If you’ve ever been victimized by once of thosee Nigerian-prince/lottery scams, your justice is being served. From our good friend and colleague Chad Bray over at the Journal:
NEW YORK—Four men originally from Nigeria have been charged in an alleged email scam in which they claimed recipients had won a lottery or inherited a fortune, federal prosecutors said Thursday.
The men—three of which are U.S. citizens and one is a permanent resident—allegedly sent mass emails to individuals claiming they had inherited millions of dollars from a distant relative or had won a lottery, such as the “$5 million Princess Diana Lottery,” according to prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Brooklyn. The scam allegedly cost victims and their banks more than $2 million, prosecutors said.
It’s always amazed me that anybody falls for these scams. But clearly some people did, because these jokers soaked their victims to the tune of $2 million, once again proving that Mencken, as usual, was right.
Of course, we believe all kinds of crazy things these days. The economy exited the recession. Sarah Palin is a credible Presidential candidate. Ben Bernanke “saved” the economy. The Jets are as good as Rex Ryan says they are.
East Shore Partners market strategist Joan McCullough perfectly summed up this morning’s jobs report:
This is a real klinker.
Couldn’t have said it any better. Economy shed more jobs than expected in July, while the unemployment rate held steady at 9.5%. Nonfarm payrolls fell 131,000 last month, well ahead of the 60,000 drop economists were expecting. The number was skewed as 143,000 census workers were let go. But perhaps more importantly, 71,000 private-sector jobs were added last month, well short of the expected 100,000 gain.
All in all, not much to like about this report. Even the unemployment rate holding steady at 9.5% has an underlying negative tone. The steady rate, even as jobs keep declining, largely reflects more and more folks dropping out of the labor force. In July, 181,000 people flat out gave up looking for work. And 791,000 frustrated folks have left the labor force since July 2009.
Those are all people that will likely return to the labor force at some point, especially when they think their prospects for getting jobs look brighter. When that happens, expect to see the unemployment rate ramp higher as the workforce expands.
How, exactly, is this supposed to make me feel better?
The job numbers may be weaker than some are expecting. However, dips in the job numbers and in these other indicators do not necessarily mean an early sequel to the recession.
We are still in the relatively early stages of the recovery. Considering how long and deep the recession was, it is only natural that the recovery has some ups and downs. Remember, it took 21 months before we saw consistent job gains following the 2001 recession, and that was considered a mild recession.
That’s the take from John Challenger, the CEO of Challenger Gray, the big outplacement firm, which trotted out an upbeat press release this morning after that bad report on initial jobless claims. But, honestly, how in God’s name is that supposed to be a comforting thought? How? It took nearly two years for employment to stabilize after the “mild” 2001 recession. So, how long is it going to take this time around, after the worst recession in 80 years? Four years? Five years? Ten?
How is that comparison in any way, shape or form comforting or favorable? Honestly, for crying out loud, that’s the reassuring pat on the back? How much blinder can you be?
When we’re done writing this quarter’s Upshot column (we’re working on the last one today, actually,) I’m going to do a post showing how weak, tepid and weak, the pronouncements of strength from the bulls and the economic cheerleaders really are these days.
The tone hasn’t changed, but the words definitely have.
Posted by Paul Vignaon January 20, 2010 Media, Uncategorized /
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This story is simply one of the most amazing things I’ve read, maybe ever:
JACMEL, Haiti – Rescue teams found a 15-day-old baby alive in a crumbled house here Tuesday, after she’d spent nearly half her life without food or water amid the ruins of last week’s earthquake.
A search and rescue team was demolishing the remains of the home of the mother, Michelene Joassaint, believing that there was no chance that her baby Elisabeth, eight days old when the quake struck on Jan. 12, could possibly be alive.
The rescue team found the baby in the same bed where she was napping when the earthquake struck. The bed had fallen to the ground floor, but the baby was not even injured.
“It was the mercy of God,” said Ms. Joassaint, 22 years old, breastfeeding her daughter on a makeshift hospital bed next to the heavily damaged city hospital Tuesday evening. Ms. Joassaint was staying in a homeless camp set up on a soccer field when she learned the news. “I cried and then ran to the baby,” she said.
Unemployed? Heck, no, I'm not unemployed; I'm not even looking for a job.
Imagine how the December jobs report would have looked if another 400,000 or 500,000 had been added the rolls of the unemployed. Or a million.
It’s important to remember that the jobs report produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as well as ones published by ADP and others, is not a definitive document, but a large-scale research project that in the end produces what is a relatively refined but still only educated guess. That’s why it is subject to continuous and often large revisions.
And as disappointing as December’s report was, there were assumptions that helped minimize the pain.
The first got a fair amount of notice: 660,000 were counted as “discouraged” workers, the kind that aren’t even looking for work anymore. Since it’s extremely doubtful the BLS actually spoke to all 660,000 of them (a task that would take a disproportionate amount of time to complete in a month,) the agency estimated the number was 660,000.
