While big-box retailers such as Walmart and Target are losing traffic, shoppers—especially those on the lower rungs of the income ladder—are still turning up at dollar stores. The migration of consumers down the retail ladder shows that plenty of shoppers remain frugal and are closely watching their spending. On Wednesday's earnings call, Dollar General Chief Executive Rick Dreiling said the company still has a cautious outlook on the consumer.
Just read somewhere that the DOJ absolved or will absolve Corzine "MFing Global" of any wrongdoing. I'm sure his buddy Dimon goes along with that. Because thousands of people working for six figures inside the DOJ and US Attorneys Office nationally that will soon work for Corzine and Dimon and Wall Street and big law firms simply couldn't find any wrongdoing. Mind you, there is actually a law that says lying to any federal agent is a crime. Laundering a dime is a crime. Lying to Congress is a crime. And on, and on, and on. But screw those farmers, those MF customers and clients and their families and friends, they matter not.
Seriously? It's so ridiculous it's exhausting. Dudes steal billions break commingling rules left and right, perjure themselves, basically bribe Congress (or is it "lobbying), fire people that try to enforce compliance rules internally, etc., etc. Honestly, again, what do people tell kids or their spouses nowadays? Be good? Work hard and you'll be rewarded? Education matters? Unless you're a complete scumbag and/or born into connections and/or are willing to steal and crush others, the USA is just a barren wasteland. Don't bother, it's a joke. "Rule of law," the "Golden Rule"? Whatever, only for suckers. Why should we follow laws or pay a dime in taxes when scum doesn't follow any of the same rules. No answer is satisfactory at this point, not one. It truly is Versailles vs. us.
Congress and past administrations have been doing everything in their power to wipe out the U.S. worker.
I have no idea what Syria is all about and who are the "bad guys" or if this is another wag the dog as Iraq seems to be, but it is bothersome than the entire globe is not up in arms and here goes the U.S., acting alone.
But we have agendas in Congress to destroy the U.S. worker and the latest absurdity is to cut food stamps to the most vulnerable.
The problem is there are no politicians these days who are not corporate controlled, corrupt. Maybe 3 in the House and 0.5 in the Senate, that would be Bernie Sanders but he just recently voted to increase more foreign guest workers and he knows better than that, so I think he was bought off.
Yup, but simply remember this, while Corzine escapes justice for year 2 or 3 now, and Obama focuses like a "laser" for year 4 or 5 or 6 now, they can get a war going within weeks of meeting with Congress. Within WEEKS. Jobs have been disappearing for decades now. That's the economic vs. political/corruption reality. They want a war or invasion or to protect one of the corrupt elite, they can do it. They want jobs to disappear for decades, they can do it. That's the reality. They want $1 trillion for a war against [fill-in-the-blank], it's done. Well, solving outsourcing and stopping Apple from using Foxconn and watching the labor participation rate drop to decades' lows and fix that? Well, don't cry corruption. Don't bite the hand that feeds you. Nope, this will take decades of study and reports and meetings and lobbyist dinners and more meetings and more donations and more meetings and more hearings, etc. etc. See, corruption is easy, so so easy. War is easy. The average American and giving a crap about his economic reality, oh, that's so very complicated. So so hard to figure out. Gotta wait and collect billions more while millions more go homeless and thousands more die.
Uh, the rocket scientists were also kind of captured and the Nazis were true evil, but if you are referring to Syria and what's going on at the moment, ya know, we are an economics site, I have no idea anymore than Joe Blow on the street on what is going on here.
Who cares anymore, it's all bullsh*t. Guess what? Nazis were the lowest form of scum until the US government needed some rocket scientists and didn't want the USSR to have them. But wasn't the USSR our ally against the very same Nazis? Wait, what's that? Cognitive dissonance? Don't ask questions.
