Tag Archives: Consumer Confidence

Sky is falling you commerce Pollyanas

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“If you talk about the sky falling too early, then people stop buying Louisiana oysters, blue crabs, and shrimp,” says LSU environmental scientist. We’re expected to believe the rate of the BP oil spill has only been deduced by hobbyists looking at foreign satellite images. At a possible 25,000 barrels a day, they calculate the Exxon Valdez benchmark has already been surpassed. The EPA has a site to crowdsource concern, while US space images are embargoed because damage control to consumer confidence is more important than protecting nature. Alas for those sardonic Gulf-is-half-empty types, the Deepwater Horizon oil missed the half already decimated by hypoxia.

I knew Black Friday, and You Sir, are no Black Friday

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I knew Black Friday, and You Sir, are no Black Friday

Robinson Crusoe illustration by OffterdingerIf this year’s “Black Friday” fails to pull retailers out of their red ink, should the dubious protologism retire its presumption to speak for consumer confidence? I think it should. Wasn’t it really just an economist’s “for the Gipper” meme –putting the solvency of the market on the shoulders of Christmas shoppers, rallying them to pull the economy into the black, regardless if it meant spending themselves into the red? I hate it when emotion-charged phrases are usurped by pretenders. Hiroshima was “Ground Zero” before the WTC, the “Homeland” was Nazi Germany, and “Black Friday” was Robinson Crusoe’s, well, Man Friday.

“Black Friday” in general has represented whichever awful event befell that day of the week of recent memory. It may be a wonderful anti-racism step to appoint a rare positive attribution to the word “black,” but I object to its use here to exacerbate affluenza, targeted against the best efforts of sustainability educators to reframe the day-after-Thanksgiving as Buy Nothing Day. If you are a booster for consumerism, black is an accounting concept meaning profitability. But how disingenuous to expect that those outside the balance sheet should share the enthusiasm. For example, it’s not everyone’s Good Friday just because Notre Dame wins that day. Good Friday, by the way, is also called Black Friday, as is any Friday that falls on the 13th.

Below I will list history’s Black Fridays, lest nocturnal Wikipedia cobbler elves continue their PR visits to bolster the retailer claim to the term. According to “Wikipedia” the earliest citation for a shopper’s “Black Friday” is 1966. But in actuality, the expression came from Philadelphia bus drivers and policemen referring to the traffic congestion created at their city center on the busiest shopping day of the year. But Philadelphia retailers objected to the negative connotation. Perhaps as a result, the “black ink” angle surfaces, attributed to a store clerk, offering a more upbeat, chamber-of-commerce-friendly spin. Hmm.

Many people think Black Friday recalls the Stock Market Crash of 1929. It does, and they’re right to be confused about which day of the week it was in particular, because the first day of the crash became known as Black Thursday, followed by Black Friday, then the next trading days, Black Monday and Black Tuesday.

What other occasions in man’s history have warranted the dark coloration? Let’s begin with Black Sabbath:

Black Saturdays
Sept 10, 1547, disaster for Scottish defenders at Battle of Pinkie Cleugh, Scotland
Aug 6, 1621, Mass hysteria caused by dark stormy night confirming Armageddon arrived with Episcopacy, Scotland
Dec 28, 1929, Massacre of Mau demonstrators by NZ police, Samoa
June 13, 1942, Disastrous UK Battle of Gazala against German Afrika Korps
June 29, 1946, UK Operation Agatha against Zionist terrorists in Palestine
Oct 8, 1962, height of A-bomb scare, Cuban Missile Crisis
Dec 6, 1975, Beirut massacres which started Lebanese Civil War, Lebanon
July 31, 1982, worst road accident in French history, (on annual “Black Saturday” when entire of population takes to the road for vacation)
July 14, 1984, Honk Kong exchange rates fall to all time low
Aug 20, 1988, worst day of Yellowstone Fires
Jan 20, 1990, January Massacre of Azeri demonstrators by Soviet Army, Azerbaijan
Feb 7, 2009, brush fires, Victoria, Australia

