Archive for March, 2009

The United States needs a safer way to shut down large nonbank financial firms without destabilizing the entire financial system, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Friday.

“We have such a regime for insured depository institutions, but it is clear we need something similar for systemically important nonbank financial entities,” he said in prepared remarks to a community bankers convention in Phoenix.

We also need a way to make sure that officials in our government don’t start adopting regulations and passing legislation that are clearly unconstitutional. I bet we see the “never to big to fail” idea long before we see any real legislation to fix this mess that doesn’t borderline on violating at least one clause of the U.S. Constitution.

If you have no idea what I am talking about, check out the next post I make.

State and national jobs numbers issued Thursday were a combination of bad news and not-as-bad news.

Georgia’s jobless rate jumped to 9.3 percent in February, up from a revised 8.5 percent the previous month, the state Labor Department said Thursday.

The state shed 189,800 jobs during the month, cutting the job base by 4.6 percent from February 2008, the agency said.

And yet, national jobless claims hinted at a possible bottom to the bad news: 646,000 laid-off people filed for unemployment benefits last week. That’s not good, but a month ago, that figure hit 670,000. It hasn’t fallen much, but it hasn’t returned to that peak.

Metro Atlanta accounted for the bulk of the state’s job losses, with the region’s payrolls shrinking by 111,300 jobs. On a percentage basis, the Dalton area in northwest Georgia saw the biggest decline in payrolls, losing 6,000 jobs, or 7.9 percent from a year ago.

I would like to take a moment to thank the asshats in Congress who keep voting for all the bailouts and other socialist economic plans and blindly following President Obama down that path for making this worse than it really had to be.

It’s amazing what happens when we enforce the law.

Wages and employment increased for legal workers after raids on six Swift & Co. meat-packing plants in several U.S. states in 2006, a study indicated.

Noting that the plants raided were back in production within five months, Jerry Kammer of the Center for Immigration Studies said there was “good evidence” that the number of U.S.-born workers increased, concluding that the plants “could operate without the presence of illegal workers,” The Hill reported.

So much for the “jobs Americans don’t want to do”, huh?

Have you lost your job?

On Saturday, March 21, individuals who have recently lost their jobs are invited to visit a FranklinCovey store nationwide to receive a free 2009 Franklin Planner.

FranklinCovey knows that getting organized for a job search can ultimately save much time and frustration. Having one place to track all information, contacts, appointments, job leads, and interview notes can make a job search less stressful and more productive. Planning and organization are an integral component of a job search. FranklinCovey products and tools can bring focus, direction, and a sense of purpose to an individual’s daily decisions and can help lesson the panic that surrounds a job loss. Capturing details and committing them to the planner will free up the job searcher’s mind, reducing the stress associated with juggling lots of details. Sarah Merz, CEO of FranklinCovey Products, said this is FranklinCovey’s way of helping out in a tough economy. This free FranklinCovey product event is a natural extension of the company’s corporate philosophy to help people achieve everyday greatness.

To receive a free planner, visit a FranklinCovey store this Saturday, March 21. Individuals recently unemployed can receive a 2009 Franklin Planner for free by providing the names of their last employer and supervisor, and the date they were laid off.

Head on over to FranklinCovey and they’ll hook you up. I would go pick one up, but it’s not worth driving for an hour to get one. If there was a FranklinCovey store near me, I would jump at the chance.

Hat Tip: The Consumerist.

I’ve heard a lot of backpedaling stories and whiny reasons why companies took the government’s offer for bailout money, but this one takes the cake.

Wells Fargo & Co. Chairman Richard Kovacevich criticized the U.S. for retroactively adding curbs to the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which he said forced the bank to cut its dividend, and called the administration’s plan for stress-testing banks “asinine.”

When the U.S. Treasury persuaded the nation’s nine biggest banks to accept capital investments in October, it signaled the whole industry was weak, Kovacevich, 65, said in a March 13 speech at Stanford University in California. Even though Wells Fargo didn’t want the money, it must comply with the same rules that the government placed on banks that did need it, he said.

“Is this America — when you do what your government asks you to do and then retroactively you also have additional conditions?” Kovacevich said. “If we were not forced to take the TARP money, we would have been able to raise private capital at that time” and not needed to cut the dividend to preserve cash, he said.

Wells Fargo was forced to take the money? I don’t think so. They took the TARP money with hands held out willingly. No one was twisting their arm forcing them to take the money.

If they didn’t need it, they shouldn’t have taken it. Maybe they could give it back now then? As a taxpayer I would appreciate it if they returned the money to my children’s pockets. They’re going to need it to pay for all the other moochers out there.

Isn’t it nice to know our hard earned tax money was used to line the pockets of the very people that got AIG into the mess theu’re in now?

White House officials and some members of Congress reacted strongly Sunday to news that insurance giant AIG had intended to pay out $165 million in bonuses and compensation. The company has received at least $170 billion in federal bailout money.

Under pressure from the Treasury, AIG scaled back the bonus plans and pledged to reduce 2009 bonuses — or “retention payments” — by at least 30 percent. That did little to temper outrage at the initial plan, however.

I really don’t think this is the time to be paying bonuses, especially with taxpayer money.

The world economy is in such shambles that OPEC has generously decided to leave outputs unchanged.

OPEC ministers agreed on Sunday to leave existing output targets unchanged, but promised to enforce those curbs more strictly and said they would meet again at the end of May.

The decision reflected concern for the world economy and a belief production curbs so far have begun to take away some of the over-supply from oil markets, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said in a communique after the nearly five-hour conference.

Is it the economy or the fact that prices were tanking that made them make this decision?

They can survive without the loan, for a while anyway.

General Motors Corp. (GM), which had said it needed $2 billion to avoid running out of cash by the end of March, said Thursday it can survive for now without the loan.

GM still needs the money, just not as quickly as anticipated, a company spokeswoman said Thursday. The auto maker is working to get up to $16.6 billion in additional loans, which includes a cash infusion of $2.6 billion in April.

Either they need it or they don’t. If they don’t need it, we wouldn’t mind keeping it, would we?

I don’t get it. What did Ford offer the union in exchange for this?

Ford Motor Co (F.N) expects operating savings of $500 million per year from an agreement with the United Auto Workers that also will make its labor costs competitive with Japanese rivals, the company said on Wednesday.

The agreement trims average wages and benefits for UAW hourly workers to about $55 per hour this year, from more than $70 per hour when Ford was negotiating a watershed contract with the union two years ago.

That figure is expected to drop to about $50 per hour by 2011, or roughly on a par with what Japanese automakers led by Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) will be paying their non-union U.S. factory workers, Ford said.

There has to be more to this story.

With an economic crisis swirling and unemployment numbers climbing, one company declared Tuesday “free resume printing day.”

FedEx Office offered to print 25 copies of customers’ resumes free, including the resume paper, at any of its 1,600 stores nationwide.

Brian Phillips, president and CEO of the Dallas, Texas-based company, said it was the chain’s way of trying to help.

“We understand that the economy has affected many people in a very profound way,” Phillips said in a news release, adding, “Printing resumes is one small way we can use our resources to help those who need it.”

Tiffany Antin, a first-year accounting student in an online college program and a job-seeker in Atlanta for the last year, said she was surprised by the lack of a crowd when she took advantage of the offer.

“I really expected to see the line out the door,” she said.

There would have been lines, had anyone known about it. The key to helping people like this, is announcing it well in advance so people have a chance to hear about it. Then again, maybe they wanted to help, but just “not that much”. Who knows. I know I could have used the service. 25 copies of my resume would have been nice to have.