by Calculated Risk on 6/28/2008 09:14:00 PM

From the NY Times: Cruise Night, Without the Car

For car-loving American teenagers, this is turning out to be the summer the cruising died.
...
From coast to coast, American teenagers appear to be driving less this summer. Police officers who keep watch on weekend cruising zones say fewer youths are spending their time driving around in circles, with more of them hanging out in parking lots, malls or movie theaters.

by Calculated Risk on 6/28/2008 09:00:00 AM

From the NY Times: Luring Affluent Renters in Manhattan

ONE month’s free rent. Two months’ free rent. No security deposit.

How about a year’s worth of storage at Manhattan Mini Storage or an appointment at a doggie day spa for Rover on moving day?

As the rental market in Manhattan has softened in recent months, these are some of the incentives that owners of high-end buildings are offering to lure tenants.

Note that this is for some high-end buildings only. It looks like the layoffs in the financial industry are starting to bite ... and it's about to get worse:

... many of the people laid off by Wall Street firms will not officially become unemployed until their severance pay runs out. For the entire metropolitan area, she said, Moody’s economy.com is projecting a loss of 60,000 jobs by the beginning of 2009, with about 45,000 of those jobs in financial services.

by Calculated Risk on 6/27/2008 08:23:00 PM

From Edmund Conway at the Telegraph: House prices won't recover until 2015, ex-MPC expert warns

Families must wait until 2015 for the property market to start booming again, according to Stephen Nickell, who heads up the unit which advises the Prime Minister on housing planning.
...
"The housing market - in terms of the price of houses - will not look much the same as it did before the credit crunch until after six or seven years."

It's probably too early to be talking about when house prices will return to pre-credit crunch levels, but at least Gordon Brown is hearing that it will take years.

Also from the Telegraph: British household debt is highest in history

Families in the UK now owe a record 173pc of their incomes in debts, official figures have shown. The ratio of debt to income is higher than any other country in the Group of Seven leading industrialised economies, and is sharply higher than the 129pc of incomes it was five years ago.
...
Michael Saunders of Citigroup warned that - at 173pc of household incomes - the debt burden is higher even than Japan's when it peaked in 1990, before more than a decade of deflation.

"Not only are we the highest in the G7, we are the highest a G7 country has ever seen," he said.

by Calculated Risk on 6/27/2008 03:40:00 PM

From the WSJ: Deep June Car-Sales Slump Seen in J.D. Power Estimate

J.D. Power & Associates sees the market for U.S. light vehicles contracting 15.4% in the month of June compared to a year ago, according to a report released Friday ... The firm expects the closely-watched seasonally adjusted annual rate of sales to fall to 12.5 million vehicle rate, well below the 16.3 million rate set in the same period last year.

This is more grim news for the U.S. auto industry.

by Calculated Risk on 6/27/2008 01:45:00 PM

For those with a round number fetish, the Dow is now off more than 20% from the peak last October. If it closes at or below this level, then this will be considered an official bear market.

Dow closing high on Oct 9, 2007: 14,164.53

20% off would be: 11,331.62 (right now 11,326 so it's close).

The closing high for the S&P 500 was 1565.15 last October 9th and 20% off would be 1252.12 - so we still have a little ways to go for the S&P.

by Calculated Risk on 6/27/2008 10:54:00 AM

Tim Duy has another great post on the Fed being caught between inflation and recession: This Is Not Good. Here is his conclusion:

This is a no win situation...which way will the Fed turn? The Fed will hold the current policy in place until policymakers becomes sufficiently distressed by the impact of energy price inflation ... Note that market participants are increasingly aware that the Fed’s default policy for the time being is higher inflation, as evidenced by the rise in 10 year TIPS breakeven levels to 254bp today.

In theory, the best outcome is to find is a sweet spot that allows global growth outside of the US to decelerate while avoiding a free fall in the Dollar. In the absence of such equilibrium, the US economy can hobble along only as long as the following three conditions hold:

1. The Federal Reserve can maintain easy monetary policy.

2. The US government can sustain repeated fiscal stimulus measures.

3. China and the rest of the dollar bloc continue to be willing to accumulate US assets, primarily the Treasury debt needed for fiscal stimulus.

When these conditions no longer hold – such as the Fed needs to tighten to counter energy inflation, or the demand for US debt drops sharply – then I suspect the US economic environment will shift decisively toward higher inflation or significant recession.

by Calculated Risk on 6/27/2008 10:18:00 AM

From MarketWatch: Consumers extremely gloomy, UMich survey says.

The consumer sentiment index fell to 56.4 in June from 59.6 in May ... It's the lowest since 1980 and the third-lowest reading in the 56-year history of the survey.

A record number of consumers said their own finances had worsened, and inflation expectations are the highest since Feb 1982. (here is the Reuters story with more detail)

Usually consumer sentiment surveys tell you what you already know, and sentiment is heavily impacted by gasoline prices, but these are still pretty stunning numbers.

by Calculated Risk on 6/27/2008 08:57:00 AM

From CNBC: Merrill Likely to Write Down $3 Billion-$5 Billion

Reuters is reporting: Merrill may take $5.4 bln in Q2 writeoffs: Lehman

Merrill Lynch will likely incur $5.4 billion of write-downs in the second quarter, mainly from its exposure to monolines, said an analyst at Lehman Brothers ...

Here comes another round of visits to the confessional!

by Calculated Risk on 6/26/2008 09:32:00 PM

From the WSJ: Schumer Asks Regulators For Greater IndyMac Scrutiny (Thanks to all!)

Sen. Charles Schumer sent letters to federal regulators asking them to monitor more closely the financial health of IndyMac ...

The New York Democrat wrote that he is "concerned that IndyMac's financial deterioration poses significant risks to both taxpayers and borrowers and that the regulatory community may not be prepared to take measures that would help prevent the collapse of IndyMac or minimize the damage should such a failure occur."

Here is the AP story: Schumer: concerned over IndyMac stability

I'm very surprised a letter like this was made public. And I'm surprised a U.S. Senator is mentioning a specific bank. Oh well, anyone with more than the FDIC insured limit deposited with IndyMac has had ample warning.

by Calculated Risk on 6/26/2008 06:02:00 PM

From Bill Fleckenstein's Daily Rap today: It's About to Blow! (Here is Fleck's Site for the Daily Rap):

Note: excerpted with permission.

[About midday] I received a phone call from the Lord of the Dark Matter, who began the conversation: "It's about to blow!" He then repeated himself.

He went on to say that behind the scenes, many parts of the credit/mortgage market were "offered only." He said it had nothing to do with month-end or quarter-end. Instead, he believed it had to do with the enormous amount of inventory that would be looking for a home in the next quarter. He believed that the equity market was "miles behind what was occurring in the mortgage-backed/credit markets." Though he noted that he'd said it before, he repeated: "It's never been this bad."

And I heard confirmation from a bond shop today that "liquidity is getting worse and worse". Here we go again?