Recent comments

  • I put some money into GM and Smurfit Stone and I'm riding out the storm right now. I expect that as soon as GM turns a profit (which I expect next year) the price will jump back up to at least $20/share. Same with Smurfit Stone, they've got a new cardboard rate come in on October 1st, and that's likely to boost profits, so I think that the stock's undervalued.

    Reply to: NEWSFLASH: FDIC siezes Washington Mutual deposits and transfers to JP Morgan   16 years 1 month ago
  • The issue is, which plan and what will work.

    They need to get over themselves, sit down with a series of world leading economists and craft a plan.

    Or select from some of the plans that have been already vetted and plain pass them.

    Reply to: CNBC: McCain says this deal is dead to him   16 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • If some type of plan is not passed soon, this nation will suffer economic fallout like you won't believe. $700 million will be a drop in the bucket. I am anti-Wall Steet but now is not the time to play politics. Our economic structure is on the verge of collapse and the price we will eventually pay for not acting will be painful for generations. It is sad how we are represented in Washington. NO Leadership at all from either party.

    Reply to: CNBC: McCain says this deal is dead to him   16 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • GM

    was planning to do the manufacturing for the new Chevy Cruze that's going to be built in Lordstown, OH at Reynoso in northern Mexico. The UAW went on strike over this among other things.

    Reply to: Christmas in Congress - GM gets $25 Billion Loan   16 years 1 month ago
  • that in order to get companies to create jobs in the United States we have to go basically to 3rd world status? I'm so thrilled!

    I don't have the link now but I remember someone who was an expert in global supply chains posted on DK maybe 2 years ago, wrote a few posts, got 5 comments each, detailing how these global companies simply were not taking global supply chain costs into account at all.

    We should dig him out, get him to post over here!

    I didn't realize the Flint jobs where there at all. Last I had read almost the entire manufacturing of the Volt was going to Mexico so this is very good news.

    Reply to: Christmas in Congress - GM gets $25 Billion Loan   16 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • plant in Flint has been the plan for the better part of a week publicly. Shipping costs are going to be a consideration, and if there's a dollar devaluation (which seems likely) then we are probably going to lose the benefit of having oil priced in out own currency.

    Right now dollar drops (like against the euro) don't have an independent effect on the price of oil, because it's priced in dollars. But if the dollar drops by 25% against the euro, and oil's being billed in euros, then the dollar price of oil goes up 25%.

    Same thing with shipping costs. If the dollar loses value then it has an independent effect on prices. And a 25% devaluation isn't out of the question. That means that the roughly $5500 it costs to ship a standard container from Shanghai to San Diego goes up to almost $6900.

    You can fit maybe 23 engines in a standard container, so that means the shipping cost is about $300 per engine. And with a general dollar devaluation that's likely to be even higher. It changes the economics of production, but we've lost economies of scale, so the price is going to be higher than if we hadn't allowed our industrial capacity to got to shit.

    Reply to: Christmas in Congress - GM gets $25 Billion Loan   16 years 1 month ago
  • They were heavily involved in subprime and this one isn't politically correct...but they also courted illegal immigrants....now phony ids, no verifiable income (I'll leave the legality out of this story) ....giving out 200k+ home loans and 30k limit credit cards isn't so wise.

    I'm not so surprised by the guys at Chase....that said...

    Bank of Internet as far as I know is perfectly solvent and there are many, many small banks who have been responsible who also offer some excellent rates, interest rates, services.

    I have an account at WaMu and pulled out my money over 1 month ago. 10 days ago I spent all by $20 bucks via my ATM.

    Reply to: NEWSFLASH: FDIC siezes Washington Mutual deposits and transfers to JP Morgan   16 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • I told you the story about how I was talking to a personal banker at Chase about a month back about how I would go to WaMu if I wanted to get a good CD rate, and they told me that I should question the financial soundness of any bank making the offers WaMu has. I wonder if what's happening is that what's been an open secret in the banking community is finally hitting the MSM.

    Reply to: NEWSFLASH: FDIC siezes Washington Mutual deposits and transfers to JP Morgan   16 years 1 month ago
  • So much for putting itself on the auction block!

    This is HUGE! Aren't they the biggest bank ever to fail?

    Wow!

    Reply to: NEWSFLASH: FDIC siezes Washington Mutual deposits and transfers to JP Morgan   16 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • Come on McCain make up your mind already, which is. To bailout or not bailout. THAT is the question, and I guess he’s answered yes to both… interesting.. Perhaps he’s looking for that KEY differentiator.. guess the female VP wasn’t working out too well..

    Reply to: CNBC: McCain says this deal is dead to him   16 years 1 month ago
  • They just announced a new VOLT engine factory in Flint Michigan...now that makes this more than worth it.

    What I was concerned with is the actual loan was a "No strings attached" deal and last I had heard they were going to outsource the VOLT...

    so this is good, finally!

    Possibly no more Pets or Meat? for Flint?

