was upset. The choice “was really hard,” she says; her peers, disdainful and heedless of costs, asked, “why would you want to go to a state school?” But after a successful year in the honors program at the University of Massachusetts, she is happy with her choice. Looking back, Sarah says, “it wouldn’t have made sense to pay $50,000.”
Ms. Perrizo says Sarah has learned an important lesson. “It’s like shopping at Loehmann’s vs. Bloomingdale’s. I’m teaching my daughter to be a good shopper and to pick value.” Ms. Perrizo’s only wish is that she had started talking about college costs earlier.
Such thinking challenges what Joseph Losco, an expert on the history of education, calls “one of the strange things” about the economics of higher education: “Universities and colleges don’t compete on price.” In fact, some college administrators fear lowering their sticker price will hurt their image, says Dr. Losco, chairman of the political science department at Ball State University, Muncie, Ind. Consumers have been complicit, largely because of what Ms. Perrizo calls “the baby-boomer notion that parents should give it all up for the kids.” In a May 2008 survey of 720 parents of college students by Gallup and Sallie Mae, a student-loan company, 46% said they had never, at any point, ruled out any colleges for their kids based on costs.
But now, “families are much more price-conscious and value-conscious,” Dr. Losco says. A soon-to-be-released Sallie Mae-Gallup study of 1,600 college students and their parents, conducted in March and April, says parents are increasingly anxious about tuition—and students are more skeptical about the value of a degree, compared with the survey from a year earlier.
Chelsea Thomas’s family was proud when she enrolled at Amherst College, in Amherst, Mass., and had an academically rich freshman year. Having a child at Amherst confers “bragging rights,” says Suzanne Thomas, Chelsea’s aunt who shares the college costs with the student’s mother.
When Chelsea’s scholarship expired after her first year, the family faced coming up with $26,000 to keep her at Amherst. That would have meant digging deep into savings that had been set aside for retirement, says her mother, Shelley Thomas.
Whatever It Takes
Relatives and friends pressured them, saying Chelsea “should do whatever it takes to continue” at Amherst, says Suzanne. Instead, the family decided that Chelsea would be happier as a financially independent young adult living close to family. Chelsea returned to the family’s home in Boulder, Colo., last year and became a partner in the real-estate-investment business that her mother and aunt own jointly.
Now 20 years old, Chelsea co-owns two rental houses and is working on a bachelor’s degree at a nearby public university. Chelsea says she misses her Amherst friends and the stimulating campus environment. Still, she adds, a degree from a top school “is worth a lot, but it’s not worth that much.”
Such thinking bucks the cultural view that an elite college degree is “the gold standard for both parents and students … validating their worth in society,” Dr. Losco says. Now, more “parents are saying, ‘I don’t have the money to get you where you want to go,’ ” he says.
Even when the economy picks up, some of this new price-consciousness is likely to endure. The engines that have enabled college costs to soar—easy credit, home-equity loans and growth in savings—have stalled. Total college costs are already up 67% in the past decade at private colleges and 84% at public four-year universities, based on College Board data, and graduates’ wages haven’t kept pace.
Parents and students are borrowing less for college, the forthcoming Sallie Mae study shows. The percentage of students from middle-income households who are attending state schools is rising, and more lower-income students are enrolling at community colleges, the study shows. “We would expect to see an even greater shift” next year, a Sallie Mae spokeswoman says.
Even for savvy parents who anticipated the costs, the trade-offs for a top-tier education can be steep. Pam Mousseau recalls hearing when her oldest daughter was a baby that a college education would cost $50,000 a year by the time she finished high school. Her daughter is now 19 and a sophomore at a private university, and the cost at many schools has indeed risen to match that earlier projection.
Promises Made
Nevertheless, Pam and her husband, John, have promised their three daughters that they could attend “the best school they get into,” according to John, a portfolio manager. The girls work and will probably take out modest loans, but their parents will pay the lion’s share.
“We always figured we would find a way to do it,” Pam says. The Mousseaus have refrained from taking equity loans against their 91-year-old Maplewood, N.J., home, conserving their borrowing power for college. The kitchen has a 1940s-era Magic Chef stove and ancient cabinets with multiple paint layers. “Some parts of the ceiling have fallen down,” Pam says. But redecorating is on hold. They drive two old cars and haven’t bought a third, even with four drivers in the house. And they’re bypassing vacations they used to take, skiing or relaxing in beach-side rental homes.