The USSR sucked in Afghanistan, so we had to arm Al-Qaeda. Until the USSR left and Al-Qaeda wasn't all that cool anymore (yeah, shocking, who could have known, especially tens of thousands of GS-15s, 14s, 13s, and anyone else in federal and state governments who should have known and raised endless red flags). Shhh, forget about it, don't read, think, write, or ask questions. Because if you had a freaking brain, you weren't getting hired in the first place. Shut up, kiss ass, write endless memos, attend millions of useless meetings that achieve nothing, and collect that paycheck. How many "lessons learned" have been written about in useless government memos that achieve NOTHING while people with some brains and integrity wound up homeless?
Paine and Hamilton would be so proud, no doubt. How about Sophie Scholl, how high would she rise in the USG or the UN or WTO or Microsoft? Hmm, food for thought. A young unarmed woman and her family and friends had more balls than most of the people in our government and corporations and international organizations. Who knows, she actually fought Nazis and died for her stand. I guess she missed the "profit rules all," "shut up and earn that cash," "the government in any country is the bestest ever" bull. Guess she was too far before Facebook and cell phones to realize the important things in life! Guess she wasn't thinking about her bank account or the number of "friends" she had. She must have been mighty unpopular, eh? No Davos or conferences or prizes for her.
Qaddafi was evil as proven in Lockerbie. Until he wasn't and trade ties were needed. And then his son got a special visa to visit the US through Hillary's State. But then he was evil again and he had to go. And then. . . Saddam Hussein was good because he fought Iran. Rumsfeld in photos proves it. But then he was bad. And then Rumsfeld said we had to fight him. Assad is evil. Or not? Wait, Pelosi visited him. He was a buffer or something. But now he's evil again. And we have to oust him. But to do that we have to help Al-Qaeda or its proxies. Wait, what?
Myanmar is evil, it butchers the Karen people and uses slave labor. But wait, corporations want contracts in Burma. So now it's good. No more sanctions. No war crimes. No crimes against humanity. No international tribunals. Huh? Drug cartels and terrorists are bad, unless banksters that control the Fed are aiding and abetting them by laundering $. Money laundering is bad, unless the TBTF do it. "Rule of law" is important, unless big corporations don't like it. Where does this joke end? This sick, deadly global joke? The UN and US stop atrocities ASAP. Just not in Rwanda. Or here or there. "The buck stops here"? Not if you are a CEO or politician that doesn't want any blame or responsibility, just $ and perks. Got that?
More importantly, who's lobbying who in DC? Is Guiliani taking $ to say this group is no longer a threat? How about Howard Dean? The Clintons and their lobbying companies?
IT'S ALL BULLSH*T. No integrity, no honor, no patriotism. And we, the average Americans that believed in truth, honor, hard work, and education, are the laughing stock of all these d*cks in high places globally! USA 2013, what's to believe in anymore? Honestly, what? It's endless lies and corruption at our expense and the people like us across the globe. F the elites, f them all.
Name this country or that one. It doesn't matter. For those who care, keep the faith, remember the heroes of the past and present. What we are witnessing is the same crap that's gone on throughout history.
This is true and thus one would think the ISM wouldn't be a great indicator yet it is. We can see, from the various graphing of other economic indicators it is amazingly correlated. I like this report and how weird we have so many other reports saying inventories are contracting yet GDP showed positive change in inventories. It also is one of the first indicators for the previous month. It comes out the 1st, data is from the previous month so it gives a forward looking window.
I think they do a lot of statistical analysis behind the scenes and as one can see from the graphs, GDP is the only correlation which makes no rhyme or reason, yet there too, their long run average (I'm printing the month correlation), does follow somewhat GDP.
Anywho, that's why all of the double graphing on this overview, to show the correlations to more hard data.
the ISM doesnt track hard data, it's just a survey of purchasing managers in in a number of industries...the individual indexes are based on questionnaires sent to these execs on the current conditions in their industry; each response of "better" out of a each hundred queries adds one to the index; each response of "the same" adds a half point, and responses of "worse" are not counted; hence any reading over 50 indicates a majority of those polled reported that conditions in their industry are improving....no weighting is given for the different sizes of businesses polled, or whether conditions are a whole lot better, just marginally so, or a whole lot worse...
