Hope you don't have too many renters Roger

This report is the closest thing to reality and it ain't even close as to how bad and how fast this is gonna happen. This is going to be freakin brutal. the market has nary a clue. See these small businesses have relied far too long on the big businesses who export for a lving and deal internationally. people forget we are largely a service economy and there is 20% manufacturing left but that 20% is HUGE in terms of allowing the 80% who are services to survive. I taledk with 7 seven new customers this week. several moths ago they wouldn't talk to me about saving money. now they are practically screaming for me to get back in the door to help them. I have never in my life seen such utter desperation in customers whose job it is to watch the urse strings and namely that's CFO's who I talk to. The CFO's know what the farg is going on the company and the world. Its their yobs. The CEO doesn't know squat in most cases. The owners of small businesses know. And their eyes are bleeding. The see red ink for miles. Consider this article very very carefully. Then watch wtf happens on Friday. and then mutiply that going on for months. this is going to be DEEP, wide, and prolonged. and some major major damage will be hitting hard and fast soon. In fact its hit but hasn't shown up yet on Wallstreet or the media. Everyone is missing it. The small companies are it in this country. They go under and have problems there are going to be several 750,000 + job loss months and maybe 1,000,000 before year end. Deer in headlights. Those bulls in AAII - deer in freaking headlights. They can't tell the headlight from a flashlight or if its a train. there aren't enough bearish words to describe this situation. people just don't get it, primarily bc they haven't lived it. lving standards are going to change HUGELY. The closest I think you can get to descrbing this is just go to Argentina. Or see some good films on you tube. that will get you close folks. ANALYSIS-Job cuts soar as small U.S. firms fight to survive2009-01-07 20:17:10 GMT (Reuters) By Emily Kaiser WASHINGTON, Jan 7 (Reuters) - The battered U.S. job market may be losing one of its last remaining sources of strength as small businesses begin aggressively cutting payrolls in the face of a dismal holiday shopping season. A report on Wednesday showed private sector job losses of 693,000 in December, far greater than economists had expected. Small businesses accounted for an unusually large 40 percent of the decline, according to the figures from ADP Employer Services and Macroeconomic Advisers. (http://www.adpemploy...December_08.pdf) If a government report on December employment on Friday is as dire as the data from ADP, it may be a sign that another pillar of the economy -- small business -- is buckling as the recession drags on into a second year. "Everybody is trying to hang on now," said William Dunkelberg, chief economist for the National Federation of Independent Business. "More and more of these firms are in survival mode. They kept thinking consumers will make it, but then December rolls around and sales are still not going anywhere -- in fact they're going down -- and finally (small businesses) run out of money," he said. The spike in job cuts at small companies is particularly worrisome for the U.S. economy because these firms are the biggest source of non-government employment. If they are starting to ramp up the job cuts, that could mean the worst is still to come for the labor market. ADP's data shows small businesses employ 50 million people, compared with just under 19 million who work at large firms. The U.S. economy shed jobs every month in 2008, according to government figures, and the pace picked up in October after the financial crisis intensified following the failure of Lehman Brothers in September. Larger companies have been quicker to slash jobs, starting before the recession began in December 2007, and they continued to outpace small firms up until the last few weeks, according to ADP's figures. Big companies, or those with at least 500 employees, trimmed payrolls in 17 of the last 18 months. Businesses with fewer than 50 workers didn't start cutting jobs until February, and even then they moved at a slower pace. That changed last month, when small business jobs declined by 0.56 percent, by far the biggest drop in ADP's database going back to December 2000. Large company payrolls fell by 0.48 percent, the worst since October 2001, which was at the tail end of the last recession. It was only the second time small companies have cut a bigger percentage of jobs than large companies in the eight years of monthly ADP data. The other time was in November, when the difference was .001 percent. "Sharply falling employment at medium- and small-size businesses clearly indicates that the recession has now spread well beyond manufacturing and housing-related activities," said Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers. FIRING SALLY To be sure, some economists have raised questions about whether ADP's report is an accurate indicator of what the data from the Labor Department will show on Friday. ADP's methodology was changed with the December data, which added to economists' doubts. Prakken said the shift would make the report a better predictor of the government's employment figure, which he expects to show a decline of 670,000 jobs. Other small business surveys and anecdotal evidence tell a similar story about the state of small firms, which suggests that ADP is indeed picking up on an important economic trend. Dunkelberg pointed out that his group's latest survey of small business owners showed the most widespread sales declines in the report's 35-year history. He expects December's data to look even worse. He said around 30 percent of small businesses are in retailing and restaurants, which have been pounded by declining consumer spending. The International Council of Shopping Centers forecast last month that the holiday shopping season would show its first decline since the organization began tracking sales in 1969. Michael Alter, president of payroll services company SurePayroll, said small business owners tend to be very reluctant to cut jobs because it's often a matter of firing a relative or friend who has been with the company for years. Business owners' first inclination may be to absorb a few bad months by taking home less profit rather than axing jobs, which could help explain why larger firms were quicker to cut when the economy starting to sour. The longer the recession lasts, the more small companies will have to face an unpleasant choice of "either I continue to make less money or I have to let Sally, who's been with me for 20 years, go," Alter said. (Additional reporting by Nick Zieminski in New York; Editing by Tom Hals)

