Der USA Bären-Thread

nun auch die "Waren-lose" Erholung?

Veröffentlichung der Zahlen zu den US-amerikanischen Lagerbeständen ("Business Inventories") für Juli 2009

aktuell:

Die US-amerikanischen Lagerbestände sind im Juli um 1,0 % zurückgegangen. Erwartet wurde ein Rückgang um -0,8 bis -1,2 %.

Heißt das dann es ist kein Rückgang?

Ihr wisst schon ... Mathe 2.Klasse und so ...

The economy remains weak and will face a big test next month when the government starts winding down its massive support programs, banking analyst Meredith Whitney told CNBC.

 

Despite avoiding a worst-case scenario, the economy continues to languish under weak job growth and home sales, Whitney said in a live interview.

"There's not a lot of new job creation going on on Main Street—and the liquidity to the consumer and small business is still contracting," she said. "And it's very difficult to get the engine moving without a lot of government support within that. So when you slowly wean government supports, that's going to be the test that I think everyone's going to be watching starting in October."

The Federal Reserve will wind down its aggressive buying of Treasurys next month. At the same time, President Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner have said recently that the government is looking more broadly at getting out of the bailout programs used to prop up the financial system after its 2008 collapse.

Though economists generally believe the US is pulling out of a recession, unemployment remains high and most economic indicators are still showing only modest improvement.

As the economy retools, there are few areas that show any promise of generating big new jobs numbers, Whitney said. A potential complication is a leaning from the White House towards trade protectionism, most recently expressed in a trade dispute with China over tire imports.

 

"Where do the jobs come from?" she said. "Surely if this country becomes massively protectionist we'll build up manufacturing capability. Is that necessarily a good thing? No. There's not a lot of free capital for small business innovation—small business, period—and that's half the workforce."

In real estate, she said sales numbers have been boosted by foreclosures and other distressed sales, but high-end home sales continue to languish.

"The high-dollar units have not sold. So people are still shopping at Wal-Mart . People will go after value," Whitney said. "Home ownership is still less attractive to the average consumer."

meint aber, er müsse noch lange (womöglich mehrere Jahre) darauf warten.

In Melvins Artikel finden sich auch interessante Zahlen zu Option-ARMs. Bei  88 % dieser riskanten Hypotheken-Finanzierungen gab es bislang noch keinen Reset. Die Quote Kreditwert zu Hauswert ist bei den Option-ARMs von anfangs 79 % auf derzeit 126 % hochgeschnellt, so dass viele Schuldner bei Auslaufen des Vertrags (bzw. beim Reset) wegen "negative equity" den Schlüssel bei der Bank auf den Tisch legen (und verschwinden) werden. Die Banken werden so mit überteuert gekauften Häusern überschwemmt und bleiben auf den den Verlusten sitzen. Die Welle der Zwangsversteigerungen ist noch längst nicht vorbei.

 

---

 

Investing
Waiting for the Banks to Bottom
By Tim Melvin
RealMoney.com Contributor
9/15/2009 9:50 AM EDT


I make no secret of the fact that I am waiting not so very patiently for the chance to be over-invested in small bank stocks. The last time we had a banking crisis in this country, small bank stocks fell to ridiculous valuations, and the next five years were profitable and an enormous amount of fun.

It was a great time to be a value investor. I was happily buying bank stocks at half of book and selling them in a takeover a few years later at multiples of tangible book value that eventually reached a level of three times at the height of the merger wave. I think it will be the same in the aftermath of the current bank meltdown.

But the time to buy is not here yet. I offer no opinion on the short-term trading of bank stocks, especially the larger ones. That is not what I do, and I cannot offer you any particular insight on that type of trading. However, as a long-term value investor, I can tell you that small banks have not bottomed. Until the value of the underlying collateral of the loan portfolios stabilizes, their earnings and balance sheets remain threatened.

The collateral on the vast majority of these loans is real estate. Real estate is not at a bottom, in my opinion. There are just too many problems facing the market for prices to bottom. We have talked about the two most obvious: Foreclosures and unemployment are both still rising, and they are a serious threat to the housing market. We are seeing sings of continued deterioration at the high end of the market even on A-rated loans. Yes, there have been some signs of improvement on the low end, but when it comes to housing prices, "less bad" is not "good." We have a ways to go to get there, in my opinion.

There are a few other problems that face the small bank stocks. The first of these has to do with option-ARM loans and their effect on real estate prices. According to Fitch, 88% of the outstanding option-ARM loans have not yet experienced a reset event. An astonishing 94% of those borrowers are making the minimum option payment.

