With a finger on the pulse of the world economic picture I do my best to to try and read the tea leaves of what's happening. Sorry for the mixed metaphor it's how I think on waking. I stumbled on an article about the German economy the other night that wasn't too heartening and this morning I read China's manufacturing is slowing down. I already knew that was happening as they set about with their own stimulus package to bolster their economy just a few months ago. I guess that didn't quite work as they had planned.
On further review as they say at football games things are looking just peachy. I don't buy it. We've seen this type of reporting just prior to the last collapse. Back then it went something like... We'll only experience a short term pull back as the fundamentals look strong and emerging markets are pulling ahead. A few months later the entire financial system froze up and stocks took a 7000 point hair cut. Back then for those who were keeping watch the market was just over 14,000.
I'm no financial guru but I don't see people running out to buy new cars, most of the homes I see being sold are at foreclosure and it seems keeping up with the Jones means who finally found work or didn't have their hours cut. People are trading goods and services like never before. True there may be a bit more work out there but it doesn't pay enough to cover the gas to get there. Gas is at $4 a gallon here now and going up.
And forget the financial news that's being reported on lame stream media. The other morning one article from one source reports how rosy things are in the Euro zone when just less than an hour earlier they were reporting that the zone was in stagnation. Is this some economic news psychosis? For some reason that James Bond movie comes to mind. You may recall it's the one where the cable news magnate starts manipulating news by reporting his own evil deeds. As North so aptly put it this is a luncheon of lies. But I think we're on to their game. They throw up a diversion be it a flood fire plane crash or royal birth to keep us distracted while legislation is covertly passed and the real economic figures are quietly slid past our turned heads. Who after all pays attention to " revised data" when it's buried so deep and always presented in a way that only a statistician could understand.
I'd sure like Riley's take on all this as he was closer to the action than I ever was financially speaking. What I do know is that not many rules were changed the last go round so we know that worthless paper is still being pawned off around the world to those dumb enough to buy it. They're playing a great game of musical chairs but the music is about to stop only in this case it's more like a game of hot potato. Who gets stuck with the defaulting debt?
We saw a report just the other day saying that housing starts were up over last months figures. That would be true since the weather in most of the country was pretty bad. Can't build a house with a tornado coming now can you? But if you really want an eye opener pop down to your local country courthouse on foreclosure auction day or take a gander at the legal notices in the back pages of the news paper. I've lived here over 30 years and have never seen more than one or two. Now you can count entire pages of listings. And this area is in the shadow of Boeing and Microsoft.
Bank fails later
UPDATE: No fails this week
Bank fails later
UPDATE: No fails this week
4 comments:
Germany and China seems to be like us, there is the very wealthy and everyone else.
Someone must be buying the cars sitting on the super store lots here, I sure don't see them cutting back on inventory or having to close. But that industry does come up with easy financing and rates.
Billy I don't see anybody here driving a new car and I'm just down the road from Boeing.
New cars all over the place here, keeping four big mega dealerships alive and well.
What's this about Bond girls?
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