Economy

FDIC Bank Failures, Chart of their Number

FDIC Bank Failures, Assets and Deposits In Current Dollars

Sherman's Comment: There are about 8,500 FDIC insured banks. While the number of bank failures is pale in comparison to the 1980s the size of some of today's failures (WaMu in particular) have been significant, (please note the second chart is in current dollars adjusted with CPI).

Shares Falling, Citigroup Talks to Government 

In a series of tense meetings and telephone calls, the executives and officials weighed several options, including whether to replace Citigroup's chief executive, Vikram S. Pandit, or sell all or part of the company. 

Other options discussed included a public endorsement from the government or a new financial lifeline, people involved in the talks said.  

U.S. Bank Aquiews All the Deposits of Two Southern California Institutions

U.S. Bank, National Association, Minneapolis, MN, acquired the banking operations, including all the deposits, of Downey Savings and Loan Association, F.A., Newport Beach, CA, and PFF Bank & Trust, Pomona, CA, in a transaction facilitated by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. 

The combined 213 branches of the two organizations will reopen as branches of U.S. Bank under their normal business hours, including those with Saturday hours. Depositors will automatically become depositors of U.S. Bank. Deposits will continue to be insured by the FDIC, so there is no need for customers to change their banking relationship to retain their deposit insurance coverage.

Customers of both banks should continue to use their existing branches until U.S. Bank can fully integrate the deposit records of the organizations. Over the weekend, depositors can access their money by writing checks or using ATM or debit cards.

Bank of Essex, Tappahannock, Virginia Aquires All the Deposits of The Community Bank, Longanville, GA 

The Community Bank, Loganville, Georgia, was closed today by the Georgia Department of Banking and Finance, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was named receiver. To protect the depositors, the FDIC entered into a purchase and assumption agreement with Bank of Essex, to assume all of the deposits of The Community Bank. 

The Community Bank's four branches will open on Monday, November 24, 2008 as Bank of Essex. Depositors of the failed bank will automatically become depositors of Bank of Essex. Deposits will continue to be insured by the FDIC, so there is no need for customers to change their banking relationship to retain their deposit insurance coverage.

Over the weekend, customers of The Community Bank can access their deposits by writing checks or using ATM or debit cards. Checks drawn on the bank will continue to be processed. Loan customers should continue to make their payments as usual. 

Timothy F. Geithner 

Would bring to the job: As president of the New York Federal Reserve since 2003, Mr. Geithner has straddled Wall Street and Washington as a central player in trying to resolve the most significant financial crisis in more than 60 years. He would bring a deep understanding of Wall Street and a close working relationship with Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, his partner in the $700 million bailout, along with Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. 

Though not an economist, Mr. Geithner has a deep understanding of monetary and fiscal policy and broad experience in international trade issues. Before the current crisis, he was involved in the bailouts of Mexico, Indonesia, Korea, Brazil and Thailand. Although he served in the Clinton administration, he is not viewed as partisan and enjoys good relations with both Democrats and Republicans in Congress.

...Used to work as: Director of the International Monetary Fund's policy development and review department. One of his first jobs was at Kissinger Associates, where he worked directly for Henry Kissinger, researching a book. 

Sherman's Comment: I'm still reading a lot of his published papers at the "Fed", but I think this snippet tells a lot. Also,  Brad Setser has a blog - he used to work for Geithner, I'll be reading his blog more closely.

US global dominance 'set to wane' 

It also says the dollar may no longer be the world's major currency, and food and water shortages will fuel conflict. 

TheTimes, They Are A-Changin' 

President-elect Barack Obama is faced with the daunting challenge of fulfilling his campaign promises - promises he actually made, along with those that voters think he made.
Unfortunately, the latter category predominates. The new president didn't actually say much on the campaign trail, but he said it well. He invited Americans to dream, actually to fantasize, about an unreal world in which their government will care for them using its own unlimited supply of money - money that comes from some mysterious place that too few people have even thought about, much less understand. 

..The presumption seems to be that government has a big job to do in cleaning up this mess and it will need more money to do so. Wrong! Government is still the problem. Obama has promised to help the Blue Dogs (fiscally conservative House Democrats) achieve fiscal discipline, including honoring the pay-as-you-go ("PayGo") rule against adding to the budget deficit. There are only two ways to do that... need I say more?

California unemployment jumps to 8.2%, third-highest in the U.S. 

