According to RealtyTrac, one in every 136 homes in the US received a foreclosure filing during Q309, the highest reported quarterly foreclosure rate since RealtyTrac began issuing its report in the first quarter of 2005.
Foreclosure filings increased 5% from the previous quarter and climbed 23% from Q308, according to the report. Nearly 938,000 homeowners received a foreclosure filing in Q309.
Remember how we were having a housing crisis during the summer/fall of 2008? Well things are 23% worse now than they were then.
The Consumer Price Index is out for September 2009. CPI rose +0.2%, down from +0.4% in August. What's more interesting is an not seasonally adjusted yearly decline of -1.3%. The food index declines for the first time in 40 years.
Inventories data came out today and showed we have the biggest decline in inventories in history of the index, 1.5%. Here is the inventory to sales ratio graph, which is actually good. The more manufacturers run out of stuff on the shelves with new orders, the more they have to make stuff and hire people to make the stuff.
Sales. The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that the combined value of distributive trade sales and manufacturers’ shipments for August, adjusted for seasonal and trading-day differences but not for price changes, was estimated at $989.6 billion, up 1.0 percent (±0.2%) from July 2009 and down 15.1 percent (±0.4%) from August 2008.
Some of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s closest aides, none of whom faced Senate confirmation, earned millions of dollars a year working for Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Citigroup Inc. and other Wall Street firms, according to financial disclosure forms.
Get that - they don't face Senate confirmation. Geithner's 'kitchen cabinet' comes right from the financial oligarchy:
The [WLI] is an index that’s been around for over a quarter of a century, and over that time (shown here) it has correctly predicted every recession and recovery in real-time.
Along with many other examples, Mike Shedlock found this tasty tidbit from November 2007, the month before the official start of this recession:
I believe that this is the perfect symbol for the failure of regulation in the Obama Administration, and the arrogance of the Wall Street bankers.
Major U.S. banks and securities firms are on pace to pay their employees about $140 billion this year -- a record high that shows compensation is rebounding despite regulatory scrutiny of Wall Street's pay culture.
Workers at 23 top investment banks, hedge funds, asset managers and stock and commodities exchanges can expect to earn even more than they did the peak year of 2007, according to an analysis of securities filings for the first half of 2009 and revenue estimates through year-end by The Wall Street Journal.
Score another one for lobbyists U.S. Chamber of Commerce, NASSCOM and Multinational corporations who are manipulating international and U.S. corporate tax codes. The Obama administration shelved corporate tax reform to remove the loopholes for the tax gains corporations get to offshore outsource your job.
The Obama administration has shelved the proposal in the face of intense pressure from business. A key part of the tax plan, and a key beef of industry, was a proposal to reform the part of the tax code that allows companies to defer paying taxes on profits earned from overseas investments.
About a week ago, Econompic posted some nice charts about recent shrinkage in the labor force. As they noted, without labor force shrinkage, the unemployment situation would look a lot more dire, rising above 10% for the nation as a whole.
In the period between March and August of this year, 837,200 persons left the labor force. This has had the ironic effect of driving down the unemployment rate in many states. Basically, unemployment is still up, but not up as much as it would be if people hadn't exited the labor force. The "economic recovery" at hand is thus largely a function of people who have lost all hope and stopped even looking for work.
A lot can happen in two weeks. Normally the foreign exchange market for developed nations move like glaciers. But in these days of global warming even glaciers are breaking speed limits.
Less than two weeks ago the World Bank President had some interesting things to say regarding the dollar.
"The United States would be mistaken to take for granted the dollar's place as the world's predominant reserve currency," Mr. Zoellick told the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University.
In his strongest comments yet in the debate over the dollar's reserve-currency status, Mr. Zoellick said that, "looking forward, there will increasingly be other options to the dollar."
For 65 years the American dollar has been the world's reserve currency. Practically as good as gold. So Mr. Zoellick's words might be considered controversial.
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