In spite of this, 46% of these loans are at least 30 days delinquent even though only 12% of them have experienced the payment shock of a reset even. The combination of minimum payments and falling home values has taken average loan-to-value from 79% at origination to 126% today. A lot of these homes are going to come onto the market as distressed foreclosure sales as the combination of payment shock and negative equity forces homeowners to just hand over the keys. There is no prospect of a workout, since many cannot even begin to afford the real payments on the home.

Banks face another significant threat for the next couple of years. The FDIC fund is stretched to its limits. At the end of the quarter, the FDIC's insurance fund had about $10 billion left after the wave of failures in the first half of the year. Since the start of the current quarter, there have been 39 more bank failures, and the estimated losses pretty much eat up the balance.

The FDIC needs to raise $54 billion to get back to the mandated 1.15% of insured deposits, and it only has two choices. One is to borrow it from the Treasury under the borrowing authority granted in recent legislation. But Shelia Blair opposes that option, and it is a little vague how the FDIC would ever be able to repay the money.

The second choice is an assessment on banks of 5 basis points a quarter of assets minus Tier 1 capital. That would amount to 20 basis points of tax levied on the banks a year. That tax is on total assets, not on tangible equity. Raising the $54 billion needed to meet the 1.15% mandated level would require fees that add up to right around 25% of tangible equity. That represents a huge hit to earnings, especially at the smaller institutions.

Right now we have a situation in small bank stocks where the cheap ones are not healthy enough and the healthy ones are not yet cheap enough. We are getting there. I see banks I am anxious to buy, such as Shore Bancshares (SHBI) here on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and Towne Bank (TOWN) in Southeastern Virginia, approaching the cheap-enough-to-buy levels. I think after the next collateral shock and subsequent capital raise, we will be at the levels needed to back up the truck on these stocks.

If nothing else, following the small bank stocks is teaching me the virtue and hopefully the profitability of patience.

 

Best Buy ist der größte Elektronik-Einzelhändler in USA. Grund für die Gewinnrückgänge ist schwache Nachfrage.


Sept. 15, 2009, 10:40 a.m. EDT
Best Buy's profit drops, missing mark

By Andria Cheng, MarketWatch


NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Best Buy Co., the largest U.S. electronics chain, said Tuesday that its second-quarter profit dropped 22%, hurt by increased promotions and declining U.S. demand for video games, digital cameras and music CDs.

Net income fell to $158 million, or 37 cents a share, from $202 million, or 48 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue in the quarter ended Aug. 29 rose 12% to $11 billion from $9.8 billion, helped by the inclusion of Best Buy Europe and the opening of 170 net new stores in the past 12 months.

www.marketwatch.com/story/...ng-mark-2009-09-15?dist=bigcharts

Zum Vergleich: US-M3b liegt aktuell bei rund 14 Billionen USD, die Umlaufgeldmenge bei rund 1 Billion. M3 + Credit + Government Debt beläuft sich auf knapp 70 Billionen, das annualisierte US-GDP auf rund 14 Billionen, das globale GDP auf etwa 42 Billionen. (Quelle: BIS, IMF, nowandfutures.com)

Is The Commerce Department Fabricating Its August Sales Numbers?

The headlines for the Government-reported retail sales number loudly announced that "retail sales jumped 2.7% in August."  Remember that this is a month to month number, so the August sales number is being compared to the July sales reading.  NOT in the headline everyone sees:  sales for August 2009 were down 5.3% compared to August 2008.  So much for the green shoots of sales growth. 

At first blush, this number for August is not very good when you consider that the Government spent close to $3 billion of your money in August trying to stimulate automobile sales.  This worked to some degree, as auto sales for August rose 10.6%.  That's compared to July.   The other large component of the 2.7% sales increase was the price of gasoline.  In the second half of July, the price of gasoline jumped over 8%.  The Government number does not strip out this inflation effect from its headline-reported number.

But the biggest question I have about the Government's number, and its ubiquitious - if not nefarious - "seasonal adjustment," is that the reported number for August in NO WAY is consistent with the sales numbers reported by big retailers for August OR the rapidly declining trend in consumer credit, which was down over 10% in July (not yet tabulated for August).  The news release I read reported "busy shopping malls in August."  Here are big mall retailer numbers for August - you decide:

Abercrombie and Fitch -23%, GAP -2%, Hot Topic -7%, JC Penney -5.6%, Limited -4.6%,
Macy's -8.5%, Neiman Marcus -15.3%, Nordstrom -3%, Saks -18.2%

Get the picture?  And we don't have the consumer credit number for August, consumer credit outstanding has been dropping like a rock since the beginning of 2009.  Here's chart that shows consumer credit vs. consumer spending (click to enlarge):

I seriously doubt that the August retail sales numbers, in reality, showed anywhere near the amount growth as reported by the Government's Commerce Department.  What I would like see is how the Commerce Department calculates its seasonal adjustments AND the numbers being fed into that calculation.  As it stands now, based on the evidence I presented above, I would say that the Government is full of you know what.

http://truthingold.blogspot.com/2009/09/is-commerce-department-fabricating-its.html

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Tuesday that he thinks the recession likely has ended but a recovery will be moderate at best.