Tulsa has had a good real estate market.
Employment was extremely high with unemployment below 4%.

But now it looks like we too are catching the flu.

Forbes LINK
In Depth: America's 25 Strongest Housing Markets
Metro Area: Tulsa, Okla.
Population: 932,500
Bottom expected: late 2009
Forecast price change to bottom: -1.1%

Roger you may think different after reading this-----

http://www.foreignpo...p?story_id=4591


Nimblebear---Obama is gonna create 3,000,000 jobs.
He said so himself. And he never lies. Just listen to
his speech tomorrow. By inauguration time that number
may change to 4,000,000. That kind of change, I can
believe in.

Edited by pdx5, 08 January 2009 - 02:06 AM.

There were many cities in argentina that looked beatiful like that. That was before 2002 and the depression there, that still exists today. They too were a debtor nation just like the US. Now you wouldn't recognize the place. What's incredible is so few reported on their depression and financial disaster in the media. Occasionally if you are lucky you might catch a few peaks of the mention on CNBC when guys like schiff are on. Its taled about though like that is so far removed from now, like it was the 1930's. No. Its going on now and has been for years. Nary a breathe mentioned in any mainstream media. Go out on the street and ask anyone in the US if they knew a depression occurred there starting over 6 years ago. Ask them if they know how bad it is now. Ask them if they even know where argentina is. ask them if they know they all had 401k's just like us, and those have been confiscated and nationalized to save their version of social security. I know. it can't happen here. sure. just go ahead and stick head in the sand and keep on hoping for that not to happen here.

Roger you may think different after reading this-----

http://www.foreignpo...p?story_id=4591


Nimblebear---Obama is gonna create 3,000,000 jobs.
He said so himself. And he never lies. Just listen to
his speech tomorrow. By inauguration time that number
may change to 4,000,000. That kind of change, I can
believe in.

When he was here in Chicago here a few months ago, he said "hey NB, watch me. I'm going to walk on the chicago river. " I said "go for it bucko." now thats change I can beleeeeve in. sure. your change of clothes when the cia pulls you off the bottom of the river. lips move. lies follow.

No depression possible unless.......Helicopter Ben resigns or is fired or killed in an accident.
The military will protect the printing presses.

This report says Argentina economy improved after fiscal expansion policies in 2004.
Are we talking about the same Argentina? Where Madonna played the first lady Evita Peron?

http://macroblog.typ..._has_argen.html

Edited by pdx5, 08 January 2009 - 02:22 AM.

We're better armed than Argentinians. Yanno, there were some painful layoffs in December by small businesses. My BIL had to "lay off Sally" too. The poor guy was a wreck over the staff cuts. Sales just weren't there going into December. There was no late ramp up. Now, this may have been the last shoe to fall, too. He, like many were holding off until the last minute, to do those lay offs, just in case. But now, they're about as lean as can be and nobody is laying down and giving up, either. I suspect this is similar across the country. It's precarious, to be sure, but any bit of stimulus will help a lot. A spark is all that's needed. Mark

and if the US just filed international bankruptcy chapter 13, we could wipe out the $10 trillion or more of national debt, and a spark might actually do something. Just a spark. and a pen. Piss on our creditors. Who needs them ?