Black Sundays
Feb 14, 1926, bush fires, Victoria, Australia
April 14, 1935, “Black Blizzard” over Dust Bowl, the Great Plains of US and Canada
Feb 6, 1938, fatal waves on Bondi Beach, Australia
Nov 8, 1942, Nazi extermination of Jews in Staszow, Poland
June 11, 1944, disastrous Canadian battle against German Panzers, Normandy, France
Sept 24, 1950, sunlight blocked by forest fires, Pennsylvania
Jan 2, 1955, brush fires in Southern Australia
May 2, 1982, Exxon canceled shale oil project in Parachute, Colorado
Nov 24, 1991, extreme right party ascension in Belgium
May 1, 1994, San Marino Grand Prix death of Ayrton Senna
April 26, 1998, DIA inter-terminal subway fails, Denver
Jan 21, 2001, Direct TV purged viewers who were pirating signals
Feb 18, 2001, Datona 500 death of Dale Earnhart
Dec 28, 2008, Detroit Lions finished 0-16

Black Mondays
Easter, 1209, English settlers massacred in Dublin, Ireland
April 14, 1360, Easter misfortune during Hundred Years War
Feb 8, 1886, Pall Mall Riot, London, UK
Dec 10, 1894, Newfoundland bank failure, Canada
Oct 28, 1929, Stock Market Crash, 3rd day of trading
May 27, 1935, US Supreme Court overturns National Recovery Act
Sept 19, 1977, Shutdown of Youngstown, Ohio steel mill
Nov 27, 1978, Assassination of Harvey Milk
Oct 19, 1987, global stock market crash
Oct 8, 1990, Temple Mount Massacre by Israeli IDF, Palestine

Black Tuesdays
Oct 29, 1929, Stock Market Crash
1967, brush fires in Tasmania, Australia
Oct 20, 1987, global stock market crash, because Monday is Tuesday in Australia

Black Wednesdays
Sept 16, 1992, when UK withdrew currency from European Exchange Rate Mechanism, suffering a devaluation of 3.4 billion pounds.
Nov 3, 2004, John Kerry concedes 2004 election immediately after promising to challenge polling irregularities.

Had not the US Stock Exchange been shut down on Tuesday, there would have been a Black Wednesday 1929 as well.

Black Thursdays
Feb 6, 1851, brush fires, Victoria, Australia
Oct 24, 1929, start of US Stock Market Crash
Oct 14, 1943, disastrous US-UK bombing raid over Schweinfurt, Germany
Dec 16, 1943, disastrous UK bombing raid over Berlin, Germany
Aug 24, 1995, Moscow Interbank credit market collapse, Russia
Feb 8, 1998, Black World Wide Web Protest
July 24, 2003, Guatemala City riots, Guatemala

Black Fridays
Sept 24, 1869, collapse of price of gold.
Oct 14, 1881, Eyemouth Disaster, Scotland
Nov 11, 1887, Haymarket hangings of innocent anarchists, Chicago
Nov 18, 1910, Police assault of suffragettes, London, UK
Jan 31, 1919, George Square Riot, during strike for 40hr work week, Glasgow, Scotland
Oct 25, 1929, second day of Stock Market Crash
Jan 13, 1939, bush fires in Victoria, Australia
1940 movie starring Boris Karloff
Sept 18, 1942, Bombing of Dartmouth, Devon, UK
Oct 13, 1944, Disastrous Canadian raid, Battle of the Scheldt, Belgium
Feb 9, 1945, Disastrous UK air raid, Battle of Sunnfjord, Norway
Oct 5, 1945, Hollywood Warner Brothers union riot, led to Taft-Hartley Act
May 5, 1950, Red River Flood, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Oct 7, 1977, Phillies lost to Dodgers, game 3 of National League series
Sept 8, 1978, Massacre of protesters in Tehran, led to Iranian Revolution
May 31, 1985, US-Canadian Tornado outbreak
July 31, 1987, Edmonton Tornado, Alberta Canada
March 12, 1993 Bombay Bombings
Aug 12, 2004, suppression of protests, Male, Maldives
Sept 30, 2005, Students protesters killed in Meghalaya, India
Oct 3, 2008, EESA Wall Street Bailout
–AND–
Nov 28, 2009, the first day of the Christmas shopping season, when America’s retailers balance sheets are brought out of the red.

