"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast"
-Oscar Wilde		 Brilliant at Breakfast title banner "The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself."
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"I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum." -- "Rowdy" Roddy Piper (1954-2015), They Live
Monday, May 05, 2008

Yard Sale Aftermath
Posted by Jill | 6:07 AM
Actual headline from the Bergen Record on Saturday(which interestingly does not appear on the paper's web site although the title in the URL remains "Job_loss_slows_to_a_healthy_trickle.html":

Job loss slows to a healthy trickle

The only trickle I see in a monthly job loss as opposed to job creation is that of the Bergen Record pissing down my back and telling me it's raining.

Saturday we held a yard sale in the rain, though the weather moderated in the afternoon. Of course this meant that Sunday would be beautiful, which it was, but we had a surprising number of intrepid shoppers considering the weather. It was even more surprising because I had only put up signs in two supermarkets and two street corners, we live at the dead end end of a dead end street, and we were competing with a town-wide garage sale in Paramus -- the shopping capital of the world. There was the usual assortment of collectors of military memorabilia, watches, and Matchbox cars, along with the ladies who want everything for fifty cents even an hour into the sale. I had priced everything to sell, and except for the clothes, which had been of necessity banished to the garage because of the rain and the rolling rack's annoying tendency to tip over, we got rid of a fair amount of stuff. The rest of the clothes will be donated to various and sundry organizations, and while the house is somewhat decluttered, we still have a ways to go.

What struck me, though, was the number of people who told us, clutching scraps of paper on which they had meticulously mapped out their weekly garage sale shopping, that with the price of gas they were even going to have to curtail their weekly hunts for dollar bargains in the form of other people's cast-offs. When limited income and the price of gasoline hits even the garage sale addicts, you know times are bad.

Everyone seems to be cutting back these days, even those of us who are lucky enough to still be employed. I walk around turning off lights, I combine errands when I'm out, yesterday I forfeited going to see Iron Man with Mr. Brilliant because he went to work in the morning for a couple of hours to set up some PCs and it didn't make any sense for me to take yet another car up to West Nyack to see a movie. Small changes to be sure, and when gas hits $4/gallon we may start talking about carpooling if I can change my hours, but it's the kind of thinking we haven't seen since the 1970's, when you'd have to get up at 4 AM and take the newspaper and a cup of coffee down to the corner gas station, where you'd wait in line till 6 when it opened to fill up your tank.

Meanwhile, retailers are dropping like flies, with Linens 'n' Things declaring bankruptcy last week, and Disney and Home Depot closing stores. This of course means that even the retail industry, the employer of last resort, is no longer able to absorb those whose jobs are being eliminated. And those involved in the business of transporting good to those retail stores and markets are getting clobbered:

When long-haul trucker Rusty Wade pulled his rig into a Missouri truck stop last week, he noticed something strange.

Of the 50 or so 18-wheelers parked in the lot, only five had their engines idling.

"That's only because of the high price of fuel," said Wade, an independent owner-operator from Brundidge, Ala. "A year ago there would only be about five that weren't running."

But with diesel fuel at more than $4.20 per gallon, Wade not only shuts his engine down to save money. He's also cut his average road speed from 60 to 56 mph.

Instead of hotels, he and his trucker wife, Mary, often sleep in their separate vehicles. And if a steady crosswind slows his pace and cuts his gas mileage, Wade will park his rig for five to six hours, if necessary, until it subsides.

"It's the only way I know to get more fuel mileage. Wind is my biggest enemy," he said."

In one form or another, Americans from coast to coast are following Wade's cost-cutting ways. Whether it's fewer restaurant visits, shorter road trips or skipping a haircut here and there, more consumers are looking for ways to stretch their dollars.

And with good reason. The soaring cost of core essentials like gasoline, food and housing now account for 57 cents of each consumer dollar spent. That leaves Americans with a record-low 43 cents out of each dollar for discretionary spending, according to new figures from Wachovia Economics Group.

That helps explains why new vehicle sales in the U.S. are at a 10-year low and why consumers are buying less clothing, shoes and big-ticket items like furniture and computers.


The well of home equity has been tapped dry, and so now we're seeing what happens when stagnant wages meet skyrocketing fuel prices.

Welcome to the 1970's. But if they remake Can't Stop the Music, I'm taking the gas:



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Wednesday, April 09, 2008

It's official now: George W. Bush is today's Herbert Hoover
Posted by Jill | 5:46 AM
As Herbert Hoover watched the Great Depression decimate the economic lives of Americans, he said:

Economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement. Economic wounds must be healed by the action of the cells of the economic body - the producers and consumers themselves.


In other words, "Go shopping", which was George W. Bush's admonition to Americans after 9/11, and it's his admonition these days as well. Where Bush differs from Hoover is that the 24 x 7 media cycle required him to do SOMETHING, hence his signing the legislation that is going to put this country further into debt and give Americans a few hundred bucks that most of them will use to pay off debt.

But in one respect, he's exactly like Hoover, and that is in his insistence that "prosperity is just around the corner", even as every indication is that our economic condition has only begun to swirl around the bowl before being completely devoured by the crapper:

one of the things that's going to happen with this pro-growth package is that not only is it going to affect small businesses like it's affected folks here, but 130 million families are going to get some money, their own money. And of course, the purpose of that is to help boost consumption. We're in a rough time right now; I'm confident we're going to come out of it. And when we do we're going to be a stronger -- stronger and better country.

Congress, of course, is contemplating different measures. And my only advice to them is, one, make sure you give the pro-growth package that was passed overwhelmingly a chance to work, see what the effects are. Secondly, anything they do should not hurt the economy. And thirdly, I, you know, I think we ought to, in terms of pro-growth packages, I think we ought to, again I repeat, give this one a chance to kick in. The experts tell me that this pro-growth package is going to add some -- you know, a percent, percent-and-a-half to the economy here in the latter part of this year. If that's the case, it's going to be an important part of recovering.


Not if they're going to bank it for when they lose their jobs or use it to help pay off credit card debt it won't:

The government's efforts to stimulate the U.S. economy by doling out checks to workers could backfire, according to two surveys asking consumers what they will do with their checks.

Nearly three-quarters of those asked on both surveys said they will either pay down debt or save any money sent to them as part of an economic stimulus package. The remaining quarter indicated they would spend the money, which is the goal of the program.

"Don't expect a big bang from the tax rebate if only about a quarter of that gets actually spent," said Michael Niemira, chief economist at the International Council of Shopping Centers, which commissioned a survey by Opinion Research.

"That's $25 billion, not $100 billion, and it's not clear how quickly it will be spent," he said. What's more, money that is directed toward lenders, be it to pay off mortgages or credit-card bills, is money that's already been spent. In other words, it's already done its job in helping the economy.
ICSC found that 46% of respondents said they would mostly pay off debt with the checks while another 28% said they would save the money. Twenty-six percent indicated they would spend it.

A separate survey from CCH Complete Tax, an online tax-preparation service, found that 47% would pay off debt with any rebate while 32% would save it. Only 21% would spend it.


Of course if you're one of those who has profited handsomely from seven years of Bushonomics and five years of war profiteering and the accompanying oil speculation, you're still sleeping well at night.

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