“If those discouraged (but still unemployed) had been still counted, the unemployment rate would have jumped to 10.4%,” UBS’ Art Cashin notes in his daily commentary. “In fact, if you left in all the ‘discouraged’ that have been removed since August, the unemployment rate would be 11%.”
For the first time in what feels like forever, the market has a sleepy feeling to it. Trading volumes are low, nobody’s staring into the abyss, GM isn’t on the verge of bankruptcy. A financial reporter for once can actually feel like just another working-class stiff, instead of embedded with the troops in the desert somewhere.
So given that we’ve got a little extra time on our hands, we’re going to “break character” a bit here and pose a question, just because we’re interested: what do you think are the great all-time performances in a movie?
It could be a leading role, it could be an Oscar-winning role, it could be a small part where the actor just nails it, it could be an overlooked movie. Anything, really, but it has to be one where you were just floored by it. We’re talking about Meryl Streep in “Kramer vs. Kramer.” Al Pacino in “Dog Day Afternoon.” Al Pacino in “Gigli.” Okay, not Al Pacino in “Gigli,” but you get the point.
- CBS and Disney are said to be considering participating in Apple’s proposed plan to offer TV subscriptions over the Internet. “Traditional TV business is toast. It’s just a question of when and how,” Henry Blodget says.
- Appliance sales may not be best read on housing market.
- Final 3Q GDP reading comes in at 2.2%, meaning it’s tough to put much faith in the earliest GDP readings. “We’re in an economic recovery, but we still don’t know how strong it is or how sustained it will be,” Time’s Justin Fox says.
- To repay taxpayers, Wall Street banks raised billions of dollars in new capital, and they generated millions of dollars in fees doing so, Andrew Ross Sorkin says.
- Abnormal Returns rounds up thoughts on the past decade in equities.
- “I have never seen a great investment where the first information came through advertising,” Jeff Miller writes, referring to gold. “If investors could learn one thing, resisting TV ads would be the key choice.”
- Jeff Jarvis offers thoughts on what bankrupt newspaper companies should be doing.
Catching up on Mike Santoli’s column from last weekend’s Barron’s, where he cites the uncanny accuracy in market calls made by a broker who frequently emails him, but wants to remain anonymous to the rest of us.
This guy essentially called the top in 2007, and was bullish in April when few believed in the stock market’s rebound. He’s predicted some of the market’s pullbacks since then, and now sees the S&P 500 running up to 1200 or 1250 by mid-January, Santoli relates. Fair enough.
What caught our eye is this part of the story:
Our guy writes that he’s “dumbfounded by the refusal of the media, investors and economists” to acknowledge the prospect of a V-shaped economic recovery given the pace of improvement in employment, industrial production and leading indicators, Santoli writes.
He’s dumbfounded, is he? Frankly, we’re a little dumbfounded ourselves…that anyone would believe in the possibility of a V-shaped recovery.
Posted by Steven Russolilloon December 18, 2009 Uncategorized /
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Newswires’ Madeleine Lim and Kathleen Madigan discuss GM’s move to close Saab, German business confidence and Clear Channel’s big junk bond offering. It’s Tomorrow’s News Today:
Posted by John Shipmanon December 14, 2009 Uncategorized /
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Floating higher and higher....
Generally a dull session for US stocks as the major averages hew to a tight range throughout the day.
Exxon Mobil’s buy of XTO Energy gets credited for contributing to the positive tone, but XOM shares get hammered, falling 4.3% and lop off about 24 points from the DJIA.
Materials, industrials, health care and tech lead sector advancers. JPMorgan, CAT, P&G and Merck among the Dow’s leading dollar gainers.
FOMC meeting gets underway tomorrow, statement set for Wednesday. We’ve seen bulls get pretty frisky ahead of some recent Fed meetings, could see another attempt to break out to fresh highs in anticipation of assurances that rates will stay low for an extended period.
DJIA rises 29.55 to 10501.05, a fresh closing high since Oct 2008, and Nasdaq Comp adds 21.79 to 2212.10 — its highest close since September 2008. S&P 500 ends 7.70 higher at 1114.11, highest close since Oct ’08. US dollar index fell 0.3% to 76.34.
On tap tomorrow, earnings from Best Buy; November PPI; NY Fed’s Dec Empire State manufacturing survey; Nov industrial production & capacity utilization; and homebuilder’s Dec sentiment index.
J.P. Morgan reported some strong earnings today. But what this bloggers eye were some of the sub-numbers in the earnings report. The bank booked $1.8 billion in investment banking fees. But don’t be fooled – that wasn’t from big M&A advising. But $429 million was in advisory fees. Instead, that $1.3 billion + remaining fees […]
President Reagan’s former budget director David Stockman says Edward Snowden performed a heroic act, the Patriot Act should be repealed, and this whole spying-on-U.S.-citizens thing is a symptom of an out-of-control military-industrial complex. Click here to watch him go on YahooFinance. The author of “The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in A […]