“Sometimes I think, ‘I’m 53 years old. Can’t I have a decent kitchen?’ ” Pam says. “But it’s momentary.” She and John both graduated from private universities with their parents’ help, and they want to do the same for their kids. “I’m glad to make the sacrifices,” John says. But with seven years of helping with college tuition ahead, he adds, jokingly, “check back with me in a few years, and see if I feel the same.”
#70 Mikeinwaiting: Sorry to ehar about your emplyment situation, but a mtg under the USDA??
3b 81 Thanks, tough times. Yes the USDA,
check out the site loans for building homes & buying land you name it. Just have to be under income guide lines.
CIT Halted
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=au8vtZvFEH6w&refer=home
Where’s John? Out celebrating the inevitable screw the taxpayers bailout?
Stimulus II coming to theater near you. I thought the Messiah supporters were livid over the last administration’s out of control spending? Now, the current regime controls Fannie and Freddie, own the car companies and want an ex-social worker from Paterson to approve or deny a life or death medical procedure for your six year old daughter.
http://tinyurl.com/kvjygz
“Where’s John? Out celebrating the inevitable screw the taxpayers bailout?”
He’s busy hatching a plan to buy up California IOUs waiting for the government to make them as good as a treasury bond.
“US MAN CHARGED 23 QUADRILLION DOLLARS FOR PACK OF SMOKES”
CF, we need to bail this guy out. Imagine the catastrophic impact of the economy losing 23 quadrillion dollars that we thought we had yesterday.
Gary [85],
Mortgages, lenders, auto’s, insurance, IB’s, etc.. Our govt is competing with GS, who’s the #1 hedge fund in the world? No wonder they want to undress hedge funds. Who wouldn’t want to know the exposure of their contra-parties?
Who is left to bailout? Other than the states and the government itself?
87: That skewed CPI.
89: Who will be left to do the bailing out?
Fiddy, NJ Coast – thanks for the info – and NJC for the invite. I’ll send you an email – would be nice to stop by. I went to Mr C’s last year with my mom and her beau, beautiful place for a drink!
I can also see that I am going to eat well in 10 days!
I’ll especially look into the Ragin cajun to see if there’s music. I looked at the Count Basie Program and Cindy Lauper and Rosie O’Donnell will be there my last night in NJ (just realized I posted the date in European style – we’re leaving on Aug 9) but I’m not sure I’ll be up for that show.
Just a note on the recession – I’m renting a 3 bedroom nice house – 6 grand for 2 weeks. The landlords have a garage apartment that isn’t to be rented while I’m there. I offered to rent it for $300 for the middle weekend since my sister’s coming and that might be nice to have a little extra space. They said no, they’d only consider $600. I kind of thought it was like found money, but I guess they don’t want/need it – I don’t see a bottom soon.
Don’t leave home without it.
Kudos to SAS.
“American Express halts pension payments to UK staff”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jul/15/american-express-suspends-pension-payments
#80
And you wonder where you find people that say no matter how miserable I am, it’s for the children. Oh wait, that’s the Obama line for the rest of us……
The Stu-Gators are off to Vegas. Have a great evening, folks. We’ll report back on the RE market there in between hands of blackjack.
Just a little theory of mine about the increase in June sales volume…
Towards the middle of May interest rates started to spike. Could the increased sales be due to nervous fence sitters concern they may be missing out on ultra low interest rates? I think so.
Interest rates recently have come down to the 5.3% level from 5.9% reached in late June… though by the looks of the 10 year treasury today, they will be shooting back up to the high 5% range within the next few days.
market up!
recession over!
everybody in the pool!
From Bloomberg:
Hamptons Home Inventory Increases 12%, Prices Fall
The number of homes for sale in the Hamptons, the towns on the east-end of New York’s Long Island, rose 12 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier as the deepest recession in 50 years cut demand for vacation homes.
There were 7,288 homes for sale in the oceanside summer retreat for Wall Street financiers and celebrities, up from 6,490 a year earlier, New York-based property broker the Corcoran Group said. The median price for all the east end towns during the first six months of the year was $605,000, down 22 percent from 2008, the report said.
“People who work in the financial markets have had job insecurity and bonus insecurity,” said Rick Hoffman, Corcoran’s regional vice president. “There were more homes competing with each other and we see that in the drop in prices.”
“Who is left to bailout? Other than the states and the government itself?”
I’m sure someone will find a way to lose a few hundred billion in the next 6 months.
