• No more Polaroid film.  Digital’s killed it.
• Whole Paycheck Foods is having problems, and people are going for store generics everywhere in grocery stores.
• Mark Penn can’t imagine how he hurt the Clinton campaign for President.
• China is having serious upsets and problems due to the recession elsewhere; if nobody buys the stuff you make, you can’t ( Read more... )

Robert Reich, the former Labor Secretary and one of my favorites on economics, writes:

After the market closed today, Bank of America announced a significant deterioration in people’s ability to repay credit-card and other consumer debt.  The central fact is this: consumers in the real economy are coming to the end of their capacities to keep ( Read more... )

From Nico Pitney in HuffPo:

3) John McCain has skipped more votes during this session than any member of the Senate except for Tim Johnson, who had major brain surgery. He hasn’t cast a single vote in five months, since April 9. All of a sudden, McCain is demanding that the presidential race shut down so he can return to Washington?

4) A reminder ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

The central bank of China has $1 trillion of US debt securities (including mortagage stuff from Freddie Mac and the like) , and the dollar’s fall and the tumble of mortgage securities in the US has led to a serious depreciation in those assets.  Problem is that they don’t have an easy way to fix the hole.

1. Sell them at fire sale prices to get rid of ( Read more... )

….that, oh, maybe, those schools in Sichuan province were made out of crap materials that enriched the local governments with kickbacks from the contractors.  it’s possible….

We are trying to trudge through an immense pile of TiVo’d stuff, and still have half the gymanstics and the opening ceeremonies to go through.  A few thoughts:

1. I can’t imagine who the heck programmed this stuff, but lawzy me, I never knew that the USA audience was so up on nearly naked women - er, beach volleyball, volleyball, etc.  I found it ( Read more... )

Very good article that explains the real limits of Chinese power down the road.  Here’s a mix of his points and some of my thoughts on the matter:

• Cheap labor and fair access to markets is about their main strengths.  Quality is not as important if the manufacturers can slide by.
• Labor is starting to price itself out of the basement, and the real ( Read more... )

Banks are now so worried about the general situation vis-a-vis credit that - well, the drop in Fed interest rates is being ignored in favor of hanging on to their money and making far fewer loans. Which strangles the good commercial players, of course.

Chinese sales of cars and gas-gulling Hummers and whatnot are continuing to go up, and it helps ( Read more... )

Another example of corrupt local government in China is highlighted in the WaPo today.

But in many other ways, his exercise of absolute power was typical of the way China’s Communist Party operates in thousands of cities, towns and counties across the country. Despite three decades of widely heralded economic reforms, the party has clung ( Read more... )