    Reply to: Christmas in Congress - GM gets $25 Billion Loan   16 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • I'm glad to see that this passed.

    I honestly think that the Big Three need the money bad.

    But I think that the deal would have been better structured if it had been an equity deal instead of a loan. This amount of money is (likely, GM's around 5.6 billion market cap, Ford around 11.26 billion, and Chrysler is anyone's guess, because it's privately held) larger than the all the company's market cap.

    It would be a sweetheart deal, but if the government came in offering the money for a majority ownership stake achieved through the issuance of new stock diluting present ownership, then this could be a winner.

    Let's take GM. Let's say the the government gave GM $8.55 billion in exchange for the issuance of 570 million new shares of stock at $15/share (a 50% premium on current the current market), that would give the government a majority stake (50.17% to be exact)

    As recently as the start of 2004, GM had a market cap of around $27.7 billion (I'm calculating from their 2004 annual report)

    I think that it's entirely plausible that the company could get back to the level if they can retool to get the Volt, the Cruze and the rest on the road. Let's say 5 years of conservatorship.

    If that happened that would mean that the value of the government stake would be worth around $13.9 billion. A $5.35 billion increase in value. About a 63% ROI over 5 years. Or something around 10% annual return.

    Reply to: Christmas in Congress - GM gets $25 Billion Loan   16 years 1 month ago
  • Everyone else, Midtowng's blog posts.

    Yeah, I know McCain's plan looks completely like a fat cat bail out but the real question is will conservatives back something that has a prayer's chance of working and get over their deregulated selves?

    On Lou Dobbs he just reported that only 4 Congressional Republicans would support the current deal....

    hmmmm, sounds like a lot of publicity railroading!

    Reply to: Senator Shelby - Sanity Coming from a Conservative?   16 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • The Big Picture has a video interview on the bail out and it's quite strange...he's like "oh yeah it's necessary, oh yeah might not work, oh yeah, taxpayers will be soaked, oh we'll see.

    What? He wrote a book on the history of past bail outs, unfortunately (and assuredly bad for him on sales) it's not out yet.

    Reply to: Senator Shelby - Sanity Coming from a Conservative?   16 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • Budget - Ultimate Credit Card.

    Yeah, that's the issue is it appears these derivatives are a catch 22.

    Reply to: Senator Shelby - Sanity Coming from a Conservative?   16 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • Who could have predicted this? Oh, wait! I did

    The director of the Congressional Budget Office said yesterday that the proposed Wall Street bailout could actually worsen the current financial crisis.

    During testimony before the House Budget Committee, Peter R. Orszag -- Congress's top bookkeeper -- said the bailout could expose the way companies are stowing toxic assets on their books, leading to greater problems.

    "Ironically, the intervention could even trigger additional failures of large institutions, because some institutions may be carrying troubled assets on their books at inflated values," Orszag said in his testimony. "Establishing clearer prices might reveal those institutions to be insolvent."

    I hope everyone realizes now that Obama will only be a one-term president.

    Reply to: Senator Shelby - Sanity Coming from a Conservative?   16 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • LOL

    Well, who knows I mean it's quite clear many, many economists are saying this is a really bad idea and because the Democrats are not specific at all...

    one cannot reach consensus on what will actually work!

    I put up an Instapopulist where I heard so much conflicting information on what the specifics were....well, what can I say, the Democrats now look like mud.

    Their message is mud because they are not being specific and to make matters worse in these press updates they blast McCain saying he's just a big clog and I'm sorry, not that I agree with McCain or his pathetic plan the reality is he is a senior Senator here and they should not be blasting him in such a manner.

    Reply to: CNBC: McCain says this deal is dead to him   16 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • Interesting links on some grassroots efforts.

    I think you'll find a lot of support on this site to move back to a production economy. There is a series, Manufacturing Mondays, which reviews the latest weeks events in our ailing and ignored manufacturing sector and there are also a lot of Professionals on the site who agree, "making things and selling them" sure seems to work to make the US great and when the focus went away from that...the US is becoming not so great.

    Reply to: Why something should be done   16 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • He didn't say that but he might as well have.

    Check out his latest blog post and my out loud mumblings as I read were no shit!

    Also, check out Roubini. (middle column). He literally just wrote a complete policy proposal to solve the situation. I've scanned through it and I believe he is right. check it out (note how close it is to Hillary too).

    Reply to: Why something should be done   16 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • We're getting a lot of new folks posting comments, many repeated comments. That's good! This is a site to discuss what's going on.

    Maybe it's not realized but this is a community site versus a regular blog. That means if you register and log in, all of those letters you must type in to post a comment are gone and you do not go into a moderation queue to make sure you are a real human posting real opinions.

    Register folks! It's free, easy and we're just a bunch of regular folks like you, nothing evil like spam mail or anything is coming from this site.

    Reply to: China to US Banking system: "Good bye and good luck"   16 years 1 month ago
    EPer:

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