March 2010

The International Unemployment Day

Mark Twain once said, "History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme."
I wonder what Twain would think if he looked around America today?

When unemployment rates hit crisis levels during the early 1930's, the unemployed took to the streets and demanded relief aid from the government.
Today the unemployed are again taking to the streets, but their demands are somewhat different.

At rallies, gatherings and training sessions in recent months, activists often tell a similar story in interviews: they had lost their jobs, or perhaps watched their homes plummet in value, and they found common cause in the Tea Party’s fight for lower taxes and smaller government.

ADP Employment Report for March 2010 - down 23,000

Ah, those green shooters lying in the brown weeds and crying. The ADP employment report is out and no magic V implied. We have more job loss, not growth, of 23,000.

Nonfarm private employment decreased 23,000 from February to March on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the ADP National Employment Report®. The estimated change of employment from January 2010 to February 2010 was revised down slightly, from a decline of 20,000 to a decline of 24,000.

The March employment decline was the smallest since employment began falling in February of 2008. Yet, the lack of improvement in employment from February to March is consistent with the pause in the decline of initial unemployment claims that occurred during the winter.

Elizabeth Warren video interview - 50% of CRE underwater by end of the year

Elizabeth Warren did an interview on CNBC. Of the tidbits we have: get rid of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, why is Citigroup growing when it should be shrinking and 50% of all Commercial Real Estate will have loans greater than the properties are worth by the end of 2010 and it's such a problem it's gonna hurt the overall economy. Watch to see if I summed that up correctly:

 

SEC writes letter to ALL Executive Financial Officers Demanding Repo 105 Disclosure

The SEC has written a letter (full letter at Zero Hedge link) demanding to find out if anybody else used repo 105s as a shell game to hid losses.

please tell us whether you have offset securities owned (long positions) with securities sold, but not yet purchased (short positions), along with any basis for your presentation policy and the related gross amounts that are offset. Finally, if you accounted for repurchase agreements, securities lending transactions, or other transactions involving the transfer of financial assets with an obligation to repurchase the transferred assets as sales and did not provide disclosure of those transactions in your

Capital controls and what you should know

When a government plans to do something unpopular, they try to hide it.
For instance, when the Democrats decided last month to renew the draconian Patriot Act, they hid it in a medicare reform bill. They originally tried to hide it in a Pentagon funding bill.

It turned out to be a very successful strategy because it was almost totally ignored by the major media. In fact, it was so successful that last week Congress slipped in what might be the most ominous law of the year.

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