{98],
No worries. GS earnings are up.
shore [44]
Actually, seal tastes worse than possum but you only infrequently meet them on the roads around here.
gary [85]
…Now, the current regime … want an ex-social worker from Paterson to approve or deny a life or death medical procedure for your six year old daughter…
Now please educate us why is it worse than when the ex-used car salesman from Rte. 22 approves or denies a life or death medical procedure for your six year old daughter sitting in BCBS or Aetna office.
[80] chifi
A good article in that it shows that one can and does receive a first-rate education at UMass, which has consistently been recognized as one of the best values in higher ed.
I took courses at Amherst, Mt. Holyoke, and Harvard, and my grades there were consistently better than at UMass. And even though I graduated near the top of my law school class, and went to what is recognized as the top tax law program on the continent, a Tax Court judge once said of my UMass transcript “you didn’t exactly distinguish yourself there” to which I replied that it is an easy school to get into, and a hard one to say in, and you try it while carrying a full courseload and working nearly full time (and no, I did not get a clerkship offer from her, but now I out-earn her former clerks. Ha).
[102] cobbler
at least you can sue the ex-used car salesman’s employer. Try that with the government.
If either of my kids wants to learn auto repair vs going to college, I’m 100% behind it.
Unless the education bubble pops, and a 4-year degree actually reflects some sort of price/value relationship.
Right now, shelling out up to 200K to have my kids move home and work a McJob just ain’t in the cards.
Gunshots on Capitol Hill, someone just told me.
“Actually, seal tastes worse than possum”
Possum stretched the limits of mu culinary limits. Next time I am close to the Arctic Circle, I willl pass the seal in favor of reindeer or moose.
“If either of my kids wants to learn auto repair vs going to college, I’m 100% behind it.
Unless the education bubble pops, and a 4-year degree actually reflects some sort of price/value relationship.”
There are only a handful of things I would currently advise people to go to college for. If you have a full scholarship, then by all means, go and do whatever you want. I teach a lot of kids that have been accepted to Med School. I tell them to add up their student loans on their 4 years of undgrad along with the 4 years of future medical school on top of that. I then make them calculate the interest payments on it. The conversation goes like this.
Me: “Why do you want to be a doctor?”
Student: “I want to make lots of money”
Me: “Quick, do this calculation”
Student then does the calculation.
Me: “You are on the fast track to losing a lot of money”
All my friends who went through Med School and are now in Residency have already admitted defeat. Back when I was debating on the Med School option, I constructed a lot of charts and concluded that unless I wanted to live with my parents until I was 38, being a doctor wasn’t a good idea. This was back in 2002. With the way tuition has skyrocketed since then, I’d bump that age up to 45. This assumed pretty low interest rates.
Fed Gov’t to CIT: Drop Dead
Driver shot dead near U.S. Capitol
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31928857/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/
IIII’mmmmmm Baaaaacccckkk
Re: Healthcare from yesterday.
Watching NBC right now. No chance for a misquote as I’ve re-run the DVR three times to get it correct and direct from the Chosen One’s mouth.
The question was put to him regarding mandating individual healthcare coverage for everyone. He states he changed his mind to now support making healthcare insurance mandatory for every man, woman, and child in America because
“In fact a lot of the uninsured are relatively young people who can be insured fairly cheaply that that [sic] actually will drive down the cost for everybody”
Aside from supporting my assertions from yesterday that many of the uninsured are opting out as a rational economic decision, this guy is worst than I thought. Forget the 5% in extra tax for higher earners to pay for his new social behemoth. Look at the economics of this stealth tax.
It may be only $300/month for some young, unmarried guy out of school to get insurance. Considering most of these people earn less than $40k, that’s 10% of his salary he’s now going to be required to pay.
So much for ‘choice’.
Get prepared for Graydon and Ellery to spend another year in your basement upon graduating.
Got this from my broker earlier today. Flame away.
The Fixed Jumbo mortgage product has just arrived. Due to the expansion in the Tarp program (monies received from the Federal Government) we are now able to offer a 30 Year, Fixed Jumbo Mortgage at below market rates. This product is available for all loan amounts up to 3MM, however, rates may vary depending on the loan size, credit score and the appraised value of the home. Rates are currently as low as 5.375%, but may fluctuate prior to locking in.
We don’t know how long this product will be available, so if you are interested, please contact me asap.