Slave labor was what America was founded upon. Foreign countries also use the technique very well. China, India, Mexico and other countries have the upper hand when they can negate environmental laws and pollute with immunity, employ with no labor laws where overtime is forced and working conditions horrible and governments back their wealthy contributors until some tragic event occurs.
This is just shocking. Another Snowden leak reveals 1 in 5 job applicants, this is to get a job with the CIA, have terrorist ties.
Wow. A couple of things, obviously the CIA should loosen up the U.S. requirements, such as rejecting applicants based on their "credit score" and "did you smoke marijuana" and other (mostly legal) behaviors that have absolutely nothing to do with keeping one's mouth shut and other capabilities.
But think about it, if 1 in 5 is trying to get into the CIA, can you imagine, what goes completely unscreened, in other sensitive jobs in the U.S.? Any security screenings for foreign guest workers as an example? Nah.
Gez, CIA loosen up your U.S. standards and Military, hire some damn old people, for that is scary as hell.
Now this is huge, in part because Nokia at one point was the Finnish economy but on the other hand, Nokia strongly underestimated Apple, Android and severely screwed the pooch in terms of audio on demand, the key feature which propelled the iPhone (beyond the rest of the design).
That said, consolidation is always bad news in terms of consumer options and Lord help Nokia employees with MIcrosoft's very evil labor arbitrage and crap on employment practices. I kid you not, they don not hire the best and the brightest by a long shot, more they fire their best and brightest and replace them with foreign guest workers.
WSJ: Verizon has agreed to buy out Vodafone's 45 percent stake in Verizon Wireless for $130 billion. The deal marks the third-largest announced acquisition in corporate history. Does anybody have a little cash to spare? A sweet deal for Vodafone's shareholders --- because of British law, not a penny will be owed for capital gains taxes.
Paul Krugman: " It wasn’t always about the hot dogs. Originally, believe it or not, Labor Day actually had something to do with showing respect. Here’s how it happened: In 1894 Pullman workers, facing wage cuts in the wake of a financial crisis, went on strike and Grover Cleveland deployed 12,000 soldiers to break the union. He succeeded, but using armed force to protect the interests of property was so blatant that even the Gilded Age was shocked."
Following the deaths of a number of workers at the hands of the U.S. military and U.S. Marshals during the Pullman Strike, the United States Congress unanimously voted to approve rush legislation that made Labor Day a national holiday; President Grover Cleveland signed it into law a mere six days after the end of the strike.
Rather than putting CEOs on a pedestal, maybe it's time we start showing workers a little respect again.
the farm inventory boost to GDP still makes no sense to me at all...the change in farm inventories subtracted 0.04% from 2010 GDP, added 0.03% in 2011, and subtracted 0.02% in 2012...so far this year, the change in farm inventories added .88% to the 1st quarter and .14% to the 2nd quarter's change (at an annual rate); it looks like they'll be added to again: "we anticipate substantial increases in the annual quantity and value of crop inventories, particularly for corn," USDA said.http://www.cnbc.com/id/100991650
There was only a slight upward revision in durable goods and I have to think they have an internal revision to get an increase in change of nonfarm private inventories. That said, there is so much additional calculation going on, there might be inventories we're unaware of.
While we see contraction, earlier I expected GDP to have less nonfarm inventories, so I said something but couldn't calculate out what exactly happened there in GDP.
Hey, anyone else notice we have crap statistics going in for July? What makes me sick is the press is all about nonfarm payrolls being about quantitative easing! Good freakin' God real people here just do not add into their equations.
The U.S. was still a British colony and "no taxation without representation" was a major reason for the American revolution, in other words, the Brits were sucking up the profits from colonial wealthy land owners.
More apt is the question is the situation worse today than it was in 1897, probably the top end of the industrialists, robber baron era.
In the United States in 1774 the richest 1 percent had 7.1 percent of total income...today almost 20 percent of total income accrues to the top 1 percent.”
I agree with you 100%. It's all an insiders game.
