Today's observations...WOW!

[offshore44]

I went to town today. 'Had a list of small stuff to pick up and it seemed to be a good day to do it. I don't really get into town very often anymore due to various circumstances, none of which are germain to my observations. The important thing is that it has been several months since I have been to town and just kind of wandered around.

Here are my observations:

Stores: The only stores that were in any way crowded were the "discounters" or value priced stores like Fred Meyers, Winco and Costco. They were pretty packed with people, none of whom looked like they were happy or having fun shopping. Lots of grim folks out there. The shopping carts were not nearly as full as what you would expect. Not as much was leaving the store as was usual a couple of months ago. Bigger quantities of much fewer items. The store clerks were really surprised, and happy to have someone talk to them in a normal, friendly fashion.

Shopper: Fewer teenagers and youngsters out bumming around and spending money. There was a much higher proportion of middle aged and older folks in the mix. Lots of couples, and man, momma wasn't happy.

Specialty Stores: Specialty stores were really barren of customers. Hardware, sporting goods and farms stores were pretty empty and most folks seemed to be leaving the store empty handed, or with small purchases. It was really easy to park the truck close to the front door.

Inventory: This is the part that I found especially interesting; the selection of items is way down. Not only variations on a theme, but stuff that you could always depend on the store to have in stock was no where to be found. The clerk's answer to inquiries about that invariably went something like "Oh ya, that's on isle 45. Oh, you checked there already? It must be out of stock." The shelf fronts were full, like always, but the inventory was spread out along the shelf and not in depth. Where you would usually find four of five sizes and varieties, there were two, and only two or three deep on the shelves. Nothing was stacked up on the shelves. Lots of ammo was on the shelves, but only in the more common calibers. Fewer reloading and other sporting books on the shelves. Lots of high end outdoor clothes, not much of the old school sturdy stuff in evidence.

Store Staff: There was plenty of staff in all the store that were eager to help. To the point of being pests on occasion. Got "pested" right out of one sporting goods store. Don't need that much interaction with store staff! It seemed like there was lots of store staff standing around not doing much. All the shelves were tidy and the inventory was arranged. Only about half of the registers were manned and ready for customers.

Road Traffic: There was traffic, but I could make a left hand turn whenever and where ever I wanted to. Didn't see very many new trucks or cars in the parking lots or on the streets. Lots of dents and dirt in evidence though.

None of this would have been evident to me if I had been going into town as often as I was a year or two ago. The changes since the last time I was in town for more than a quick run for parts and such is remarkable.

Oh, and there were beggars everywhere. Really, I was amazed at the number of people, mostly either older men or really young men who had signs out begging. I must have seen, at least and conservatively, 25 people begging on the side of the road, in parking lots and almost anywhere else that there was traffic of any kind. "Will work for food", "Need work, will do anything". Those sorts of signs. Not many women and no kids begging yet though.

(edited to add) Lots of garage sale signs out and about to. More than I have ever seen. The empty store fronts are still empty. Lots of commercial and industrial land for sale. There was one thing that I haven't seen in a very long time. Owner financing signs on commercial and industrial land. Lots of empty buildings for lease and sale. Didn't see any help wanted sign though, even on the fast food places. With school starting, you would expect to see that. Lots of older checkers and store staff, which is unusual around here.

[Thorack]

Well,

Where the hell you been hiding out at! Bomb shelter run out of MRE's or what? Cold Wars been over about 20 years. Muslims been gettin uppity as of late and every vagrant able bought a house which crashed the economy. Most folks are broke and we got close to 10% unemployment. Hope that brings you up to speed.

Captain Obvious signing off.

[offshore44]

Give me a break, Thorack, I been here all along and seen what's been going on. BUT, and this is a BIG BUT, the change that I have seen in the last six weeks to two months has been remarkable. Really, it has gone from "this sucks" to "Holy Cr*p!" in the time that I have been out minding my own business. Sure I read the news and check in here and other places daily, but to see deterioration like this and not even seeing it remarked about anywhere but on the more "extreme" sources is puzzling.

I am not a tin foil hat kind of guy, but I am really calling BS on all of this happy economic horse sh*t that we are getting force fed. I am starting to think that Shadow Stats and other sites like that are way more believable than some others that I could name.

You know what I think? I think that someone is feeding us crab bait and BS to try and keep the lid on this thing. I think that someone is desperate enough to say and do anything it takes to keep the lid on.

You know what else I think? I think that we are deteriorating at an ever increasing rate.

(edited to add) By the way - U6 numbers around here are running about 23%. I have been out of work for just over a year. The last position that I applied for (last week) had 2,600 applications submitted. I am a geek, and very good at what I do, with years of experience. Business / Systems / Data analysis is my specialty. Been doing it for years. I can SMELL when I am being lied to. Guess what, I AM BEING LIED TO!