Thanks
#109 – Saw that too skep. Very surprised, I was expecting something to be done.
nom [104]
By the time the lawsuit is resolved, the poor child will be long gone…
I just think that an ex-social worker has more empathy than an ex-used car salesman – due to the difference in their prior vocations. And btw on QALY scale (that is what UK’s NICE is using) care of the 6-yr old has a very high priority. A 90 yo may not get a bypass though – unless willing to blow her kids’ inheritance.
“Government studies are kind of like weather forecasters before…balloons, even, and certainly before radar.We’ve talked about the inability to forecast the debt – right? – and the fact that we have to keep paying more
taxes. Then when Medicare came along in 1965, they said it would cost us $9 billion in 1990. It cost us $109 billion. Then, when Medicaid came along, they said it would cost $1 billion in 1990. It cost $76 billion in 1990.”
-Ross Perot 1994
I can’t believe the American public actually believes the government will meet it’s targets. Their previous endeavors in health care resulted in missing the target by a margin of error of 1000%!
clot,
for you
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/07/gun-accessories/3/
[114],
The answer is that the gov’t doesn’t have an incentive to deny coverage to the child, while it’s in the private insurance company’s best interest to deny coverage. Their CEO needs to get paid, after all.
“The answer is that the gov’t doesn’t have an incentive to deny coverage to the child, while it’s in the private insurance company’s best interest to deny coverage. Their CEO needs to get paid, after all.”
Once again, we all seem to agree the private sector in pursuit of profit is very efficient at following incentives no matter how skewed they may be.
Why not simply change the incentives in the current system rather than start a $1T public agency monstrosity. Something as simple as a a public/private treatment appeal board that can overrule denial of treatment could be a start. If overruled the insurer is assessed a fine 5x the amount of treatment. That will focus all that efficiency where we want it.
Also, speak with some of the providers. Medicare/Medicaid is no reimbursement picnic so be careful which ‘incentives’ you wish for…
“Something as simple as a a public/private treatment appeal board that can overrule denial of treatment could be a start. If overruled the insurer is assessed a fine 5x the amount of treatment.”
– This sounds like an incentive for hiring more lobbyists. How difficult would be to “influence” this board in the right direction?
Why don’t you get the simple idea that making profits is not compatible with treating all sick people? The more sick poor people you insure, the more claims you have, the less profits you make. Wall St. wouldn’t approve of that now, would they? There is no “shareholder value” in that. I will post another excerpt for you from the interview yesterday.
Aetna was in a pickle. And they saw their stock price starting to plummet. So they brought– among the things they did was bring Ron Williams in. And Williams, among the first thing he did was order a revamp of the IT system, so that–
BILL MOYERS: The information technology system–
WENDELL POTTER: Exactly, so that the company could determine more about which accounts were not profitable or margining profitable. So with that new system, he was able, and the other executives to identify the accounts that they wanted to get rid of. And over the course of a very few years, they shed eight million members.
BILL MOYERS: Eight million policy holders?
WENDELL POTTER: Eight million people, men, women, and children, yes.
Some of them were shed by intention. Some, I’m sure, probably walked because the– or left for whatever other reason, but they intentionally had this program to purge these accounts. Eight million fewer people were enrolled in Aetna’s plans. Many of them undoubtedly joined the ranks of the uninsured, because their employers had been purged.
BILL MOYERS: So what happened to Aetna’s stock?
WENDELL POTTER: Went up.
Rising interest rates
July 16 (Bloomberg) — The difference between Treasury two- and 10-year yields may widen to record levels set last month as the U.S. economy recovers, according to Pacific Investment Management Co., which runs the world’s biggest bond fund.
“When indications accumulate indicating the economy might be moving toward a self-reinforcing condition, long-term rates will rise at a faster speed than short-term rates,” Pimco portfolio manager Tony Crescenzi wrote in a report distributed by e-mail.
The so-called yield curve steepened to as much as 2.62 percentage points today, the most in three weeks. It rose to a record 2.82 percentage points on June 5. The spread typically increases when investors anticipate a recovery because they demand more compensation for the risk that growth will spark inflation.
The steepening “could well continue,” Crescenzi wrote.
Crescenzi was hired by Pimco last month from Miller Tabak & Co. in New York. He is the author of the book “Investing from the Top Down: A Macro Approach to Capital Markets.”
You go Sheila girl. Can Timmy, Sheila for Treas Sec. Get the puppet out.