And the situation is about to get worse, predicted Ross DeVol, director of regional economics at the Santa Monica-based Milken Institute. The unemployment rate is seen reaching 9.9% in the first quarter of 2010, with the loss of 360,000 more jobs before then. 

The hemorrhaging of jobs is "another indication that the state is plunging into what is likely to be a long and deep recession," said Stephen Levy, chief economist and director of the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy in Palo Alto. 

Warren Buffett: Unemployment Heading "To New Heights" 

On Unemployment: 

"There are going to be more people unemployed...but I'm not worried about how we come out in the end. I mean, I'm not worried about five years from now. Five months from now, can be very painful...it will be considerably higher...It will happen eventually [surpassing 8%], and we will go on to new heights, but it will not turn around by mid-year next year." 

The Truth About Bailouts 

As the Federal bailout bonanza prepares to spread beyond the mortgage and financial sectors to fill Detroit's depleted coffers, few economic or policy analysts have spared a thought for the destitution of the U.S. government itself. Put simply, our government doesn't have enough spare cash to bailout a lemonade stand let alone a bloated and failing industry that is losing tens of billions of dollars per month. Washington can only offer funds that it has borrowed from abroad or printed. Unfortunately, the nation is in the grips of a delusion that money derived from these sources has the power to heal. But history has clearly shown that borrowed or printed money only has the power to destroy.

...When it comes to bailouts, the real discussions are not centered in Washington but rather in Beijing, Tokyo, and Riyadh. With no money of our own, our ability to bailout our own citizens is completely dependent on the world's willingness to foot the bill.

...If Washington bails out General Motors, the funds will never be recovered. GM will simply burn through the bailout money and then be back for more. Talk of designing a new fleet of "green" cars that will pave the way to profitability by spurring a new buying spree is simply delusional. Given the staggering "legacy" costs of health care and pensions for millions of current and former workers, Detroit cannot produce cars profitably. Unless these costs are seriously brought down, and there is very little chance that they will be, Detroit will remain a bottomless money pit. 

The Road to Financial Ruin: 

When just about all economists agree, should we rejoice or be scared? During the Weimar Republic, economists at the Reichsbank argued that printing money to finance a war was "exogenous" to the economy and thus not inflationary. Hyperinflation in the ensuing years proved them wrong. We tend to think we are so much smarter today. Economists know how to run regression models; in the absence of a historic precedent, some economists know how to draw shifting supply and demand curves. But common sense seems to be missing in the toolbox of all but a few. 

Oil firms to store crude on ships as oil tanks 

DUBAI, Nov 20 (Reuters) - Oil companies plan to store millions of barrels of crude at sea as they wait for demand to pick up and prices to rise. 

So far oil companies have booked ships capable of holding up to 10 million barrels, brokers have said, more than the daily output of top exporter Saudi Arabia.

..Some of the vessels were to load crude in the North Sea, the first time large volumes have been placed in floating storage there since the oil price crashed to below $10 a barrel in 1998.

'All this oil has to go somewhere, especially if the refiners aren't running at capacity,' a Singapore-based crude oil trader said.

...'The only reason as a producer you would pay money to put crude in floating storage would be if you would otherwise struggle to get it out of the ground,' said one Gulf industry source. 

SnapshotBoom and Bust, U.S. Home Prices

Snaphot Export orders for the G7

The World is Coming to an End

Sherman's Preface: I'll post the last paragraph first and then pick a few salient points of the article, this is a good read and it is NOT gloom and doom. Janice Dorn is no dope, she is an MD and a PhD, and in my book she also has common sense. 

With all of this doom and gloom, there is enormous hope. Addictions, if not stopped, end in only three ways: jails, institutions or death. We are now about to take off the beer goggles, get off the drugs, and deal with the consequences of years of reckless spending and self-indulgence. This is going to be a long and painful process of cleansing and detoxification. It won't feel good, and you will-at times-fight against it and long for the high of your addiction. Those who get sober and stay sober will find that life as we know it today has changed forever. People will awaken to a higher level of purpose and meaning. They will find a new freedom and a new happiness. Values of integrity and honesty will be respected. Trust will return as we strip away the excesses and stand in the light of authenticity of our true selves. It will be a happier, more serene and simple way of being. In the end, after all the sound and fury, the gnashing of teeth and the depths of despair and hardship, those who survive will find that they have-at long last--- come home again. 