 

"From a technical perspective, the recession is very likely over," Bernanke told questioners at a Brookings Institution conference, but he cautioned it may not feel like it's over.

"I've seen some agreement among the forecasting community that we are in a recovery," Bernanke said, "But the general view of most forecasters is that the pace of growth in 2010 will be moderate."

Bernanke also said Tuesday that a U.S. "shadow banking system" that lets banks package loans into securities is likely to be smaller and simpler when the current crisis eases.

 

"I imagine that the shadow banking system at least in the medium-term, will not return to the size it was before," Bernanke said. "The changes in accounting standards, the regulatory standards, will reduce the benefits to off-balance sheet type of lending by banks."

Geithner macht Ernst

15.09.2009 , 18:42 Uhr von Rolf Benders

http://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/international/...ht-ernst;2457173

Krise sei Dank!

Ein bemerkenswerter Artikel: www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/0,1518,649182,00.html

U.S. credit card defaults up, signal consumer stress

Bank of America Corp and Citigroup Inc customers defaulted on their credit card debts in August at the highest rates since the onset of the recession, a sign that the banks' consumer lending woes are far from over.
The trend was echoed among most other major credit card issuers, dashing optimism sparked when many banks and specialty finance companies reported lower default rates for July.

"People have gotten very bullish with the July data, and (the August data) raises the question about how fast the consumer will get better," said Scott Valentin, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets. "People were assuming the pace would be pretty rapid, and this maybe slows the pace down."

www.reuters.com/article/businessNews/...;feedName=businessNews

Im Chart des Finanzwertes E-Trade fallen seit etlichen Monaten relativ enorme Volumenspikes auf - und die Preiskurve bewegte sich kaum vom Fleck. Dies ist mE ein charakteristisches Merkmal von "Zombisierung".

Die Bären hier im Thread sind tot

sie bereiten sich auf das kommende Volksfest "Dr Bär isch los" vor ;-))

Berns neuer Bärenpark öffnet

Mit einem Volksfest wird am 25. Oktober der neue Bärenpark in der Schweizer Hauptstadt Bern eingeweiht. Darauf weist die Organisation Schweiz Tourismus in Frankfurt hin.

Zum Volksfest unter dem Motto "Dr Bär isch los" werden etwa 30.000 Besucher erwartet. Zum Programm gehört ein "Bäremärit" genannter Markt mit Kunsthandwerk und Spezialitäten aus der Region. Dass die Stadt Bern lebende Exemplare ihres Wappentieres innerhalb ihrer Mauern hält, ist eine Tradition, die laut Schweiz Tourismus auf das Jahr 1513 zurückgeht.