“Why don’t you get the simple idea that making profits is not compatible with treating all sick people?”
For the same reason you don’t get that a very large part of the population is tired of pouring their hard earned dollars – their lifetimes – to corrupt and inept government programs that do very little to alleviate the problems they claim to be solving and work primarily to perpetuate their own existence and the well being of their political cohorts.
And, btw, profits are required to treat sick people. I have yet to see a doctor or other provider work solely to cover his costs.
So stock market up, trauries down, mtg rates up, volume will be bak down, just like end of May amd begining of June.
Wash, rinse, and repeat.
We have slid down the slope of hope if we think that this money sucking, inneficient, fraudelent, lying, parasitic monster will be the savior for our health care problems. How’s the govt’s track record regarding medicare, medicaid and social security. We are in a $60 trillion pit, with no hope in sight.
Sure sounds like another recipe for disaster.
July 15 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve may start to raise its target interest rate from near zero in the first half of 2010 as the economy recovers, Princeton University economist Alan Blinder said.
“I think the Federal Reserve will look around at the state of the financial system and the state of the economy” and “bump the federal funds rate above zero,” Blinder, who served as Fed vice chairman from 1994 to 1996, said in a Bloomberg Television interview today. “I am not talking about a massive tightening,” he added.
The Fed lowered its main interest rate almost to zero in December, switching to asset purchases and credit programs as the main policy tools. San Francisco Fed President Janet Yellen said last month leaving the rate at zero for several years is “not outside the realm of possibility.” Some Fed officials, including Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker, have warned that leaving rates too low for too long could spark inflationary pressures.
A forecast for the fed funds rate to remain near zero for years is a “very dire” outlook, Blinder said.
Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke is leading plans to buy as much as $1.25 trillion of mortgage-backed securities and $200 billion of federal agency debt by year end, and $300 billion of long-term Treasuries by September. Some economists have called on him to explain how the central bank can withdraw stimulus without causing inflation.
Exit Talk ‘Premature’
“Too much talk about an exit strategy now is premature,” Blinder said. “It is not close to pulling the trigger. Things are looking better, but everything is still looking a little fragile.”
While Blinder predicted a first-half 2010 rate increase, the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News is for the Fed to raise rates starting in the third quarter of 2010.
Fed officials projected the U.S. unemployment rate may climb as high as 10 percent and judged the economy at risk to further shocks, according to minutes of their June 23-24 meeting released today. Employers in the U.S. cut 467,000 jobs in June, pushing the unemployment rate to the highest in almost 26 years, the Labor Department reported July 2.
“Frankly, 9.5 percent unemployment is a just terrible labor market, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the early 1980s,” Blinder said, adding that economic slack will dampen inflation.
The committee appears to have a “substantial disagreement” over the likelihood of a surge in inflation as the economy recovers, he added.
Bernanke Reappointment
Blinder said that there are “still pretty good” odds that Bernanke, a former Princeton professor, would be reappointed as Fed chairman, “all predicated on the B of A thing not blowing up in his face.”
Bernanke’s role in persuading Bank of America Corp. to complete its takeover of Merrill Lynch & Co. has been scrutinized by Congress. The issue is a “distraction,” Blinder said.
I have yet to see a doctor or other provider work solely to cover his costs.
Where did I say that doctors should not be paid well for their job? I am talking about the blood sucking middleman – the insurance company who is the villain in this piece.
The rest of your post is a pointless rant which seems to culled from Drudge Report. I have provided you with specific examples where the private sector is exploiting the populace behaving in the exact manner which you attribute to the government.
How’s the govt’s track record regarding medicare, medicaid and social security.
BC – I don’t think I have disagreed with you on anything. However, I will have to point out that with Medicare, the government is actually more efficient than the private sector – spending only 3% on administrative costs vs 20% by the private sector.
Also, Medicare was pushed into the deep hole by the Bush admin (Part D) by eliminating negotiations with the drug companies.
At this point, I don’t think healthcare is compatible with the private sector, primarily because it involves human lives and we are laying waste to lives in pursuit of profits.
However, having said that, I would be very interested in hearing about alternate solutions because the system sure ain’t working now.
Vic, you’re hopeless.
‘blood sucking middleman villian’.
Priceless.
Not only are we never going to agree, we aren’t even on the same playing field. I fundamently believe in government that governs the least is best, free enterprise, and a ‘safety net’ in many aspects of life that is just that – a helping hand when all other options are exhausted.