[Thorack]

Offshore 44,

I know what you are talking about and I agree with you that we are probably being lied to. I dont think we are going to have the rug pulled out from under us I think it will be like all the economic analysts say, "We are looking for an orderly decline". That I believe the congress critters and Fed folks dont want to fear for there lives if the bottom drops out. To many folks in America with guns and nothing to lose is bad for congress critters and Wallstreet/Fed types. So look for it to get worse just slowly and incrementally. Like the old frog in the water trick.

Plus I just wanted to bust your chops for being mysterious about why you come out of the hills only every so often.

Take it easy
Thorack

[juanni]

I have recently seen a few hitchhiking families trying to bum a ride out in the middle of nowhere.


Very Grapes of Wrath.




..................juanni

[2barearms]

Here in Houston I'm seeing some small business failures and tons
of out of state license plates. The commute hasn't slacked up one
bit even with 8.8% unemployment. There is still new commercial
and residential construction albiet at a much slower pace. I just put
in a bid for the Railings on a 50 Million dollar house! Like I've said
all along it seems eerily similar to the end of the 70's.

[offshore44]

I really didn't think you-all would be interested in why I don't get into town much, so....

stupid.gov is jerking our chains pretty hard, and playing us for mushrooms. This "orderly decline" that the econs keep talking about is going negative in a parabolic fashion. We are about 15% or so from the origin right now and in another brief period of time it is going down at an ever steeper slope. It is not going to matter if the rug is pulled out or the decline goes parabolic after a certain point, the difference is not going to matter one whit. We won't be able to tell the difference.

The Dems, the Repubs and the Bureaucrats are going to keep passing the turd around like a hot potato hoping the crash happens on somebody else's watch.

There is no mathematical possibility that we can keep funding our debt, or pay it off with our current internal resources. Things are getting noticeably worse in the economy at an ever increasing rate. Even with a neutered Second Amendment the population is way to armed for .gov to handle. The general population is getting more militant every week. (Either as a blatant scoff-law or along the lines of the Tea Parties) The Federal Government has already lost control of the nation and the economy, they just don't know it yet. Have you ever seen the disconnect between the nation and the government greater than right now?

I haven't seen juanni's grapes of wrath hitch hiking families yet, but I do know where there are a bunch of people living in tents and under tarps; and hand to mouth by their wits. How many of those people does there have to be before a leader emerges? It's just a matter of time before critical mass is achieved and we see some form of civil unrest.

We are one relatively minor black swan event away from being truly and righteously screwed, blued and put to bed. So much for the orderly decline at that point.

[bykerhd]

FOX did some filming in what they claimed, and looked, to be large shopping malls in different cities across the country. This was mid summer, middle of the week. Virtually EMPTY parking lots.
Joe "The Liar" Biden was busy out pushing Obummer's "Summer of Recovery" message. Times are BAD out there and NOT getting better.
In spite of what the incumbent DemoLiars are saying.

[offshore44]

Originally posted by 2barearms
Here in Houston I'm seeing some small business failures and tons
of out of state license plates. The commute hasn't slacked up one
bit even with 8.8% unemployment. There is still new commercial
and residential construction albiet at a much slower pace. I just put
in a bid for the Railings on a 50 Million dollar house! Like I've said
all along it seems eerily similar to the end of the 70's.

I'm thinking that you are about a year to year and a half behind us on the slope. Our "official" unemployment rate is about 10.6%, and has just started to increase again recently. We have some construction that is still happening, both commercial and residential, but we also have a ton of new construction sitting vacant. That has to be costing someone some serious coin. Two large companies announced that they are either closing or cutting back in the last week or so. Weyerhauser totally closed a plant, and Con-Way sent 200+ jobs to India. We don't have that many Weyerhausers and Con-Ways in this state for that to not make a difference.

[357ross]

Offshore44, as scary as it is to contemplate, I still believe it is by design. And, I am no tinfoil hat type either. I still think we may be headed for some sort of martial law solution to this mess. A black swan event may be just the thing to push it over the edge.

[offshore44]

Originally posted by bykerhd
FOX did some filming in what they claimed, and looked, to be large shopping malls in different cities across the country. This was mid summer, middle of the week. Virtually EMPTY parking lots.
Joe "The Liar" Biden was busy out pushing Obummer's "Summer of Recovery" message. Times are BAD out there and NOT getting better.
In spite of what the incumbent DemoLiars are saying.

Yup, the green shoots turned out to be green sharts. It's not just the Dems though. The Repubs are not going to do what is required of them to turn this thing around. To turn this thing around they have to go after the Bureaucracy and the budget. The Repub power base that gets them elected is not going to let that happen. (Tea Parties and conservative independents not-with-standing) Just like the Dem's, they will owe to many favors to too many people to actually make that much of a change.

