Archive for 2007

It’s amazing what the UAW can accomplish through “negotiations”.

Ford Motor Co (F.N) agreed to keep three U.S. plants open and delay closing another two as part of a tentative four-year contract with the United Auto Workers unanimously endorsed by union officials on Monday.

The endorsement sets the stage for a ratification vote by some 58,000 UAW-represented Ford workers expected to conclude by next Monday without the kind of deep-seated division that marked debate over the union’s earlier deal with Chrysler LLC.

Under the tentative deal, Ford pulled back from a plan to close six U.S. facilities that it had not yet identified, sparing three U.S. assembly plants from closure.

I guess the UAW got a little skittish after Chysler announced they were cutting jobs and scrapping models right after their contract was ratified. I wonder if Ford will just close different plants, or cut jobs at them, like Chrysler? It wouldn’t surprise me.

Ouch. Their net income dropped from $5.01 billion to $3.72 billion. How ever will they survive with only $3.72 billion in net income?

Chevron Corp’s (CVX.N) third-quarter earnings fell more than 25 percent, missing analyst estimates on sharply lower profits from gasoline production.

Margins to produce gasoline and other refined products plummeted during the quarter as prices for the fuel did not keep pace with surging crude oil prices, dragging down earnings across the industry.

Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N), BP Plc (BP.L), Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSa.L), and ConocoPhillips (COP.N) all posted lower third-quarter earnings despite the sky-high oil prices.

Chevron, the No. 2 U.S. oil company, said on Friday its net income dropped to $3.72 billion, or $1.75 a share, from $5.01 billion, or $2.29 a share, a year earlier.

Excluding about $400 million of one-time items, it posted earnings of about $1.94 a share, coming in behind the average analyst estimate of $2.07 a share.

Revenue in the quarter rose to $55.17 billion from $54.21 billion.

Maybe, just maybe, if they weren’t gouging the customers so bad before the price of oil went through the roof, they wouldn’t be crying about the lower earnings now.

Just two days ago, analysts were remarking about how bad our economy is (once again), because of the market tanking over 300 points.

But now, things are looking bright again because the economy added double the number of jobs that those same analysts had predicted.

Employers added twice as many new jobs to their ranks than expected in October, an encouraging sign that the nation’s employment climate is not cracking under the stress of a deepening housing slump.

The Labor Department reported Friday that the nation’s payrolls grew by a net 166,000, the most in five months. The unemployment rate didn’t budge at 4.7 percent, a figure considered low by historical standards.

Job gains were logged at schools, hospitals, bars and restaurants, hotels and motels, temporary-help firms, legal services, accounting and bookkeeping companies, the government and other places.

We’ve had 50 straight months of uninterrupted job growth, which sure doesn’t sound like a “bad economy” to me. Then again, no one has sneezed today.

Oh boy, here we go again, all doom and gloom about the economy…

Wall Street plunged Thursday, pulling the Dow Jones industrial average down more than 360 points as investors found themselves confronted by two uncomfortable prospects: an end to interest rate cuts and a slowing economy.

Mindful of a warning from the Federal Reserve Wednesday about inflation, the market nervously watched the price of oil, which passed $96 a barrel overnight for the first time before dipping on profit- taking. The Fed, which cut interest rates a quarter point, said in a statement that inflation remained a concern, and oil’s ascent to another record raised the possibility not only that the Fed might stop cutting rates, but that it might even consider raising them if inflation accelerates.

Meanwhile, Wall Street also had to contend with concerns about a slowing economy. A report from the Commerce Department indicated consumers scaled back their spending in September as worries mounted about a worsening housing market and further credit market turmoil. And a trade group reported that manufacturing in the U.S. grew in October at the weakest pace since March.

We all knew oil was going to hit $100 a barrel soon enough, so why are they all bent out of shape about that now? It’s not like they didn’t know it was coming. And what about the slowdown of the economy? Haven’t they noticed that the economy always slows down in the fall?

Today was just another example of hype affecting the economy rather than true economic factors. You’ll see. The market will rally in a day or two and no one will mention today’s drop or even reference it when that happens.

I love Burt’s Bees lip balm. It’s an awesome product. I dunno though. Mentioning Clorox in the same sentence with Burt’s Bees just stings. Really bad.

Clorox Co (CLX.N) on Wednesday posted a quarterly profit that was little changed but beat analysts’ estimates, and said it will acquire privately owned Burt’s Bees to enter into the natural personal care business.

Clorox said it will buy Burt’s Bees, which makes lip balm, soaps, and other products from natural ingredients, for $925 million net of an additional $25 million for expected tax benefits.