You believe the government is benevolent and good and the more it is involved in our lives the better off we’ll be. That’s worked really well here in NJ, huh?
Have fun with Hope, he’s a one termer.
BERLIN (Reuters) – A German who tried to fix his leaky air mattress blew up his apartment instead, the fire brigade in the western city of Duesseldorf said Wednesday.
The 45-year-old man used tire repair solvent to plug a hole in his airbed and left it overnight.
But it blew up when he went to inflate it the next day. “A spark from the electric air pump ignited it,” a fire brigade spokesman said.
The blast pushed his living room wall into the building’s stairwell and caused extensive damage to walls, windows and furniture.
Fire fighters evacuated the 12-apartment building and a neighboring housing block while they checked for structural damage.
The man suffered burns on his arms, while a three-year-old girl suffered first degree burns
Leftwing, you’re not leftwing, you’re absolutely right.
Here’s a good article on individual rights and healthcare:
http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?id=13873&page=NewsArticle
You believe the government is benevolent and good and the more it is involved in our lives the better off we’ll be
No, I do not. I have criticized the government often enough on these boards especially with the way it is handling the financial crisis. I believe it should not in any way be involved in it. The market should sort that one out. Government should stay out of business, but with appropriate regulation over the business.
However, I am not ideologically blind enough to see that there are areas that the government is better suited to and more aligned with the interests of the populace. Healthcare, I believe, is one of them.
AWest
It’s been a long time since I read any Rand, although I did get my oldest ‘1984’ and ‘Brave New World’ as summer reading last year.
Particularly relevant for today’s discussion:
“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.”
I’m still amazed at what the Chosen One said in his NBC interview. Can’t wait until that sinks in and goes viral with the GenX and Millenial crowds. I remember a scene from some sitcom years back that made me laugh. A newly employed grad opens his paycheck with anticipation and then screws up his face asking “Who is this FICA guy and why is he taking all my money?” When these kids discover that thousands of dollars a year of their earnings will be taken from them for something they neither want nor need I think they’ll hop off the Obamaland ride, no matter how cool he is and how much Europe likes him.
If Obama really wants to improve Health Care, he needs to take over the Drug Companies, make them not for profit, and get them back to actually trying to cure things. We haven’t had decent unbiased research in years. Also start recording the real cause of death from treatments like Chemo.
Where was John last weekend?
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/fantasies-fetishes/its-a-very-nice-house-in-the-country-but-not-for-an-orgy-1746473.html
Re: 134
“Perhaps the alarm bells should have rung when they asked for a chill-out room filled with beds and silk sheets, but we thought they were going for a Moroccan feel and might want mint tea or something.”
Gotta love the Brits….
Peter Schiff announces possible run for senate against Chris Dodd!!
http://www.schiffforsenate.com/
Pol Clot,
you’ve got mail
sl
“Are we really sure the recession started in December 2007?”
began we before then, you just didn’t see it. thanks to hand crafted bubbles.
SAS
“Calpers Sues Over Ratings of Securities”
-The nation’s largest public pension fund has filed suit in California state court in connection with $1 billion in losses that it says were caused by “wildly inaccurate” credit ratings from the three leading ratings agencies.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/business/15calpers.html?_r=4
hey dolphin,
if not a good time to be a flipper.
:P
SAS
it
We have landed. Viva Las Vegas. Bring on the heat, jackpots and distressed properties.
Clot – do you think we can buy an REO if we hit 4 deuces on a 25 cent deuces wild machine?
“All my friends who went through Med School and are now in Residency have already admitted defeat”
its a process that doesn’t select for the most intellectual, creative, problem solver.
Its set up to select for someone who can read fast, compute fast, so they can quickly read a pharma/med device written protocol or dose chart in a quick manner to move onto the next patient.
basically, a Manchurian Candidate/factory worker hybrid.
but, hey they get free office supplies, lunches, and can cherry pick good insurance to their same day clinic or surgery centers.
SAS
Gator,
Enjoy! And, remind Stu that if you hit it big: private jet home.
I am pretty libertarian/conservative, but I sympathize with the idea that healthcare should be thought of as a public good along the lines of national defense.
We could have private militias that people could individually contract with to pay for protection. Sounds kind of stupid, but still conceivable. But we understand as a society that a national defense really benefits everyone, and this is an appropriate function for government.
Healthcare is an equally important service and it seems increasingly untenable to leave so many people out in the cold here.