[offshore44]

Originally posted by 357ross
Offshore44, as scary as it is to contemplate, I still believe it is by design. And, I am no tinfoil hat type either. I still think we may be headed for some sort of martial law solution to this mess. A black swan event may be just the thing to push it over the edge.

Do the math on the imposition of martial law. There is no way to make it work out for the government in the long run. I doubt that they could control more than the major cities on the coasts and maybe some in the mid west for longer than six months or so. I think this is all just a huge cluster-f*ck accident that got out of hand. Way to many well intentioned elected leaders wanting to save the world being taken advantage of by to many savvy, powerful and connected business men. Since no one was really minding the shop, it progressed faster and further than anyone expected. Now the bubble has popped...well actually it has detonated like Bikini Atoll, but none the less it has turned out poorly. Now all those well meaning politicians, all those hooked in for life bureaucrats and all the powerful business men are looking at each other and going "Now what?!"

Ever gotten on a horse and known that it was a bad idea about ten seconds later? You thought it would be a fun ride. But now you know that if you fall off, you are going to get the cr*p stomped out of you. You know that you aren't going to stay on much longer. You also know that you can't jump off, because you will still get the cr*p stomped out of you. You can't even wet yourself because you are bouncing around so bad. That's where the powers that be are...kinda funny actually, if we weren't strapped on that horse as well.

[Gary Harwell]

I just posted this in another thread, MSM still poopooing apocalyptic financial scenarios it, but at least some stories are making it to the forefront, albeit Drudge and Infowars.

I think your right about Houston, it will decline, but had dinner tight in a housewarming $1m mansion(the smart nephew),.. but saw lots of for sale signs in that neighborhood.

Roubini has been pretty accurate ,would like to hear more from some of the other dire predicters but they seem to be silent lately.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php...show_article=1

[offshore44]

The other dire predictors are getting their stuff together and bugging out, probably. Drudge is pretty good, but I'm not convinced about Infowars yet.

One of the problems with the MSM is that they are products of the public school systems and liberal Arts Colleges. They CAN'T do math. Even simple math. Since it is painful for them, they rely on whatever the official line is and don't have the skills to check what they are being fed by the spoonful.

The math says that we are, at the very least, partially toast, and possibly totally screwed. Look at the numbers and do the analysis. Do a best case, a worst case and a most probable case analysis. The best case is not all that good, there is a lot of pain there for a lot of people for a lot of years. The worst case and the most probable case are converging slowly. That is never a good thing.

As an aside, I have been an elected official and worked as a consultant in State and local government off and on. They are not efficient, nor do they have good organizational skills. Most state and local bureaucracies can't even agree at the upper-middle management level and below what, exactly, they are supposed to be doing on a day to day basis, nor what, exactly the rules really are. They are not the military in any way shape or form. They will cause more harm by accident than they will ever cause by design.

[gates]

For fuks sakes guys! I /WE have been talking about this HERE on THIS forum for 18 months! this is nothing new!

[evan price]

The MSM has been feeding the Dow Jones Industrial Average to the population every evening on the 6 o'clock news. With 401(k)s being in nearly everyone's retirement stream, the population started tuning into that to see how they were doing.
Presto, most of the nation now believes that the Dow index is actually the heartbeat of the economy. If the Dow is over 10,000 we MUST be doing OK, right???
Unfortunately they can't see past the sizzle to see in fact the steak has dried up to a piece of shoe leather.

The only way to stop this mess is for the bailouts, stimuli and free rides to stop and let the market settle itself out, get the valueless assetts off of the books, let the mortally wounded banks get eaten by the ones that made good choices, and let the entire economy revalue itself at more realistic numbers. Couple that with austerity measures on the part of every taxpayer-funded entitiy- local, state or federal- how about an across the board 10% budget reduction for every department with no loopholes or exceptions?

Why is it that when i have less money coming in, I have to cut spending, yet when the government has less money coming in, they raise taxes to get more money? WTF is up with that? Me spending MY money at businesses will drive more economic good than the .gov doling out my money for me ever will!

[gates]

Evan - it's called Kenesian economics - Wiki it! it WILL piss you off!

[2barearms]

Deflation is probably the first and worst scenario we are facing.
It's tough to tell first hand from where I sit because the recession
hasn't hit Houston nearly as hard as say Florida or California. The
net result will be that as fewer people buy big ticket stuff and the prices
will continue to fall and with the Real Estate market continuing to
decline I'd look for autos to be a huge problem next. This of course
will translate to lower wages and further spiraling downward. This
could easily be a decade long struggle, I've been thru it before and
it's numbingly hard to cope. We don't have what it takes at this point
to prime the pump of an economy that's finally been drained.