While big-box retailers such as Walmart and Target are losing traffic, shoppers—especially those on the lower rungs of the income ladder—are still turning up at dollar stores. The migration of consumers down the retail ladder shows that plenty of shoppers remain frugal and are closely watching their spending. On Wednesday's earnings call, Dollar General Chief Executive Rick Dreiling said the company still has a cautious outlook on the consumer.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732412300457905466328383099...
But it seems nothing changes and I think that disgusts people more.
Just read somewhere that the DOJ absolved or will absolve Corzine "MFing Global" of any wrongdoing. I'm sure his buddy Dimon goes along with that. Because thousands of people working for six figures inside the DOJ and US Attorneys Office nationally that will soon work for Corzine and Dimon and Wall Street and big law firms simply couldn't find any wrongdoing. Mind you, there is actually a law that says lying to any federal agent is a crime. Laundering a dime is a crime. Lying to Congress is a crime. And on, and on, and on. But screw those farmers, those MF customers and clients and their families and friends, they matter not.
Seriously? It's so ridiculous it's exhausting. Dudes steal billions break commingling rules left and right, perjure themselves, basically bribe Congress (or is it "lobbying), fire people that try to enforce compliance rules internally, etc., etc. Honestly, again, what do people tell kids or their spouses nowadays? Be good? Work hard and you'll be rewarded? Education matters? Unless you're a complete scumbag and/or born into connections and/or are willing to steal and crush others, the USA is just a barren wasteland. Don't bother, it's a joke. "Rule of law," the "Golden Rule"? Whatever, only for suckers. Why should we follow laws or pay a dime in taxes when scum doesn't follow any of the same rules. No answer is satisfactory at this point, not one. It truly is Versailles vs. us.
Congress and past administrations have been doing everything in their power to wipe out the U.S. worker.
I have no idea what Syria is all about and who are the "bad guys" or if this is another wag the dog as Iraq seems to be, but it is bothersome than the entire globe is not up in arms and here goes the U.S., acting alone.
But we have agendas in Congress to destroy the U.S. worker and the latest absurdity is to cut food stamps to the most vulnerable.
The problem is there are no politicians these days who are not corporate controlled, corrupt. Maybe 3 in the House and 0.5 in the Senate, that would be Bernie Sanders but he just recently voted to increase more foreign guest workers and he knows better than that, so I think he was bought off.
Yup, but simply remember this, while Corzine escapes justice for year 2 or 3 now, and Obama focuses like a "laser" for year 4 or 5 or 6 now, they can get a war going within weeks of meeting with Congress. Within WEEKS. Jobs have been disappearing for decades now. That's the economic vs. political/corruption reality. They want a war or invasion or to protect one of the corrupt elite, they can do it. They want jobs to disappear for decades, they can do it. That's the reality. They want $1 trillion for a war against [fill-in-the-blank], it's done. Well, solving outsourcing and stopping Apple from using Foxconn and watching the labor participation rate drop to decades' lows and fix that? Well, don't cry corruption. Don't bite the hand that feeds you. Nope, this will take decades of study and reports and meetings and lobbyist dinners and more meetings and more donations and more meetings and more hearings, etc. etc. See, corruption is easy, so so easy. War is easy. The average American and giving a crap about his economic reality, oh, that's so very complicated. So so hard to figure out. Gotta wait and collect billions more while millions more go homeless and thousands more die.
Uh, the rocket scientists were also kind of captured and the Nazis were true evil, but if you are referring to Syria and what's going on at the moment, ya know, we are an economics site, I have no idea anymore than Joe Blow on the street on what is going on here.
Who cares anymore, it's all bullsh*t. Guess what? Nazis were the lowest form of scum until the US government needed some rocket scientists and didn't want the USSR to have them. But wasn't the USSR our ally against the very same Nazis? Wait, what's that? Cognitive dissonance? Don't ask questions.
The USSR sucked in Afghanistan, so we had to arm Al-Qaeda. Until the USSR left and Al-Qaeda wasn't all that cool anymore (yeah, shocking, who could have known, especially tens of thousands of GS-15s, 14s, 13s, and anyone else in federal and state governments who should have known and raised endless red flags). Shhh, forget about it, don't read, think, write, or ask questions. Because if you had a freaking brain, you weren't getting hired in the first place. Shut up, kiss ass, write endless memos, attend millions of useless meetings that achieve nothing, and collect that paycheck. How many "lessons learned" have been written about in useless government memos that achieve NOTHING while people with some brains and integrity wound up homeless?