Excluding one-time acquisition costs, Clorox expects the deal to be neutral to earnings in fiscal 2008 and add “solidly” to earnings in fiscal 2009.

Now there’s a company where I do not want to see cross-product advertising. Ha!

I love articles like this. Read the first paragraph…

Fourteen children working in a textiles factory have been rescued after media reports said an Indian clothing supplier to US retailer Gap was employing underage workers, an activist said Tuesday.

Police carried out the raid after alerts by a non-profit organisation which acted on a British newspaper report that Indian children as young as 10 were working for a Gap supplier in New Delhi.

Since most people read nothing more than the headlines and one or two paragraphs of a news story, you would think, based on what we’ve read that the Gap is using child labor to supply some of it’s products. Right? Not quite.

The children who were rescued late Monday worked in the building that houses the Gap supplier, but did not produce clothes for the US label, said the Save the Childhood Foundation, which works to rehabilitate child workers

“When we went there, we found a room where they had been living and working. Some children were ill and some were not being paid at all,” said Bhuwan Ribhu of the group.

Yes, the children were there, but no, they were not working for the supplier for the Gap. The article does not mention which company they may have been working for. But even so, the Gap pulled some clothes from their line. Talk about peer pressure.

Gap withdrew some garments from sale after Britain’s Observer newspaper said an Indian supplier in New Delhi’s Shahpur Jat area employed child workers.

My question is, if they weren’t working on garments for the Gap, who were they making them for? I couldn’t have been any “big” companies, or they would have mentioned them instead of, or in addition to, the Gap.

I knew something was up. Gas has gone up 23 cents per gallon since I got back from Las Vegas.

Oil leapt to a record high for a third day on Monday, surpassing $93 as investors bet on another U.S. interest rate cut this week, the dollar struck new lows and Mexico briefly halted one-fifth of its oil production.

U.S. crude, which hit a high of $93.20 a barrel earlier, was trading at $91.92 by 11:07 a.m. EST, up six cents from the previous close. London Brent, which hit a record $90, was up 33 cents at $89.02 a barrel.

I remember some of the analysts on the evening news re-assuring us that the price of oil would never hit $100 a barrel. How much you wanna bet that happens before Christmas?

It’s a little late isn’t it? I already know about a dozen people who have lost their homes because Countrywide wouldn’t talk to them, let alone work with them.

Countrywide Financial Corp (CFC.N), the largest U.S. mortgage lender, on Tuesday offered to refinance or restructure up to $16 billion of adjustable-rate mortgages through the end of 2008.

The lender said its program may help about 82,000 borrowers who face higher payments stay in their homes.

It announced the program as pressure mounts on the mortgage industry from politicians and consumer groups worried about rising foreclosures to clean up lending excesses, and make only home loans that consumers can afford in the first place.

Countrywide plans to offer new mortgages to 52,000 subprime borrowers with $10 billion of home loans. It also plans to modify $4 billion of loans for 20,000 prime and subprime borrowers who cannot refinance, and $2.2 billion of mortgages for 10,000 subprime borrowers who are already delinquent.

Some will say “better late than never”, but in this case, it’s “too little, too late”.

Stocks were expected to open higher… But then Morgan Stanley sold their shares of the NY Times and all hell broke loose.

U.S. home construction starts fell in September to their lowest level in more than 14 years, while consumer prices rose at the sharpest rate in four months, separate reports showed on Wednesday.

Weak housing data boosted U.S. government bond prices and the U.S. dollar slipped versus euro and yen as some investors saw the data as a sign of continuing headwinds for the economy.

U.S. stocks were still expected to open higher with investors more focused on healthy corporate profit reports.

How long do you think it will be before the housing market crisis bottoms out? Has it already bottomed out and we’re still seeing a delayed effect?

Is it shocking that they sold their shares? Not as shocking as the fact someone wanted to buy them.

Morgan Stanley, the second-biggest shareholder in New York Times Co., sold its entire 7.3 percent stake today, according to a person briefed on the transaction, sending the stock to its lowest in more than 10 years.

The person declined to be identified because Morgan Stanley hasn’t made the sale public yet. Traders with knowledge of the transaction said Merrill Lynch & Co. brokered a $183 million block trade of 10 million New York Times shares this morning.

…

New York Times shares slid 54 cents, or 2.9 percent, to $18.37 at 2:51 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading and fell as low as $18.24, a level not seen since January 1997.

Other newspaper stocks, including Gannett Co., owner of USA Today, and McClatchy Co., publisher of the Miami Herald, are also trading at 10-year lows because of the loss of advertising to new media such as the Internet and the decline in classified ads linked to tumbling housing sales.

[Source: Bloomberg]