I should seed a comment here.  Since i get paid in both dollars and euros, i follow the currency exchange.  There have been many times where i've seen currencies fall or rise by 20 or even fifty cents in a day, though rarely, but i have never seen the dollar drop $1.50 in an hour at the end of the trading day.

Hedgers are having a field day, but somehow i know; people are getting hurt.

i'm very thankful i have the work i have, and my trade is analysis and engineering (OK, M&A strategy included), but tonight there's an emotional override.

Crazy Horse coined a Lakota word, Itanka, which loosely translates to: My People First.  Keep your eyes wide, my friends.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

Here's who gets hurt: Almost Half of SoCal House Sales are Foreclosure Resales (via Calculated Risk).

Almost half.  Think about that.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

I'm in pretty good shape here too - I have a solid list of contacts in silicon valley now.

I'm going to have to ply your brain on who I can work for in the wind industry. I've been a mixed-signal semiconductor test engineer for about eight years. I'm willing to go back if I need to and can, but I like me some wind turbines.

you are the media you consume.

... in some engineering disciplines and more recently some Grad School business and experience in finance in Hong Kong get into the sustainable energy field?


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

The house we sold in Nov. 2005 in Northridge, CA would now be worth about 65% of what we got.  Fortunately for the buyer I don't think they plan on moving and both husband and wife had good jobs, at least a year ago.  There was not much run up in prices in Arkansas and our present house might be worth more than we paid (cash) for it.  Wish I could say the same for my savings.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

...Note the scale of the following store closings across America in recent weeks:
Ann Taylor closing 117 stores nationwide.
Eddie Bauer to close more stores after closing 27 stores in the first quarter.
Cache, a women's retailer is closing 20 to 23 stores this year.
Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug, Catherines closing 150 stores nationwide
Talbots, J. Jill closing stores. Talbots will close all 78 of its kids and men's stores plus another 22 underperforming stores. The 22 stores will be a mix of Talbots women's and J. Jill.
Gap Inc. closing 85 stores
Foot Locker to close 140 stores
Wickes Furniture is going out of business and closing all of its stores. The 37-year-old retailer that targets middle-income customers, filed for bankruptcy protection last month.
Levitz - the furniture retailer, announced it was going out of business and closing all 76 of its stores in December. The retailer dates back to 1910.
Zales, Piercing Pagoda plans to close 82 stores by July 31 followed by closing another 23 underperforming stores.
Disney Store owner has the right to close 98 stores.
Home Depot store closings 15 of them amid a slumping US economy and housing market. The move will affect 1,300 employees. It is the first time the world's largest home improvement store chain has ever closed a flagship store.
CompUSA (CLOSED).
Macy's - 9 stores closed
Movie Gallery - video rental company plans to close 400 of 3,500 Movie Gallery and Hollywood Video stores in addition to the 520 locations the video rental chain closed last fall as part of bankruptcy.
Pacific Sunwear - 153 Demo stores closing
Pep Boys - 33 stores of auto parts supplier closing
Sprint Nextel - 125 retail locations  to close with 4,000 employees following 5,000 layoffs last year.
J. C. Penney, Lowe's and Office Depot are all scaling back
Ethan Allen Interiors:  plans to close 12 of 300  stores to cut costs.
Wilsons the Leather Experts - closing 158 stores
Bombay Company: to close all 384 U.S.-based Bombay Company stores.
Dillard's Inc. will close another six stores this year.

For anyone familiar with American shopping malls and retailing, this represents a staggering part of the daily economic life of the nation, from furniture stores to clothing to video rentals to leather.
...The process has only begun and neither major party Presidential candidate has dared to mention this on the ground economic reality, because they evidently have no solutions to offer that would not jeopardize their campaign finances. Obama is tied to not only Pritzker but also to Omaha billionaire, Warren Buffett and George Soros. McCain depends on the traditional money contributions of the Republican Party which demand permanent tax reform for highest income earners and a pro-bank laissez faire treatment of millions of homeowners facing home foreclosure and asset seizure by banks.
...Hundreds of thousands of real estate brokers, small and large bankers, furniture workers and salespeople, and construction workers are unable to find work. Jobs are being cut wholesale and those working are often on reduced hours. Car sales in June plunged by 28% for Ford, 18% for General Motors and even 21% for Toyota which will mean more layoffs in coming weeks. This will be the next wave of unemployment.
...By Williams' calculations the US economy first entered recession, defined as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth, at the end of 2006. Ever since, the recession has deepened, dramatically so in the past 12 months. Little known is the fact that the Labor Department also publishes six different unemployment statistics from U1, U2 through to U6 being the most comprehensive. The reported "official unemployment" is the very narrowly defined U3 which stands at 5.5%. However, as Williams notes, U6 is the real measure and that officially shows 9.7% unemployed. His calculations put the figure at 13.7% actually unemployed and seeking work.
...The Arizona homebuilder continued, "Today nobody is building. Unsold home inventories are triple that of 2003. Banks no longer give easy credit for home buyers. Many realtors I know have gone two years without selling a home. Empty storefronts are becoming common. In many areas unemployment among construction trades people is 50% or more. Tens of thousands of illegal Mexicans who did most of the manual labor have returned to Mexico to find work. What now? Well, I do handyman projects of all sorts, big or small and make about 70-90% of what it takes to survive with a family of a wife and three young children. My savings make up the rest. That can't go on for too much longer. We went from affluent and comfortable to nervous and broke with diminished opportunities in just three years. We used to be the middle class."

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind...Albert Einstein

"African Americans are going to be really hard-hit. African Americans really benefited from the relaxation of credit standards, which made it possible for more of us to buy our first homes. As the credit market tightens, it's almost 'last-in, first-out.' ... We don't have generations of wealth in our community. When times are hard like this, we don't have the resources in our families to turn to, to get through this."

--  Jay Ward, CEO, 1st Friday.com

"Years of reckless deregulation of Wall Street are putting our retirement security in jeopardy. ... We have the lowest level of home equity since the Great Depression. We need to regulate the economy to protect workers and consumers. Until we have real change in our national priorities, we will continue to suffer from economic policies that put corporate giants before working families."

-- Art Pulaski Executive director, California Labor Federation, Oakland

"I believe the current economic crisis could lead to a greater number of people without health care insurance, which will put an additional strain on our already broken health care system."

-- Lloyd Dean, President/CEO, Catholic Healthcare West, San Francisco

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

Yes but none of you consider the drama that City Wives face. The whole piece is shocking and I can't really pick the most infuriating piece but:

"The size of a banker's pile of money is like the size of anything else in a macho environment: you need the biggest one to show that you are good at what you do. The pile does not necessarily reflect personal greed, it reflects the need to be the best banker. It reflects how long and hard you have worked. One man I know who worked at Lehman Brothers accumulated stock in the company for decades and never got around to diversifying his portfolio. This week he saw his net worth drop from a paper high of about $100 million (£56 million) some months ago to virtually nothing.

Nobody at Lehman Brothers will be making a pile of money any more, real or virtual. Nor do they have an income. Or an office, a BlackBerry, a plane ticket to an important meeting out of town, a driver waiting downstairs...

...And when they do get home, how long can they afford to stay if the rent is high or a mortgage outstanding? What about the builders remodelling the kitchen? The nanny and the cleaner? How will they pay for the private school? The private health insurance? The car, the clubs, the tennis lessons? Dining out, theatre, opera? Christmas presents, holidays, charities? The accumulating pile, which to a banker serves as a report card, means many different things to those who help to spend it and to those on whom it is spent."

This is not irony. Won't anyone think of the brokers?

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake