Archive for January, 2009

The consumer products maker Procter & Gamble reported Friday that its quarterly profit rose 53 percent aided by the sale of its Folgers coffee business, but warned that sales are slowing in the tough economy.

The company lowered its earning projections for the full year, and said it expected total sales to fall in the current quarter and possibly for the year.

I wonder how much they would have lost if they hadn’t sold Folgers?

Some numbers just keep going up, while others keep going down.

The number of Americans claiming jobless benefits hit a record high in mid-January, while orders for long-lasting factory goods fell for a fifth month in December, according to data on Thursday that showed the economy in steep decline.

…

The number of people staying on state jobless benefits rolls after drawing an initial week of aid jumped 159,000 to a higher-than-forecast 4.78 million in the week ended January 17, the most recent week for which data is available.

I’ll be glad when things pick up again.

Sales of newly built single-family homes fell 14.7 percent in December, the largest monthly decline since 1994, data showed on Thursday, indicating the housing market’s downward spiral was far from reaching a bottom.

The Commerce Department said sales tumbled to a 331,000 annual pace, the lowest since it started keeping records in 1963. November’s sales were sharply revised down to 388,000 annual rate, which was previously reported as 407,000.

Well duh, didn’t we all know that new home sales were going to keep falling? If people don’t have money, they can’t buy. If banks won’t lend money, they can’t buy. If politicians in Washington keep sending bailouts and offering stimulus, someone has to pay for that, until they have no money, and can’t buy. I know, it’s a vicious circle. Time for it to stop.

Who knew there were speedbumps in the old west?

Wells Fargo & Co reported a fourth-quarter loss as it added to reserves for credit losses and wrote down investments.

The company also said the former Wachovia Corp, which it bought on December 31, lost $11.17 billion in the fourth quarter, largely to boost loan loss reserves as well as investment writedowns. Before Wells Fargo outbid Citigroup Inc to take control, Wachovia nearly collapsed as losses soared from troubled mortgages.

Wells Fargo said it remains “comfortable in the aggregate” with its original assumptions on Wachovia’s credit quality, and is comfortable with its forecasts for cost savings and earnings impact.

They’re comfortable? Wow. I haven’t heard any banker types use that word in a long time.

Home Depot announced Monday it’s laying off 7,000 employees and said it will close all of company’s EXPO stores because of poor performance.

“Over the next two months, the Company will be closing 34 EXPO Design Center stores, five YardBIRDS stores, two Design Center stores and a bath remodeling business known as HD Bath, with seven locations,” company officials said in a press release.

Did anyone shop at those EXPO stores? Okay, I meant to ask, did they ever purchase anything at those stores? Aren’t the people rich enough to shop at that store having their contractors bring the ideas to them at home anyway? I never understood the concept of those stores.

The good news? Existing home sales rose.

The bad news? Existing home values suck.

The pace of sales of existing homes in the U.S. rose 6.5 percent in December, but the median home price dropped by a record 15.3 percent compared to the same period the year earlier, a National Association of Realtors report showed on Monday.

I wonder how much of the sales were related to foreclosure sales? Do those figure into these numbers?

While Microsoft tries to justify laying off 5,000 because they didn’t make as much profit (they still made more than $4 billion in profits), Apple does it right.

There’s nothing like a solid quarter to take the market’s mind off bad news elsewhere. That happened on Jan. 21, when Apple (AAPL) released a report showing better-than-expected profit and record revenue and iPod unit sales. Sales in the fiscal first quarter rose 6% to $10.17 billion while profits increased to $1.61 billion, or $1.78 a share, outpacing the average analyst estimate of $1.39.

Heh. Yeah, that’s enough to take mind off things for a bit.

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said Thursday that the US software giant remains interested in a search business partnership with Yahoo! and welcomed the appointment of new CEO Carol Bartz.

“I’ve been quite public about the fact that there are advantages for advertisers and consumers, for Microsoft and for Yahoo! through a search partnership, and we’d like to do one,” Ballmer said.

Does this mean we have to go through a whole new he said/he said cycle with the on again off again love affair between Microsoft and Yahoo? God I hope not.

This is bad news for Georgia, and I am not even in that count yet. These numbers are for last week. I know it’s at least 1 more this week.

Georgia’s unemployment rate in December climbed to 8.1 percent, up 80 percent in the past year to reach its highest level since 1983, the state Labor Department announced Thursday.

During the past year, the state has lost nearly 122,000 jobs.

Still looking for work.

Well duh. He had to freeze someone’s pay to help cover the cost of all the social programs he’s going to create. Those folks should be happy they still have a job.

President Barack Obama’s first public act in office Wednesday was to institute new limits on lobbyists in his White House and to freeze the salaries of high-paid aides, in a nod to the country’s economic turmoil.

Announcing the moves while attending a ceremony in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building to swear in his staff, Obama said the steps “represent a clean break from business as usual.”