It fits right?

Consumer confidence men

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Consumer confidence men

Sam IsraelThe more I see pundits scoring Barack Obama’s performance based on Wall Street’s reaction, according to how much hope Obama is able to infuse into the public’s faltering confidence in the economy, I have to ponder the uncomfortable etymology of the term CON ARTIST. Con Man is short for Confidence Man, itself a now obscure euphemism for chiseler, defrauder, grifter, scammer, swindler, gouger, or fraud. But the term is still charmingly descriptive.

While even the disreputable economists now admit that Americans can expect much worse from our economy, Bill Clinton is publicly counseling President Obama to come across with more confidence about our nation’s financial prospects.

The ex-president formally known as Slick Willy is talking about your confidence to spend, without regard to whether you may lose your job, your home, your health, or your life savings.

It’s money that makes the world go round. They need everybody’s, including yours. All the better if you have to borrow it, because you really are of little use to a monetary system unless you take out a loan and pay interest.

Otherwise, with what is anybody going to laugh all the way to the bank?

The following are a few relevant dictionary definitions. Actually, I thought they were going to be more tangential:

consumer confidence
The degree of optimism that consumers are expressing for the state of the economy through their saving and spending activity.

con·fi·dence
Trust or faith in a person or thing.

confidence man
A swindler who exploits the confidence of his victim.

confidence game
A swindle in which the victim is defrauded after his or her confidence has been won.

confidence trick
A swindle in which you cheat at gambling or persuade a person to buy worthless property.

toxic asset
Not in the dictionary. Not even Orwell’s 1984. Could this be the balance sheet doppelganger to the “good-for-you liability?” Does it share the value of a “profit-net-loss” as n approaches zero? The meaning of toxic asset would be recognizably oxymoronic, if it weren’t for the fine suits worn by the FED’s confidence men. Literally, shouldn’t a carcinogenic nutrient translate, currency-exchange wise, into Funny Money?

Much as the banks want to disguise it, a Toxic asset sounds to me like Spilt Milk, an idiom for which we already know the recourse. A chorus of cries from Bernanke, Volcker, Paulson & Rubin would not then be able to convince us to put it back in the bottle and pay for it again.

Who is the economy calling stupid?

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Okay, I’ve had enough of our readiness to believe, about the economy, that nobody knows what’s going on. Nobody will tell you what’s going on, is what’s going on.

Even my deepest thinking friend tells me, “Eric, they really don’t know” (The game theorists, the would-be global axis shifters, don’t know.) He may be right, but that’s not who we’re talking about. Between those guys, and you and I, who have no clue about where the economy is going, is a hand-basket courier. That composite abstraction at the handlebars knows the destination, he’s being paid cost-plus for the delivery, and he knows enough to collect his fee in advance.

We thought “it’s the economy, stupid” was directed at George Bush the Senior. Who is/was stupid? I’m finding the syncronicity of Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill song “Isn’t it ironic?” superlatively ironic. The era when a mass audience un-learned the meaning of irony, was when the joke was really on us.

Today the accepted theme to describe the economy is: nobody knows. I recently heard the governor of Colorado speak to the need for budget cuts in these hard times. He introduced the subject of the economic downturn by explaining, almost as a throwaway foregone conclusion, “Nobody saw this coming.”

I thought, really? This is what Americans are satisfied to expect for leadership? Elected authority figures return our system to us, broken, with not a mea culpa, but mea confuso. And we buy it.

