Posted on 02/03/2014 9:19:06 AM PST by John W
Disappointing factory data sent stocks falling hard on Monday, with the Dow dropping over 200 points and extending losses after its worst monthly percentage drop since May 2012.
The markets had wavered ahead of the report from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) which said its index of national factory activity fell to 51.3 last month, to its lowest level since May 2013, from a recently revised 56.5 in December.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
Green shoots
They’ll try to get their hands on it somehow, I’m sure.
One of my “outs” would be to transfer it to “ira ready” metals.
I’ve second hand info that some of these places have assured customers that any attempt by the gov’t to confiscate these holdings would result in stall tactics on the part of the IRA management company with backdoor shipments to the customers while the stall was going on.
there were over 14 million manufacturing jobs in USA before 2009, now there are barely 12 million. That’s 2 million more people out of work (just factory related jobs) in the last 5 years.
(to be fair to Obama, there is also a long-term trend along these lines ... but “factory utilization rates” do NOT tell us anything about whether there are more or less real JOBS for real PEOPLE....)
Care to share what you've been doing "out of the market" for so long, and how you've been investing your money?
Would only be higher if anybody could hire more workers too...
Many companies, like mine, shed workers during the recession and modernized the plants. We are now producing more with less.
No need to hire more people with excess capacity. We are not volume constrained. We implemented LEAN in 2009 and are producing more product with less people than before the recession.
Thanks.
Time to cash out....
Sat nite Larry Kudlow said the DOW is going to 18,000, thinks the economy is gradually improving.
Last nite Bob Brinker told a lady who wanted a hedge to buy GLD which is backed in bullion. Not to hold coins. I don't think he, personally, thinks much of hedging in metals.
You've got a point. A lot are blaming the weather for the mess that is passing as the "economy".
The defunct Soviet Union blamed their "weather" for years and years of crop failures, yearly production shortfalls, and generations of unmet Five Year Plans.
I guess the cheerleaders for our nasty economy still imagine that old excuse still works.
I was thinking about the world response to bail out Greece AGAIN
U.S. manufacturing grew at a slower pace in January as new order growth plunged by the most in 33 years, while spending on construction projects barely rose in December.
"Combine that with the fact emerging market currencies continue to sell off, and things don't look too good for the market now," he said. "Somewhere between now and 1,700 (on the S&P) there's a big buying opportunity, but people need to see some stability in emerging currencies."
exactly right!
less workers.... (as an investor, automation is usually good news...yipee....I like it!.......But for American workers, especially during a Great Recession or Depression like today, automation brings on more and more unemployment...especially since many of the robots can now be imported from China and elsewhere...they used to mostly be built here....so even many of those jobs are now moved, moving overseas).
Gold is up...for now.
At one of our dinners, Milton recalled traveling to an Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: You dont understand. This is a jobs program. To which Milton replied: Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If its jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.
Funny thing is, the parent company is implementing it in a cookie cutter way. Keeping some positions that for business are not needed, and cutting some that are.
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