www.n-tv.de/reise/...uer-Baerenpark-oeffnet-article507366.html

Ausgabe vom 16.09.2009 7:56 Uhr

Inflation hat Tief erreicht

Der treibende Faktor hinter dem Rückgang der Teuerung in der Eurozone über die vergangenen Monate war der Kollaps der Rohstoffpreise im vergangenen Jahr. Die positiven Effekte aus dieser Richtung laufen nun aber aus. Dies hat sich bei der bereits veröffentlichten vorläufigen Schätzung zu den Euroland-Konsumentenpreisen im August mit einem Anstieg der Jahresrate auf -0,2 % bemerkbar gemacht (Juli: -0,7 %). Die angeführten -0,7 % dürften dann auch den Tiefpunkt im aktuellen Inflationszyklus repräsentieren. In den kommenden Monaten ist mit einer Rückkehr der Jahresrate in den positiven Bereich zu rechnen, die Teuerung dürfte sich in den kommenden Quartalen aber im Bereich von nur rund 1 % einpendeln. So hat der zugrundeliegende Inflationsdruck bis zuletzt sukzessive nachgelassen. Darauf weist die Kernrate der Inflation hin, die sich immer weiter zurückbildet. Die von der Konjunkturschwäche der letzten Monate ausgehenden preisdämpfenden Effekte entfalten erst jetzt ihre volle Wirkungskraft, so dass nicht mit einer schnellen Trendwende zu rechnen ist. Auch in den USA dürfte die allgemeine Rate der Teuerung mit -2,1 % gg. Vj. im Juli den Tiefpunkt durchschritten haben und sich - ähnlich wie in der Eurozone - Schritt für Schritt wieder dem positiven Bereich annähern. Im August sollte ein Zuwachs im Monatsvergleich um 0,4 % erzielt worden sein, hier machen sich die angezogenen Benzinpreise im Beobachtungszeitraum bemerkbar, die die Jahresrate auf -1,6 % treiben dürfte. Die Kernrate dürfte in der gleichen Zeitspanne lediglich um 0,1 % gg. Vm. zulegen. Ein Grund für die geringe Preissetzungsmacht der USUnternehmen ist die niedrige Kapazitätsauslastung. Diese dürfte mit 68,1 % im Juni zwar auch ihr Tief gesehen haben. Der weiterhin niedrige Auslastungsgrad von wohl nur 69,1 % im August hindert die Unternehmen aber weiter an massiven Preiserhöhungen. Grund für die wieder anziehende Auslastung ist das von uns erwartete Plus der Industrieproduktion um 0,7 % gg. Vm. im August.

Quelle: HSBC Trinkaus

www.godmode-trader.de/nachricht/...hen-Euro,a1890397,b605.html

sehr interessant und gut recherchiert. was ich bisher nur vermutet habe, wird hier eindrucksvoll belegt. aber wahrscheinlich keine news für profi bären wie euch

members.ebay.de/ws/...PI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=nissefrau
Es fällt mir nicht leicht diesen Weg zu gehen, aber ich bin verzweifelt genug, es zu tun ... Ich bitte um HILFE

Durch längere Arbeitslosigkeit bin ich in finanziellen Schwierigkeiten ...

Ich habe zwar endlich wieder eine Arbeit gefunden... nicht im Büro, was ich gelernt habe, sondern an einer Pack-Linie, aber mit 55 Jahren doch wenigstens wieder eine Arbeit für ein paar Euro in der Stunde...

...was aber nicht reicht, um meine Schulden abzubezahlen und die laufenden Rechnungen zahlen zu können. Privat-Insolvenz möchte ich nicht anmelden; ich will keinen Luxus, ich will nur überleben... Ich kämpfe um meine Existenz.

Da ich nicht 1 Menschen habe, der mir finanziell helfen kann, brauche ich die Hilfe von mehr als 7000 Menschen aus der Ebay Gemeinde, die bereit sind mindestens einen Euro plus Porto auszugeben...

Die Bank gibt mir Druck... wenn ich monatlich nicht genügend Geld einzahle, sperren sie mein Konto... und überweisen jetzt schon meine Rechnungen / Miete nur noch auf Bitten; somit hat sich der Druck noch erhöht ...

Wenn jemand noch Tipps für mich hat, Geld zusätzlich zu verdienen, nur seriöse, bin ich dankbar ...



Gestern erhielt ich ein Schreiben,wo jemand mit Ansprüchen aber ohne Geld dringend  eine Wohnung sucht,arbeitslos mit Sperre ....

auch sehr viele "Betrüger" unterwegs. Manche nutzen die Mitleidsmasche auch um Schrott an den Mann/Frau zu bringen. Nachfolger der Zeitschriftendruckerkolonnen?

was wenn die Chinesen sich nu gegen die USA in einen Handelkrieg begeben und den Hühnerimport verbieten,was machen sie dann nur mit ihrem Leibgericht gebratene Hühnerfüsse? deswegen besteht da gar keine Gefahr sagt ein Hühnerspezialist in der New York Times....
China is threatening to cut off imports of American chicken, but poultry experts have at least one reason to suspect it may be an empty threat: Many Chinese consumers would miss the scrumptious chicken feet they get from this country.“We have these jumbo, juicy paws the Chinese really love,” said Paul W. Aho, a poultry economist and consultant, “so I don’t think they are going to cut us off.”

Chicken exports were thrust to the forefront of American-Chinese trade tensions on Sunday when China took steps to retaliate for President Obama’s decision to levy tariffs on Chinese tires. The Chinese announced that they were considering import taxes on automotive products and chicken meat, a development that some trade experts feared could escalate.

