Financial topics

[Higgenbotham]

Speaking of the Panic of 1857. Someone on this list recommended "The Emergence of Lincoln" by Allan Nevins. Was it Higgy?

It was. Might be a good day for me to give it another look.

[Higgenbotham]

I think it's exceptionally difficult to find accurate salary data because there is so much incentive to lie. This may be as good a picture from as good a source as we can get. The real key I see is not that the median salary has gone down, which is bad enough. It's the very high level of unemployment, the pervasive and high debt level, and the fact that it's not improving. Thanks to Old1953 for putting this issue on the radar; it has true crisis implications for many reasons.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/busin ... grads.html

The median starting salary for students graduating from four-year colleges in 2009 and 2010 was $27,000, down from $30,000 for those who entered the work force in 2006 to 2008, according to a study released on Wednesday by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University. That is a decline of 10 percent, even before taking inflation into account.

Of course, these are the lucky ones — the graduates who found a job. Among the members of the class of 2010, just 56 percent had held at least one job by this spring, when the survey was conducted. That compares with 90 percent of graduates from the classes of 2006 and 2007. (Some have gone for further education or opted out of the labor force, while many are still pounding the pavement.)

A little more: http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/17/news/ec ... /index.htm

About 60% of recent graduates have not been able to find a full-time job in their chosen profession, according to job placement firm Adecco.

And the lack of steady income can also delay the start of their lives as independent adults. About a third of recent graduates are still living with their parents, Adecco found, with 17% saying they are financially dependent on their parents. Almost one in four say they are in debt.

Contrast the above with the establishment data I normally read:

While not quite the $60,000-plus offers that engineers are getting, the average starting salary across all majors is $50,034 -- up 3.5% from last year.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/08/pf/coll ... tm?iid=EAL

If I understand the difference correctly, what happens is, for example, Exxon may come out to a campus placement office to hire 1 or 2 engineers. They pick 1 or 2 out of 35 or 40 who interview, make the offers, and those get reported to the placement office. The rest of the kids may find jobs mixing paint or some other crap job that doesn't go through the placement office and that doesn't get reported.

[aedens]

http://generationaldynamics.com/forum/v ... 3930#p9812

As we all forwarded in the forums its starting and Higgs date of August 25th is so close
to our inception date I feel we can all agree. All politics is local and nothing else matters.
I live in Michigan. We are seeing zigs and zags and we knew this was to be the case.
It will be interesting after the NLRB ruling on Boeing. Kind of
my pivot point to growth issues.

[Higgenbotham]

I live in Michigan.

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Chemical Engineering

This is a top 10 ranked engineering school as well as an in demand major and specialty, relatively speaking.

2010 Placement Stats
27% of 2010 graduates accounted for. Suspicions confirmed. And this is as good as it gets, folks. Now, do they want to chase down those other 90 kids and tell us how they are doing? I suspect they do not.

Degrees Awarded FY 2010: BSE 124
http://che.engin.umich.edu/aboutus/factsfigures.html

Chemical Engineering $65,210 (34)
http://career.engin.umich.edu/salary/20092010.html

[aedens]

Confirmation to our GD. http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/ho ... -tick-tock

Long time until spring 2013. Some points will be sharpened.
We are being crushed from every side. Its past free lunch
for a long time. They just do not get it.

[OLD1953]

With two daughters in graduate school, and one to finish high school in a couple of years, I'd be hard pressed not to know about student debt loads. Having heard them and so many of their friends calmly discuss leaving the US for Canada or Europe to get away from their debts, I do believe this issue will reach immense proportions and break through to the mainstream press as a crisis in a very short time. The USA cannot function as a first rank technological society if the most educated and most intelligent feel they must leave to avoid a crushing burden.

What truly annoys me is there is no reason for this, apart from greed on the side of the schools. Tuition increases have far outstripped inflation by any measure you'd care to use, and textbooks have become a racket.

[aedens]

I told mine that if debt "ratio" was to be pursued they would be banished as in
exiled, from all Family decisions and future considerations to guidance
for 10 years. We knew it was serious issues this Nation was facing.
It is simple, since the voters are incompetant we already knew the results.
Honestly this kind of debt is wealth is stupidity in the highest order
of thought. As a family we have a few years to go in sacrifice
these asshats will never understand. We already see federal, state and local
pillaging for profit. Its all over there sites to how they are saving US
taxpayers. It will not be much longer for these savots eat themselves
out of house and home. Tax what is left and convey growth based revenue?
Inflate debt away and already 50 perecent or more cannot even afford
the products on the market now?

Krugman missive.
"The larger answer, however, is outside political pressure.
Last year, the Fed actually did institute a policy of buying long-term debt,
generally known as “quantitative easing” (don’t ask).
But it faced a political backlash out of all proportion to its modest effect on the economy.

We see who, what , when, where, and why around here. They missed important issues not us. Value.

[OLD1953]

I think we'll survive, it's just a matter of realizing what actually matters and what does not. Food, shelter and survival matter the most, without those, very little matters. Putting thieves and robbers in jail matters, not packing jails with pot smokers to pad the pockets of the people who make money off that system.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php? ... a&aid=8289

There is much perplexity in the press as to why the country currently despises Wall Street. The people know when they were ripped off, and they know who was responsible. I would not be shocked to see the political center of the US return to New York from the South, because New York is prosecuting so many Wall Street bandits, while the SEC is shredding documents.

http://www.truth-out.org/matt-taibbi-ex ... 1314209174

There is no perfect system that cannot be subverted. This is inherent in the very nature of systems, and the governing bodies of the US are no different from any other. We'll flush out most of the bad or ridiculous, change the systems, and then we'll run with it for a while. Its been done before, and we'll do it again.

[Higgenbotham]

Back to trading.

Covered all short silver positions at 40.77 (entry was 42.22).

If the S&P can continue to rise this week, I will scale back into short S&P. Short S&P is the trade I would prefer to concentrate on with the S&P having moved up 33 points today to 1210.

Last exit from S&P shorts was from 1225 on August 4, posted in real time in this topic.

[aedens]

I am not planning any moves. 25 percent long as forwarded.
End of the month noise and the Sun will will rise.
Sideways up unless Europa noise surfaces.
Steady as we go in the real world.
I think trade partners are seeing the air of simple realism
as crisp as the morning air. Hubris never goes unpunished
so to teams who looked ahead stay the course.

http://www.guggenheimpartners.com/gp/me ... f?ext=.pdf
http://www.mackinac.org/archives/1998/SP1998-01.pdf