Paine and Hamilton would be so proud, no doubt. How about Sophie Scholl, how high would she rise in the USG or the UN or WTO or Microsoft? Hmm, food for thought. A young unarmed woman and her family and friends had more balls than most of the people in our government and corporations and international organizations. Who knows, she actually fought Nazis and died for her stand. I guess she missed the "profit rules all," "shut up and earn that cash," "the government in any country is the bestest ever" bull. Guess she was too far before Facebook and cell phones to realize the important things in life! Guess she wasn't thinking about her bank account or the number of "friends" she had. She must have been mighty unpopular, eh? No Davos or conferences or prizes for her.
Qaddafi was evil as proven in Lockerbie. Until he wasn't and trade ties were needed. And then his son got a special visa to visit the US through Hillary's State. But then he was evil again and he had to go. And then. . . Saddam Hussein was good because he fought Iran. Rumsfeld in photos proves it. But then he was bad. And then Rumsfeld said we had to fight him. Assad is evil. Or not? Wait, Pelosi visited him. He was a buffer or something. But now he's evil again. And we have to oust him. But to do that we have to help Al-Qaeda or its proxies. Wait, what?
Myanmar is evil, it butchers the Karen people and uses slave labor. But wait, corporations want contracts in Burma. So now it's good. No more sanctions. No war crimes. No crimes against humanity. No international tribunals. Huh? Drug cartels and terrorists are bad, unless banksters that control the Fed are aiding and abetting them by laundering $. Money laundering is bad, unless the TBTF do it. "Rule of law" is important, unless big corporations don't like it. Where does this joke end? This sick, deadly global joke? The UN and US stop atrocities ASAP. Just not in Rwanda. Or here or there. "The buck stops here"? Not if you are a CEO or politician that doesn't want any blame or responsibility, just $ and perks. Got that?
More importantly, who's lobbying who in DC? Is Guiliani taking $ to say this group is no longer a threat? How about Howard Dean? The Clintons and their lobbying companies?
IT'S ALL BULLSH*T. No integrity, no honor, no patriotism. And we, the average Americans that believed in truth, honor, hard work, and education, are the laughing stock of all these d*cks in high places globally! USA 2013, what's to believe in anymore? Honestly, what? It's endless lies and corruption at our expense and the people like us across the globe. F the elites, f them all.
Name this country or that one. It doesn't matter. For those who care, keep the faith, remember the heroes of the past and present. What we are witnessing is the same crap that's gone on throughout history.
This is true and thus one would think the ISM wouldn't be a great indicator yet it is. We can see, from the various graphing of other economic indicators it is amazingly correlated. I like this report and how weird we have so many other reports saying inventories are contracting yet GDP showed positive change in inventories. It also is one of the first indicators for the previous month. It comes out the 1st, data is from the previous month so it gives a forward looking window.
I think they do a lot of statistical analysis behind the scenes and as one can see from the graphs, GDP is the only correlation which makes no rhyme or reason, yet there too, their long run average (I'm printing the month correlation), does follow somewhat GDP.
Anywho, that's why all of the double graphing on this overview, to show the correlations to more hard data.
the ISM doesnt track hard data, it's just a survey of purchasing managers in in a number of industries...the individual indexes are based on questionnaires sent to these execs on the current conditions in their industry; each response of "better" out of a each hundred queries adds one to the index; each response of "the same" adds a half point, and responses of "worse" are not counted; hence any reading over 50 indicates a majority of those polled reported that conditions in their industry are improving....no weighting is given for the different sizes of businesses polled, or whether conditions are a whole lot better, just marginally so, or a whole lot worse...
Slave labor was what America was founded upon. Foreign countries also use the technique very well. China, India, Mexico and other countries have the upper hand when they can negate environmental laws and pollute with immunity, employ with no labor laws where overtime is forced and working conditions horrible and governments back their wealthy contributors until some tragic event occurs.