American executives expressed concern about losing what recently has become the largest export market for their chickens, one that is expanding rapidly as the Chinese population grows more prosperous. But the executives also expressed relief that, so far, Chinese importers have told them to keep the feet and wings coming.........www.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/business/global/16chickens.html?em

dürfte es im gegenwärtigen Boom gar keinen Bärenthread mehr geben....grins.

blogs.reuters.com/rolfe-winkler/2009/09/15/...p-the-big-banks/

39% aller Bankeinlagen liegen bei diesen Banken.Insbesondere  Citigroup, Chase and Bank of America haben Investmentoperationen die unglaublich complex und sehr gefährlich sind.Was ist mit Glass-Seagall oder dem Antitrust-Law,um sie einzuschränken??"too big to fail-"Banken sollten zerschlagen werden .


President Barack Obama pledged on Monday “to put an end to the idea that some firms are ‘too big to fail.’”  Though he outlined some worthy prescriptions, he failed to face up to the very size and power of the financial institutions that makes “too big to fail” possible.

For the big have gotten even bigger since the start of the financial crisis. At the end of 2007, the Big Four banks — Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo — held 32 percent of all deposits in FDIC-insured institutions. As of June 30th, it was 39 percent.

In total, they had $3.8 trillion worth of deposits as of June 30th. Compare that figure to the FDIC’s Deposit Insurance Fund, which showed a balance of just $10.4 billion on the same date.

The FDIC has been the most effective regulator since the onset of the crisis, closing down failed banks in order to limit risk to taxpayers. But its resources are woefully inadequate to deal with the largest institutions. (I am excluding the $500 billion credit line it has at Treasury; those are taxpayers’ resources, not FDIC’s.)

And that’s just the commercial banking side. These banks — especially Citigroup, Chase and Bank of America — have huge investment banking operations that are maddeningly complex and, systemically-speaking, very dangerous.

Obama certainly recognizes the problem — “the system as a whole isn’t safe until it is safe from the failure of any individual institution.”But his recommendations — more stringent capital requirements, stronger rules and a “resolution authority” to cope with systemic meltdowns — won’t solve it once and for all.

To be sure, higher capital requirements are a very good start. They not only give banks a bigger cushion to deal with losses, they also limit the amount of credit they can flush through the system. This is a good thing: Too much credit is the air that inflates dangerous asset bubbles in the first place.

But higher capital requirements won’t make too-big-to-fail banks much smaller. At best they will penalize the biggest banks by reducing their returns on equity, giving smaller banks a leg up competitively.
A tax on assets is another good idea to discourage growth, but what we need is more aggressive action to force shrinkage.

For instance, resurrecting a version of Glass-Steagall would be highly sensible. Commercial banks have no business using their federally-insured balance sheets to finance risky investment banking operations. The two functions should be split.
And what ever happened to anti-trust laws? Among them, Citigroup, Chase and Bank of America control two-thirds of the credit card market. That stranglehold gives them significant leverage vis-à-vis consumers.

Another issue is derivatives, which Obama didn’t really address.

Notional exposure still totals tens of trillions at the biggest banks. Sure, many of these positions offset one another, but that assumes the daisy chain won’t break. To insure market integrity, the biggest players in it all have to get an explicit “there will be no more Lehmans” guarantee.....

The only way to ensure we’ll never need them again is to eliminate too-big-to-fail banks. The fastest way to achieve that is to break them up.

wenn die großen Banken zerschlagen werden gibt es keine FED mehr. Wer soll dann das Papier bedrucken?

froh sein, dass schon über 90 Banken pleite sind. So werden die übrigen mächtiger und widerstandsfähiger.

Mortgage Applications Decrease in Latest MBA Weekly Survey

WASHINGTON, D.C. (September 16, 2009) — The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) today released its Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending September 11, 2009.  This week’s results include an adjustment to account for the Labor Day holiday. The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, decreased 8.6 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier.  On an unadjusted basis, the Index decreased 18.3 percent compared with the previous week and decreased 18.7 percent compared with the same week one year earlier.  

The Refinance Index, also adjusted for the holiday, decreased 7.4 percent from the previous week and the seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 10.3 percent to from one week earlier.

www.mbaa.org/NewsandMedia/PressCenter/70358.htm

Letzte Woche gab es noch einen Anstieg um 17 %, der an der Börse mächtig gefeiert wurde:

www.marketwatch.com/story/...-jump-17-last-week-mba-2009-09-09

Jetzt geht es 8,6 % runter, nicht saisonal bereinigt sogar um 18,3 %. Die Börse wird das vermutlich ignorieren, da es sich um eine schlechte News handelt.

www.marketwatch.com/story/...-fell-86-last-week-mba-2009-09-16

Über's Jahr lag der Rückgang bei den Hypoanträgen bei 18,7 % (bzw. -18,7 %, für Katjuscha ;-))