For me, this no-comprendo motif doesn’t play well in Adagio. Today DC’s new lawmakers want to know what’s become of the first half of the TARP bailout money, and the good-enough-for-primetime answer is “nobody knows.” Don’t you just want to stand up and beg your fellow audience members for a collective show of incredulity? “NOBODY KNOWS?!”

Whoever pocketed the 350 Billion, KNOWS.

From explanations of the graft in Iraq, we the television public KNOW that just one million dollars in t-bills weighs more than you can get past surveillance cameras.

From nighttime video of the economic collapse in Argentina, documentary footage viewers know it takes a continuous train of armored trucks to do a run on the banks before the public gets there.

By the way, I’m certain Billion is always capitalized, out of respect for its size.

“Nobody knows” where went the 350 Billion? No. Nobody who knows, intends to tell us.

Either way, we don’t get to know, but the distinction makes a difference, don’t you think? The excuse we’re given for not dwelling on this incongruity, nudge nudge wink wink, is that all misdirection is for the sake of consumer confidence.

To look behind the green curtain is to become dis-illusioned. If you explain the slight of hand, instead of building confidence, you throw fuel on consumer doubt.

The better economists opposed the bailout. Hundreds of them signed a petition to tell us what’s going on is a heist. Under George Bush, bankers have been making off with the US treasury. What they couldn’t spend pay themselves to foist a war, or give themselves in tax cuts, they are having to abscond with under cover of an eleventh hour “bailout.”

The best of the honest economists, Paul Krugman, was given a Nobel Prize. At the same time, our president-to-the-rescue is saying he’d consider the advice of “even Paul Krugman,” like Krugman is a fringe opinion.

Do we empower the American public beast with a truer education about what’s happening to their finances, or do we narrow their peripheral foresight like the gangway to the abbatoire?

P.T. Barnum said no one ever went broke underestimating the American public. Barnum saw opportunity and he took it. I’ll bet he wasn’t satisfied to invest his winnings on the advice of the public’s broker.

The economy is tanking because the Bush investment banker free-for-all is over.

The cash heart of the consumer confidence fattened-calf is already in the bloody hands of the high priests. The American consumer is what’s being thrown off the wall. And the communal wealth of America’s middle class can’t be put together again because the pieces which formed Humpty Dumpty’s actual pre-confidence-ballooned size are going to come up missing.

Not missing, exactly. Look at the corporate jets, private skyboxes, enormous estates, private island kingdoms and advance ticket sales of quarter-million-dollar fares into space.

With much recent ballyhoo, George Bush set aside for protection some nature preserves in the Pacific. Unlike Yellowstone, or Yosemite, these parks of azure coral reefs are inaccessible. To you.

Barack Obama’s spread-the-wealth-around campaign lingo had nothing to do with the mad scramble to divvy the pot. Obama represents our non-insider’s reflexive grab for the fewer spoons. If Obama represents a wisening up at all.

Beyond buy low, sell high, here’s an example of how the scam worked: If a $100K house can be made seem worth $500K, a broker gets five times the commission, say $60K instead of $12K, and collects that money in cash. When the cows come home, you’ve got just a house, and let’s admit that value is arbitrary. But the broker is free and clear, his gleaning of a cash value done.

And actually, your house is not even worth the cost to build it. As the democratic capitalist apparatus downgrades, and the wealthy lose empathy for the lower classes, your house is worth just the value of the shelter it provides. Look at the concern they show for your health care. Your well-being, food and shelter wise, is worth only as much as the value you add to your landlord’s pleasure.

No more reporting on the beef recall?

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Suspect beef product ON HOLD on school shelvesThe largest beef recall in history has taught us what, so far? That 37 million pounds went to the USDA school lunch program, which was distributed to schools unknown. We quietly presume the USDA had been pawning off the questionable product to the poor and dismissible among our population. But why won’t they release the names of the schools? In whispered tones with food program insiders, you learn why. Because the USDA product goes to ALL schools. (NOTE: Corpus Christi School found the recalled meat on their shelves and made the switch to a safer supplier, shouldn’t your school do the same?)

