Not surprisingly, we continue to see a mixed economic bag; while the banking and lending industry is being hammered by foreclosures and shitty decision making, other industries and companies are still doing quite well. The banking problems in the US are still not dragging the rest of the global economy into a depression, although if we're not in a recession you can slap me on the ass and call me Shirley. The economy overall is still riddled with imbalance and problems galore that will take quite a while to fix.
Clearly the rising cost of oil is hurting companies that require oil, which just hit $118/barrel today. Airlines are in trouble, while rail service seems to have a viable future again since it's likely to become economical to travel by rail in the near future. The technology sector has so far ignored the recession, and I'm going to be very curious to see Yahoo! and Microsoft's earnings reports this week.
Nevertheless, panicking is still strongly encouraged; if you haven't already started, you should consider hoarding cash and gold bullion. College students, please continue to ask strangers on the Internet for advice on your education
A lot of AT&T's profits were from the merger with BellSouth, firing 10,000 employees will give a nice temporary boost in the bottom line. But that's not going to last, and as consumers start getting squeezed by gas & food prices they're going to start cutting back on their cell phone and internet packages, and that's going to drop their profits.
MickeyD's is going to get pinched later on this year or next year when the grain shortage forces farmers to kill off their herds of cattle, there will be a glut of beef on the market for a bit and then prices will spike when it clears, that's not going to be good for their bottom line. Farmers are already planning to significantly scale back their herds of cattle & pigs since feed prices are getting unaffordable.
Airlines & trucking are fucked, UPS & FedEx have seen volumes drop and both say they're going to miss earnings estimates. Retail is fucked, housing is fucked, financials are fucked, the entire auto industry is fucked, and that's well over half the US economy right there. When you look at the fundamentals, none of them are good.
aerius: I'll vote for you if you sleep with me. Lusankya: Deal!
Say, do you want it to be a threesome with your wife? Or a foursome with your wife and sister-in-law? I'm up for either.
There's a fun article in the WSJ today about buying food in bulk to use as an investment. Given the prices and no sign of things changing, it may be a better idea than oil hoarding.
Admiral Valdemar wrote:There's a fun article in the WSJ today about buying food in bulk to use as an investment. Given the prices and no sign of things changing, it may be a better idea than oil hoarding.
Wheat has in fact done better than oil over the last couple of years. It's been a few weeks since I looked at the actual prices, but wheat is up something like 300% relative to oil's 100%.
"Typical Canadian wimpiness. That's why you have the snowball and we have the H-bomb." Grandpa Simpson
