plus as the blogger puts it a dose of John Galt

http://www.bizzyblog.com/2009/07/13/this-is-what-going-galt-and-obamas-induced-uncertainly-have-led-to/

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Iran who are trying to achieve what many take for granted.  Their freedom to choose.

Fortunately, modern communications enables them to show the brutality of their own government.  Unfortunately we as individual citizens can’t do much to help other than to hold our companies and our government accountable for their responses.

There was an Auction of 10 year notes today.

Demand for higher yields resulted an a coupon of 3.99%

Expect Mortgage rates to continue to rise

Traders and Foreign buyers are worried about inflation and the value of the dollar.

We are increasingly concerned that the economy is facing a W.  This means that the recovery process looks like a W.  Last fall through the March 9th lows of the market was the first leg of the W.  The second leg of the W is the recovery in stock prices since the March lows.  The third leg will be when the current recovery in stock prices corrects to the downside and we see a retest of the March lows.  The Final leg will occur after that and will be the road to full recovery barring unforeseen events.

The Dow has only recently crossed into positive territory for the year, which in one aspect is nice since the components are changing.  Which once again means comparisons to previous levels is comparing apples to oranges.

Looking forward, we see weakness in the financial sector relative to their holdings of commercial real estate loans.  Hence we see weakness in the commercial real estate sector.

We have completed the 5th month of 2009 and the way things stand are the markets are mostly recovered from the March Lows and are progressing doubts are starting to percolate that this is not a bear market rally and may be something more fundamental.  The data is not there.  Rapidly rising commodity and energy prices are not do to construction demand but from China stockpiling as a hedge against a dollar devaluation.

As people see a rise in their portfolio value though they start to feel more optimistic, but they are still wary of excessive spending and instead are building a safety cushion for future shocks (inflation) and deleveraging by paying off their debts.  This is still fundamentally a secular recession led by a global deleveraging process.

The revised GDP numbers for the first quarter show a slight improvement, down only 5.7% not the original –6.1%.

This is good news but old news and the market is forward looking.  While pundit who are often wrong expect the 2nd quarter to also be negative they are betting on the third quarter to be positive.  There are a lot of indicators that point to that optimistic scenario being a little to Rosy.

Two items to hit the news lately highlight the need not only for governments to have a disaster plan but for companies as well.  We have a Disaster Plan as mandated by law.  It is reviewed and updated annually.   These two scenarios will be incorporated into our planning this summer.

The two articles on Domestic Terrorism are:

Morgan Hill, CA

http://perens.com/works/articles/MorganHill/

and from France

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6150447.ece

Both articles deal with the loss of at least one major service whether electric service or cellular.  Is you company ready for a disaster? Is your City? County?

Is your Family prepared?

Are you prepared?

Three Steps to Preparedness – American Red Cross

Ready.gov – Department of Homeland Security

12:31 PM GMT  |  Read comments(0)

April 15

Sweet Tea Party

 I exercised my 1st amendment rights today by attending the Macon Tea Party at Rosa Parks Square.

The crowd was great, the speakers for the most part were good too.

The Pork BBQ, Sweat Tea, and Pork and beans from Sonny's was excellent.

The weather could not have been more perfect.

Rumor has it I appeared on the Macon.com page.

If you were wondering what I was protesting, I was protesting spending without deliberation, bailouts without a plan, and incompetent governance by our elected leaders both republican and democrat.

I took a lot of pictures and hope to post them as soon as I get a cable from the camera to the computer.

Happy Tax Day everyone!

12:41 PM GMT  |  Read comments(0)