While all or any of the Colorado schools may have taken delivery of the Hallmark suspect product, the USDA school food program in Colorado gets the bulk of its meat from Advanced Meatpacking out of Oklahoma. Advanced is regarded by industry watchers as likely worse than Hallmark. We’re not talking about the tip of an iceberg, we’re [not] talking about the as yet largely unexposed large underbelly of American factory farming.

What’s so bad about US meat that foreign markets won’t buy it? Our government regulators won’t test it adequately. Individual meatpackers who want to submit their product for voluntary testing are prevented by the USDA, for fear of creating a stigma around non-tested meat.

Other countries test their 100% of their herd animals for BSE. They also prohibit the feeding of rendered animals to other animals. This is the process by which BSE spreads. The US does not prohibit the use of rendered feed. US calves are raised on a diet of milk and blood: milk fortified with the blood of their predecessors. It redefines “adulterated” I think.

US methods to prevent mad cow disease resemble more the measures necessary not to see it. The official word is that the USA doesn’t have mad cow disease. Cattle which display the traits resembling mad cow disease in Europe, here are called “downer cows.” Our safety guidelines are thus: keep those cows from reaching the meat packers. Easy enough, unless you run across slaughterhouse workers with the initiate to use forklifts and chains to harvest downed cows like any other. Then you need video cameras to catch them.

But video cameras cannot catch the biggest flaw in this screening process. Most cattle infected with BSE do not begin to show symptoms until after they are two years old. Most cattle in the US reach the slaughterhouse before they are two.

Even with a breach of our paltry preventive procedures, the USDA is still unwilling to say their prescribed screening is insufficient.

Perhaps the USDA fears that implementing European testing standards would reveal a huge chunk of US beef to be tainted with mad cow. This would profoundly impact the food industry and our economy as a whole. Perhaps a few thousand CJD fatalities five years from now is a small price to pay for stability now. Besides, those in the know have money to buy organic beef from verifiable sources. The prosperity of the market has always been borne on the backs and at the expense of the common mortal. CJD means fewer to reach retirement.

Newspapers don’t want to touch this subject, many of their advertisers are restaurants which can’t afford to deal in the more expensive meats. Alternative news-weeklies rely on supermarkets for their distribution sites.

(NOTE: Except Ralph Routon and the Independent, March 6)

No one wants to shake consumer confidence in the food supply. The problem extends beyond beef, beyond poultry, beyond farmed fish, beyond ocean fisheries, beyond imported produce, beyond domestic agribusiness, beyond pesticides, irradiation and biogenetics. So the media is not going to start with any of it. As it is with the American health care system, your health is up to you.

By the way, most of the meat being recalled has already been consumed. Of what’s left, the USDA is only asking schools to set it aside for the time being. It is being neither recalled, nor destroyed. Probably it would be too alarming to ask cafeteria workers to destroy what only a day before they had been serving up for their kids for years.

This is good news for you, if you want to find out which schools were serving the bad meat. You still have a chance to call those responsible for the food service at your child’s school. Public or private, I assure you the probability is similar. Ask them if they’ve got the recalled Hallmark stock on hold.

The virtual world of the global marketplace

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Wow. We’ve been trying for several years, a group of friends and I, to get our local public radio station KRCC to add Democracy Now to their news lineup. Nope, we’re told. Nope. Too one-sided.
 
And then they add Marketplace, a daily homage to the stockmarket.

We tried call-in campaigns, petition drives, we’ve even had Amy Goodman come speak on the campus twice and she filled the venues with audiences of mostly KRCC listeners.

KRCC was not disposed, no space available on the lineup, nope, sorry, no. And the dealings have not been above board. Listeners calling in were not told that they were among a multitude. Mention of the petition efforts, or the speaking engagements, was not made on the air. It’s been such an uphill battle, in this ultra conservative city, that petitioners meet people who’d signed already in years past, who ask “what, didn’t that happen already?” They’re no longer even tuning in anymore to KRCC to know.

