With the unemployment rate soaring alongside the U.S. budget deficit, the Obama Administration and congressional Democrats are struggling to solve the nation’s problems before next year’s midterm election.
“Gold continues to climb…stoked by inflation worries,” says a headline in the International Herald Tribune.
Yesterday was another exciting day on Wall Street. The Dow rose 131 points…and gold shot up $25 to a new record, $1043.
Naturally, at the focus of renewed market pessimism is a struggling financial: CIT Group. (NYSE:CIT) The company — a hundred-year-old staple of small/medium business lending — is no stranger to walking the credit tightrope. They narrowly averted fiscal meltdown late last year with $2.3 billion in TARP bucks… then again in July by goosing bondholders with a $3 billion a debt-to-equity deal. Back then we joked, “Look for this crisis to repeat in a couple weeks.” We were wrong… it took a couple months.
September job losses soar to 263,000…G-7 does not make statement on currencies…RBA meets tonight…India & Brazil pull the right strings…And Now… Today’s Pfennig!
Welcome to Zombieland…where the most amazing things happen…Starring Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner and a cast of millions…
The new movie – Zombieland – about a group of survivors in a world of zombies, was the biggest grossing film in America and Canada over the weekend. It must reflect the zeitgeist of the North American public…a deep feeling that we are living in a decaying world.
Not much happened yesterday. The Dow fell 47 points. The newspapers attributed the reversal to surprisingly low consumer confidence numbers. Apparently, consumers aren’t so sure this crisis is over. As we reported yesterday, they’re saving money… maybe even at an 8% rate.
“The real danger — economically, socially or politically speaking — in the 1930s was loads of young men without jobs.”
Personal conversions sometimes mark dramatic turns in history. Saul of Taursus saw a vision so bright it left him blind. The next thing you know, he had changed his name and was pushing Christianity all over the world. According to Gibbon, the Roman Empire fell as a consequence. Then, on the advice of his mistress, Gabrielle, Henry IV became a Catholic, leading to the Edict of Nantes and its subsequent revocation.
We’ve said it before, more than once: Jobs and housing will be the real indicators for how the depression pans out. Housing led us into this mess, it is one of the worst performing asset classes in America, it’s most people’s biggest investment, and bad mortgages (and their subsequent securitizations) have rendered our financial system impotent — at best. And jobs, well… people gotta work. When they don’t, all kinds of craziness ensues.