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alstry (35.68)

Does the WSJ think CAPs players are FOOLS????

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May 04, 2009 – Comments (5)

HEADLINE:

Fewer Banks Are Tightening Their Lending Standards

CONTENT:

When banks tighten standards, they make it harder to get a loan by toughening certain criteria, such as for income, cash flow or indebtedness. Banks were also a little less aggressive about demanding more for the loans they actually made. Some 80% said they toughened terms on loans -- for instance, increasing the interest rate -- when compared with some benchmark. That was down from the 95% that said in January they demanded a higher rate.

"A LITTLE LESS AGRESSIVE ABOUT DEMANDING MORE"???

Are you F...ing kidding me......seriously, how stupid does the Wall Street Journal think you are????

If 95% of the banks toughened terms in January......that is almost every blasted bank in America.  If 80% then followed up with ADDITIONAL tightening.....that is the vast majority of the practically all of the blasted banks that tightened in January.

And the WSJ is trying to portray that banks are being a little less agressive??????

How about this headline:

Most banks squeeze customers EVEN MORE after toughening standards in January.

And we are giving these pricks FREE TAXPAYER $$$$$$$$$

5 Comments – Post Your Own

#1) On May 04, 2009 at 11:24 PM, alstry (35.68) wrote:

For those of you that want some clarification on Unemployment stats:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - When economists tell us the current U.S. slump could never turn into another Great Depression, they all point to one thing: one of four Americans was out of work in the 1930s.

But since the definition of joblessness has changed over the years, this expert assessment might be too rosy.

As many as 25 percent of Americans were unemployed during the days of bread lines that symbolized the Depression, but that figure is more than three times the current 6.7 percent unemployment rate, the economists say. Even the most pessimistic estimates only foresee the rate rising barely above 10 percent.

"We are in a very, very different place than the U.S. economy was in the 1930s," James Poterba, president of the National Bureau of Economic Research told a recent Reuters Summit.

Or are we? Figures collected for Reuters by John Williams, from the electronic newsletter Shadowstats.com, suggest that, while we are not there yet, the comparison is not as outlandish as it might initially seem.

By his count, if unemployment were still tallied the way it was in the 1930s, today's jobless rate would be closer to 16.5 percent -- more than double the stated rate.

"I expect that unemployment in the current downturn, which will be particularly deep and protracted, eventually will rival, if not top, the 25 percent seen in the Great Depression," Williams said.

He and other critics have one particular sticking point with the current way of measuring unemployment: the treatment of discouraged workers.

Under President Lyndon Johnson, the government decided individuals who had stopped looking for work for more than a year were no longer part of the labor force. This dramatically decreased the jobless rate reported by the government.

"Both part-time workers wanting full-time work and discouraged workers tend to make the unemployment rate lower than it would otherwise be," says Robert Schenk, professor of economics at St. Joseph's College, Indiana.

The latest report, due on Friday, is expected to show another month of more than half a million job losses in December, and a jump in the unemployment rate to 7 percent.

However, some economists, including Kenneth Rogoff at Harvard University, now say joblessness could top 11 percent. Under Williams' methodology, that picture might look much more like the Great Depression.

(Reporting by Pedro Nicolaci da Costa; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE5077TM20090109

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#2) On May 05, 2009 at 12:23 AM, DonnerDiv (48.02) wrote:

Alstry:

Beating the gloom and doom drum every day is informative, if repetitive beyond belief.  But it offers CAPSters no concrete steps to survive/thrive in the coming equities market.  Beware/prepare is simply not sufficiently actionable to constitute a plan for us unelightened Fools.

Pay off your debts, save money...maybe buy a little precious metals, is pablum.

So I challenge you.  Expose your R/L portfolio.  Demonstrate the practical steps you have taken.  Your CAPS portfolio, as presently constituted, certainly is not the path to follow.  In a word, it's pathetic.

Mine is fully exposed.  DonnerDiv is designed to profit regardless of the outcome of the near and medium-term.  Enlighten us, expose your R/L approach to the coming Armageddon.

And way to go creaming TDRH.