The unfortunate fact is that our government is so incompetant and institutionally corrupt that it is extremely risky to hand over this power to them, even though there are strong arguments in theory as to why it is a good idea.
It would be nice if the President would say something like, national healthcare is such a priority that we are going to find a way to fund it with the revenues we already receive. We are going to cut out all of the BS and I am going to veto every spending bill that has pork in it until we find a way to fund healthcare without raising taxes. Then you would know that this is really a genuine priority rather than an ill-conceived power grab.
For anyone looking for some really good headphones:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13645_3-10285208-47.html
Just don’t leave them behind on the train.
Remind me tomorrow to post USSR version of universal healthcare
“Viva Las Vegas”
when the family marketing began, thats when I left the strip.
better off in Tunica.
SAS
“We are going to cut out all of the BS and I am going to veto every spending bill that has pork in it until we find a way to fund healthcare without raising taxes. ”
That would be change in which even I could believe
Hopefully I’ll have time to post :(
“Get prepared for Graydon and Ellery to spend another year in your basement upon graduating.”
If they cut the grass, shovel the snow, and otherwise perform like Kato Kaelin, it may be a decent deal.
A photo from the last GTG?
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/ads/marketing/mm09/theater_071609.jpg
skep [145]
I believe that a link between demonization of the government and its ineptitude is a two-way one. We condition ourselves to expect something wasteful and stupid, and when we see it we become more entrenched in our opinions. OTOH, when the government acts efficiently we just don’t notice this. E.g., NJ DMV – being a butt of all govt jokes – in the early 90s had been a true nightmare; it’s been totally impossible to spend less than 3 hrs on anything. In the last 5 years I don’t remember a single visit to their office when I was out the door in more than 30 min. Despite this, DMV is still used as an example of how govt messes things up.
I have to laugh at all these experts especially Victorian. Why not just ask the providers what they think of working for the government?
Truth is, the private sector will be legislated out of business. Evidence in the Sept moratorium on new surgery centers. That is the tip of the iceberg. The surgery centers are more efficient, provide better care, have higher patient satisfaction, and attract the best talent.
Say good bye to that. Once this industry is dismantled there will be no getting is back.
If Joe sixpack wants to trust the government with his health care payed for by someone else good for him. If you arent on the inside and cant pay you will get Obamacare. The rest will get what they pay for.
per yesterday’s thread, actually the gene that’s associated with risk-taking increases in frequency in the population as you go west; across Europe, across the Atlantic, across the U.S., and southward. that’s why we have Evil Knieval and CDOs and the slavs are still eating potatoes.
Shoreguy, of *course* house prices are going to continue to drop in R.I.. BTW, Providence is not at all representative of the rest of the state; it has its own pluses (I guess) and minuses (for sure). the coastal and rural areas are the relevant areas.
and hey, if you are part anglo and part Italian, then R.I. should be your ancestral home; that or eastern CT. everyone is part anglo-yankee AND part Italian or Portuguese or E. European (Jewish or not). my (non-Jewish) E. Eur. grandmother taught me to say “geh kaken affen yam” (that’s phonetic) which in Yiddish means to go perform a personal function in the ocean.
but if you buy in R.I. you are morally obligated to take under your wing a couple of kids with stellar potential who are from sad sack families; the state is chock full of them.
re college costs: what would really makes sense, at least for a non-science degree, is for several kids to get together and hire grad students as hourly tutors to teach them what they’d learn in college classes. the cost would be a tiny fraction of the cost of college. and then they could go on to start their own businesses, with the money they’d saved on tuition that would normally ne wasted on mega-sized classes, or the handholding of private school profs. actually if you paid a couple hundred bucks an hour you could entice real profs even. way cheaper than paying the university as a middleman.
Clotpoll #16: wow, that is so scary-true
Foreclosures Rise 15% in First Half of 2009
http://www.cnbc.com/id/31937456
GM all… here’s another on the foreclosures
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aHAbmgVoHjA4
Ой, благодарю
#158
i can see your point
10 Things Your Real Estate Broker Won’t Say
http://finance.yahoo.com/real-estate/article/107302/10-things-your-real-estate-broker-wont-say.html?mod=realestate-buy
hey clot, did you hear your boy Dennis Kneale finally caved and ripped bloggers?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiHYBwZI_YY&feature=player_embedded
i bet he’s talking about you!
(this guy is a raging douche; he’s like a toxic blend of bi, frank, and re-investor)