The End of the Peak Credit Era: 3 Quarters of Contracting Consumer Debt. Credit Card debt Contracts on a Year over Year Basis for First Time Ever.
There is a small silver lining in the unemployment report released on Friday. The positive side was the amount of people being fired slowed down in July (if you can call an annual rate of 3 million layoffs positive). However, there is still a major reluctance for firms to hire. We still have 26,000,000 unemployed and underemployed Americans in the country. Many have been relying on the plastic support of credit cards to ease the pain of the deep recession. Yet many are finding out that they are unable to have access to the once abundant lines of credit. It may be the case that we have witnessed peak consumer debt.
In Goldman Sachs We Trust: The Story of a $222 Stock going to $1 During the Great Depression.
As we look over the masters of the universe on Wall Street with Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs only two remain standing and no longer in their previous form. Yet in the midst of all this turmoil, the storied Goldman Sachs is still churning out the profits. A recent report by Bloomberg shows that Goldman Sachs made more than $100 million on trading revenue on get this, 46 separate days during the second quarter. This is rather unbelievable in the midst of the deepest recession since the Great Depression. The spotlight in recent months is squarely on the Wall Street giant and is probably not the kind of PR they are looking for.
The Ultimate Sucker’s Rally: Record Breaking 50 Percent Stock Market Rally in 5 Months: Extreme Market Volatility Occurs in Deep Economic Recessions and Depressions. From 676 to 1002.
Incredible. We have never seen a stock market rally like this in all the history for the S&P 500. In no other time has the S&P index run up nearly 50 percent in the matter of 5 months. Extreme market volatility is the ultimate sign of market distress. Think for a minute and ask yourself if 26,000,000 unemployed and underemployed Americans warrants a 50 percent rally? Ask yourself if $3 trillion in commercial real estate gearing up for implosion is reason for a massive jump in the stock market? I assure you that it does not warrant the current rally but massive unrelenting blind optimism, the same blind optimism that led to the bubble, is back in fashion.
FDIC Loan Report and Plan C: Nearly Half of the $7.7 trillion in Loans Outstanding at FDIC Insured Banks are in the form of Commercial Real Estate. USPS Contracting CRE Space. Drop in Restaurant Traffic.
The commercial real estate debacle is heating up. Although the market is cheering the better than expected drop in second quarter GDP, much of the reason for a less than spectacular fall came from the “G” in the equation, government spending. By the way, we revised Q1 GDP lower to -6.4 percent but not much interest was given to that minor detail. Who is to say we do not revise the advanced estimate for Q2 lower? Either way, the GDP release tells us that commercial real estate is on precipice of implosion. Is it any wonder that the U.S. Treasury is secretly working on a preemptive bailout program called Plan C gearing up taxpayers dollars for another toxic mortgage industry that has $3 trillion in loans? The failure of 2008’s residential mortgage bailout should tell you that bailing out CRE loans is a losing cause especially for taxpayers.