Oh, to strengthen my street cred...!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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#3) On May 05, 2009 at 1:38 AM, KamranatUCLA (29.72) wrote:

Alstry

WSJ is an obsolete media and people know it unless you are a retarded person who came to this country from a retarded country (Mongolia?!) and have money and you might read WSJ.

Who reads that crap anymore? WSJ has ZERO integrity. It's a corporation like any other and of course they want to boost their stock prices so that the CEO and board of directors can buy better Jets. DOn't get me wrong, I am a Jet mechanic and I rely on their corrput behavior to make a living.

I am even surprised that you read WSJ...r u joking me??!! Why would you read such crap!!! They do and say anything to get us back on track to spend every penny we have so that they can go on with their American way of life.

Meanwhile 99% of Americans are living check by check, have very little or no savings, work like a dog, have no insurance or crappy insurance at best, decale bankruptcy, have broken homes because of financial problems (e.g. divorce, etc), have lower educational access, experience lower education (outdated books, and professors in universities), take no vacation (the only industrial nation whose population travels less that Iranian people for example).

The top 1% have broken the back of 99% of us and don't even know or care about it. I am a driving instrcutor and I picked up a 16 year old girl yesterday for a lesson. Her dad is a movie producer and they are renting a place in Brentwood for $165,000/month (how do I know that? we had to go to bank to get a cashiers check) . Why are they paying $165,000/month for rent? So that their old home can be renoviated.

I understand that surgeants, some lawyers, some CEOs should make more money than us because they are smarter and have better/longer education, but how much smarter are they? I make 12 bucks/hour....Some of these rich people make 1200/hour. ARE THEY 100TIMES SMARTER THAN ME?? Do they have 100 times more education than me? I have a UCLA BA degree and 2 Associate degrees and speak 4 languages...so I don't know. These rich people are pissing me off! They know how to get around tax codes, they know the insiders, to them 1 million is what is to me like 100 bucks.

Things will change, either naturally or with force. 

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#4) On May 05, 2009 at 8:46 AM, doctorpeer (79.41) wrote:

Several things.  First, everything is worth what the market will pay for it.  That includes wages.  If someone agrees to pay a movie producer enough to be able to afford 165k a month in rent, then their labor is worth that amount.  My labor is worth what someone offers me and I accept for it.  If I decline, and take another offer, then it's worth that amount.  If you have two jobs, and they pay differently, what is the reason for the discrepency?  Someone will pay differently for the work, and you accept.  If no one accepts a job at McDonald's for 8$ then they will either have no workers or they will increase the market price until someone accepts.  Plain and simple, of course.

Second, unemployment is calculated some way, and anyone with a brain will find their own data that serves their needs.  I don't care what the government's unemployment number is, as it's deflated by disincluding those who've stopped searching, disincluding those who've found lesser work, etc.  Perhaps KamranatUCLA is underemployed, but what does that tell me, the investor, about the overall economy?  Nothing.  I have a PhD and am dramatically underemployed.  Does this say the economy is broken that a man with Dr. before hes name is a manager at a retail store?  No.  I don't feel like spending 90 hours a week as an engineering manager pushing paperwork all day when I can spend far less time resources doing my current job doing something I enjoy for half the money.  I can go get the job that I'm qualified for, the one that would say the economy has one less *underemployed* person, but I don't want that job.  It sucks.  So, unemployment numbers mean very little on their face.

Last, doom and gloom is lame.  There's plenty of money to be made even in a downturn.  At the least, if you believe the universe is melting down, sell short and cover when you think it's hit the bottom.  Easy.  Either way, there is always momentum in investing.  Read the charts.  There is alot of money to be made inside the numbers, no matter if the market or a single stock is up or down.  Everything is worth what someone will pay for it.

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#5) On May 05, 2009 at 9:08 AM, rd80 (99.11) wrote:

And we are giving these pricks FREE TAXPAYER $$$$$$$$$

No, we're not giving them free taxpayer $$$$.  I opposed TARP and still think it was a mistake, but the money wasn't free.  Cheap maybe, but not free.

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