...The media continues to feed us with hope that things will get better. How comforting that the price of oil has gone down and we now have a silent tax savings. Yippee. That is small consolation for those people who are losing their jobs. The unemployment numbers from last week were ugly. October showed a loss of 240,000 jobs. To add insult to injury, the negative revision to August and September increased these losses by an additional 179,000. The economy has lost 1.2 million jobs since December, with over half of those losses in the last 3 months. While two-thirds of the losses are in manufacturing and goods production, the service economy is also starting to show signs of strain.

...At least two trillion dollars have disappeared from the IRAs and savings accounts of millions of hard-working Americans. People are fearful because they now know that they can no longer trust their elected officials to protect them from harm. It's one thing to spend trillions fighting a war in Iraq to keep the "homeland" safe. It's quite another when people have to make a decision between eating and buying needed prescription medications. Old people are eating cat food because they do not have enough money to eat and buy their medications. 

..Before this secular Bear Market is over, we are going to new lows in all indices, more than 3500 banks will close, unemployment will surge, there will be violence in the streets and people will kill you to get what you have. Every one of the 17 macro factors detailed in The Big Rollover is converging and coming to fruition. Sorry-but this is what we see in the future. Could we be wrong? Of course. No one has a crystal ball that can see beyond the hard right edge of the charts. No one can tell the future with complete accuracy. All we have are our many years of research and the fact that everyone has now begun to see, hear and feel the power of The Big Rollover.

This is what we are giving to our children and their children. This is why we need to apologize to them, and apologize profusely because they will be paying for our mistakes for the rest of their lives. I have enormous compassion for these young people who will be the victims of the privatization of profits and the socialization of losses. Just as we have allowed our elected officials to loot us, we have looted our children and their children. 

Environment 

Sherman's Preface: I got a lot of comments on the four or so articles I posted on the environment in the Nov 21 edition of the Daily Digest. I'll be broadening the selection of articles I post. I found Chris's site via an email forward. It was sent to me by a someone who is probably as reclusive as I, he has a vast financial, environmental and energy in-site. We are talking Buffett's league here and that is all I will ever say about the guy whose passion is clearly helping humanity by helping our planet. One thing he taught me early on is that population is clearly exacerbating all the problems we face, from energy to the environment which so echo's Chris's Crash Course Chapter 18 Video: Environmental Data.

Why have scientists succumbed to political correctness? by Prof. Al Bartlett Spring 2008 Published in the Teachers Clearinghouse for Science and Society Education Newsletter, Vol. 27, No. 2, Spring 2008, Pg. 21 

Throughout the world, scientists are prominently involved in seeking solutions to the major global problems such as global climate change and the growing inadequacy of energy supplies. They present their writings in publications ranging from newspapers to refereed scientific journals, but with a few rare exceptions, on one point they all replace objectivity with "political correctness." 

In their writings the scientists identify the cause of the problems as being growing populations. But their recommendations for solving the problems caused by population growth almost never include the recommendation that we advocate stopping population growth. Political Correctness dictates that we do not address the current problem of overpopulation in the U.S. and the world.

Solar project in Fletcher (NC) to the largest in world 

The newly created Vanir Solar Construction Co. is counting on that fact as it constructs the world's largest solar heating and cooling system in Fletcher. 

Formerly known as Appalachian Solar Energy, the Fletcher-based company was acquired in October by Vanir Energy of Sacramento, Calif. The company launched a $2.4 million project to install 640 solar panels atop the Fletcher Business Park by Dec. 31.

The project will be the world's largest installation of solar thermal heating and cooling technology, according to the International Energy Agency. The acquisition and the new project were unveiled Thursday at AdvantageWest's annual banquet at the Grove Park Inn.

Coal's time bomb 

Every year, South Carolina's power plants burn enough coal to fill 10 large football stadiums, leaving behind a stadium-size pile of toxic ash. 

Every year, our power companies dump roughly 2.3 billion pounds of this tainted ash in landfills and holding ponds, many precariously close to rivers and neighborhoods..

Sherman's Comment:  Today's Daily Digest wasn't what I wanted to post, I thought it would be a quiet day, economically speaking, and I had hoped to put up a few videos and some interesting stuff on CDS's, mortgages, deflation and inflation that I have been saving for a good weekend read. Maybe tomorrow.