Susan Z. recommended this piece by Bob Chapman: And All the Kings’ Horses and All the King’s Men… [1]
GG mentioned Mish Shedlock’s latest piece: Weekly Unemployment Claims Portend Disaster [2]
Also from GG: Federal tax revenues plummeting [3]. I can foresee the reinstitution of pre-Kennedy-era marginal tax rates [4] (more than 50%) in the next few years. This is just one more good reason to invest in tangibles. They’ll heavily tax interest income, but you don’t pay taxes on tangibles until you sell them.
Several items from frequent content contributor Karen H.:
Cathay Pacific to Park Six Passenger Planes After 27% Sales Slump [5] ““We still cannot see any signs of any pickup in business,” Chairman Christopher Pratt told reporters in Hong Kong today.
Adidas Q2 Net Profit Falls 93 Percent [6]
P&G Fourth-Quarter Profit Declines as Consumers Curb Spending [7]
ADP Says U.S. Companies Decrease Payrolls by 371,000 [8] “The estimated 371,000 drop, higher than economists forecast, followed a revised 463,000 drop the prior month, figures from ADP Employer Services showed today.”
Farmland Falls for First Time Since 1987 [9] “Farmland prices in the U.S., which advanced for 21 years, couldn’t escape the worst plunge in real estate since the Great Depression.”
Items from The Economatrix:
Investors Nudge Rally Forward with Small Gains [10]
Mortgage Aid Program Helping Fraction of Borrowers [11]
Florida-based Mortgage Company Suspended [12] A prominent U.S. mortgage company is being investigated by the Housing and Urban Development Department after allegedly failing to submit a required financial report, raising concerns of fraud. The Federal Housing Administration on Tuesday suspended Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp. from originating new FHA-insured mortgages, HUD said in a news release.
Good-bye Dollar, Hello Gold [14]
Fed to Strengthen Bank Examination with Expert Teams [15]
American Incomes Head Down, Threatening Recovery in Spending [16]
Banking Bonuses is Bubble Yet to Burst “Even after receiving billions in government money to rescue the industry, whose bonus culture has been nailed as one of the causes of the crisis of 2008, the bankers have slipped right back into their old ways. And yet the one lesson we can draw from the last year is that all bubbles burst eventually. The bonus juggernaut is staying afloat on a wave of cheap money and taxpayer support. That will be withdrawn one day, and the fallout will be huge.”
Sotheby’s Sees Bottom for Art Market After Quarterly Profit Declines 87% [17]