This is just shocking. Another Snowden leak reveals 1 in 5 job applicants, this is to get a job with the CIA, have terrorist ties.
Wow. A couple of things, obviously the CIA should loosen up the U.S. requirements, such as rejecting applicants based on their "credit score" and "did you smoke marijuana" and other (mostly legal) behaviors that have absolutely nothing to do with keeping one's mouth shut and other capabilities.
But think about it, if 1 in 5 is trying to get into the CIA, can you imagine, what goes completely unscreened, in other sensitive jobs in the U.S.? Any security screenings for foreign guest workers as an example? Nah.
Gez, CIA loosen up your U.S. standards and Military, hire some damn old people, for that is scary as hell.
Now this is huge, in part because Nokia at one point was the Finnish economy but on the other hand, Nokia strongly underestimated Apple, Android and severely screwed the pooch in terms of audio on demand, the key feature which propelled the iPhone (beyond the rest of the design).
That said, consolidation is always bad news in terms of consumer options and Lord help Nokia employees with MIcrosoft's very evil labor arbitrage and crap on employment practices. I kid you not, they don not hire the best and the brightest by a long shot, more they fire their best and brightest and replace them with foreign guest workers.
Corporations are sitting on record high amounts of cash, which can be used for buyouts, acquisitions.
WSJ: Verizon has agreed to buy out Vodafone's 45 percent stake in Verizon Wireless for $130 billion. The deal marks the third-largest announced acquisition in corporate history. Does anybody have a little cash to spare? A sweet deal for Vodafone's shareholders --- because of British law, not a penny will be owed for capital gains taxes.
Paul Krugman: " It wasn’t always about the hot dogs. Originally, believe it or not, Labor Day actually had something to do with showing respect. Here’s how it happened: In 1894 Pullman workers, facing wage cuts in the wake of a financial crisis, went on strike and Grover Cleveland deployed 12,000 soldiers to break the union. He succeeded, but using armed force to protect the interests of property was so blatant that even the Gilded Age was shocked."
Following the deaths of a number of workers at the hands of the U.S. military and U.S. Marshals during the Pullman Strike, the United States Congress unanimously voted to approve rush legislation that made Labor Day a national holiday; President Grover Cleveland signed it into law a mere six days after the end of the strike.
Rather than putting CEOs on a pedestal, maybe it's time we start showing workers a little respect again.
the farm inventory boost to GDP still makes no sense to me at all...the change in farm inventories subtracted 0.04% from 2010 GDP, added 0.03% in 2011, and subtracted 0.02% in 2012...so far this year, the change in farm inventories added .88% to the 1st quarter and .14% to the 2nd quarter's change (at an annual rate); it looks like they'll be added to again: "we anticipate substantial increases in the annual quantity and value of crop inventories, particularly for corn," USDA said. http://www.cnbc.com/id/100991650
walter kurtz at sober look is picking up on some of the current crap statistics, but he omitted the downturn in durbable goods: http://soberlook.com/2013/09/4-indicators-signal-that-us-economic.html
There was only a slight upward revision in durable goods and I have to think they have an internal revision to get an increase in change of nonfarm private inventories. That said, there is so much additional calculation going on, there might be inventories we're unaware of.
While we see contraction, earlier I expected GDP to have less nonfarm inventories, so I said something but couldn't calculate out what exactly happened there in GDP.
Hey, anyone else notice we have crap statistics going in for July? What makes me sick is the press is all about nonfarm payrolls being about quantitative easing! Good freakin' God real people here just do not add into their equations.
The U.S. was still a British colony and "no taxation without representation" was a major reason for the American revolution, in other words, the Brits were sucking up the profits from colonial wealthy land owners.
More apt is the question is the situation worse today than it was in 1897, probably the top end of the industrialists, robber baron era.
In the United States in 1774 the richest 1 percent had 7.1 percent of total income...today almost 20 percent of total income accrues to the top 1 percent.”
http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2013/08/29/economic-equality-1774-and-beyond/
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