I check in on KRCC every once in a while, and this morning at 91.5 on the FM dial, what do I hear? Smack in the middle of morning drive-time, a new show. Marketplace or something. Business Talk. As if the news is not already dominated by corporate press releases and corporate mouthpieces trying to direct stock market consumer confidence! And it was atrocious!

Regular NPR news itself is comprised of stories underwritten and packaged by corporate interests. Listen to any one of them and ask yourself, who wants me to know this? Chances are it’s a military contractor, or someone bidding on a water project, or an oil company hoping to ease your anxiety about Global Warming, or a chemical conglomerate wanting to impress you with the scope of human progress. A whole host of pharmaceutical underwriters give NPR reason not dwell on the 25 millions, entire generations, of Africans dying of aids.

The regular NPR stories are broadcast to give you a sense of the bloodless global economy. I guess the irregular work is done by shows like Marketplace, to pretend to report to stockholders and investors in direct terms.

You very likely do not have stock, but they’re talking to you. Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous was not for the rich and famous to watch. You can’t afford what they’re showing you, but you enjoy it vicariously, and most important your confidence is boosted by the belief that it’s there should you ever overcome your bills, or win the lottery.

National Public Media’s MARKETPLACE. Wow! Corporate press releases designed to stimulate stock values, and commentary designed to give the stimulation a simulation of being in the investor’s interest.

In five minutes I heard about a $40 million mansion for sale on Rhode Island, a rare occurrence apparently, with a 100k-bottle wine collection; to an airline that says it can’t make a competitive bid without concessions from its union; to the US car industry being criticized for having a $24 disadvantage versus Japanese cars, based on poor pricing strategy (whatever that is, $24 short maybe?) and labor problems.

Add to that, amiable chit-chat about the Dow in terms of “nearly” and “a little bit” with specialist experts who don’t want to commit to any opinion really of whether up means down or vice is versa or verse visa.

Enron blaming the victims

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Enron super-con man, alleged, Jeff Skilling, explained today that the Enron bubble need never have burst if only investors had held their confidence in Enron’s outrageous marketplace success. On paper.

I recently saw a presentation by one of the authors of ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM. While this journalist did not mince words regarding the criminality of those “smarts,” there did seem to be an underlying appreciation that Enron’s market innovations were “marvelous and novel” methods of trading energy stocks. Never mind that the only function that Enron served was to squeeze more money from between the supply and the demand.

So the world at large is responsible for bringing Enron crashing down? That is the Neocon economic M.O. isn’t it? Hold up the economy on purely the fumes of consumer confidence. If the economy falters, it’s the fault of consumers too afraid to shoulder more credit card debt.

Isn’t this like the bank-robber saying that if only no-one would call the cops, the robbery would be ongoing?

Or isn’t this quite like the Emperor’s New Clothes? So long as no one tells the emperor he has no clothes, the Emperial procession could still be processing forward, albeit naked.

The economy stupid

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Are we in a recession? Could it be a depression? A crash? Does the economy have a hope of recovery without help? The Bush administration doesn’t want to call the EMTs just yet, they prefer to tone down the rhetoric:

HELP! I’ve fallen and
I can’t improve the momentum of my recovery?

HELP! I’ve fallen and
my confidence about getting up needs a boost?

HELP! I’ve fallen and
I’m double-dipping on floor time?

HELP! I’ve fallen and
I’m despairing that my getting-up ability isn’t what it was?

HELP! I’ve fallen and
everyone wants to pretend I can get up! Or that I haven’t fallen, or that it was only a shallow fall.

A jobless recovery:
Telling a patient he’s already recovering to induce him to recover. Or pretending there’s an economic recovery to boost consumer confidence and generate an actual recovery.

I heard a spokesman say today that this recession has been the shortest in human history. In its first year the hundred year war was short.