[wileycsg]

Went to the local outlet village this weekend to buy sneakers for my son. Stores there are mostly high end. The place was booming. Lots of expensive cars, beemers everywhere. The area in general isn't much different. Some building contracters are complaining that it's real slow but we,ve got more work than we can keeep up with right now. Talked to a friend in real estate. He sells only land and says things are doing great. The top two house sellers are raking in the money. Haven't seen any bussinesses going under that wouldn't be no matter what. The differnce may be that this is a very wealthy area to begin with.

The fact of the matter is, yes the economy sucks overall right now. This has happened before and will happen again. We've been blessed with an unusally long period of prosperity so most people have forgoten this. If gates and juanni had been around during the Carter years they probably would have hanged themselves.

[juanni]

Originally posted by wileycsg
If gates and juanni had been around during the Carter years they probably would have hanged themselves.

Oh I was around.

This time is different, in case those words haven't been worn out enough.

Carter's bungling and OPEC's energy squeeze is tame compared to the across the board structural issues at every level our current system has.



...............juanni

[offshore44]

Originally posted by gates
For fuks sakes guys! I /WE have been talking about this HERE on THIS forum for 18 months! this is nothing new!

Sorry to make your head pop gates, but the intent was to share personnel observations from my local area that demonstrate an increasing negative change. Nothing more - nothing less. I find it interesting and informative that other members here are not seeing the same thing in their areas. A quick check shows me where they are from, and viola! a new data point and more grist for the data analysis.

If I really had my stuff together, I would make up a survey to be filled out on the 1st and the 15th for a more formal data gathering effort. The unofficial Fal Files economic and political trend analysis and survey. Now wouldn't that be interesting...

Abstract, analyze and publish the results periodically and let the discussion games begin!

[festus]

Food Lion stopped stocking Campbell's Bean and Bacon soup! And pepper pot soup as well. If you look at the selections available you can see that they are eliminating a lot of brands and items. Pork prices are rising again along with most everything else with only select items being discounted.
They are throwing out steaks and lamb chops cause people are not buying them. They are opting for 49 cent a pound cut up chicken parts.
Houses are not selling, people are not paying mortgages or electric bills on time. The help wanted section of the paper is just three jobs, and one of them is for exotic dancers. Taxes have increased. People with money are not spending it. Business sucks. I got a call from Iraq on Friday from a dude looking for a job. He is working for KBR and they are sending most of the employees back here. Got another call this morning from a dude from Michigan that is moving here to live with his sister and he needs a job...
We are in for more shit. It's not getting better.

[gates]

Guys it really boils down to this, do you believe we are just in another downturn in the normal economic cycle or do you think this time it might be a structural issue that will not resolve itself as other recessions have - I'm in the latter camp. My belief that this is structural is driven by this: free trade has resulted in wage arbitrage gutting our manufacturing base and middle class, this has been masked for the last 20-30 years through the use of asset bubbles and credit bubbles - those have popped and the covers have been pulled back - we are a consumer driven service economy that does not produce and export enough to employ all of our people - (i'd estimate we fall 20-30% short) - which means, barring some game changer, that we will have ongoing, structural, 20% unemployment rates - take a look at europe and the U.K. - thats where we are headed IF we are lucky and can figure out a way to pay for it... considering we are at ZIRP we will be DAMN lucky end up like Japan economically and they financed their B.S. internally AND still make and export stuff... It seems fairly clear to me we cannot coninue business as usual forever - on other peoples money.

EDIT: that "other peoples money" thing is about 12% of our GDP - that means we are currently borrowing and spending 12% more than we generate as a country - whats the definition of a depression again:-)

[offshore44]

This is a Major Structural thing...

Wage arbitrage
Regulation arbitrage
Tax arbitrage

Employment rates are now at about, what, 54% and declining steadily? (the actual U6 unemployment rate is probably unknowable right now)

Total leverage throughout the economy is just stupid high.

We all know that this is not going to end well. You-all have been discussing this for months, and believe me I've been lurking and listening.

I think that actual observations on the ground my give us some guidance to when the financial / social / political S is going to hit the proverbial rotating ventilation device. Lord knows the official organs won't share any pertinent information they may have.

Bye the way, has anyone noticed how many violent acts are being committed right now and are not really being covered by the MSM like usual? There have been a fair number of shooting, knifings and such that barely make the local news for one news cycle. Makes you go Hmmm... Lots of Lady GaGa's new hat to replace those stories though.

Reliable information is power; ignorance isn't bliss...it's just ignorance.

[FAL freek]

Originally posted by offshore44
I am not a tin foil hat kind of guy, but I am really calling BS on all of this happy economic horse sh*t that we are getting force fed. I am starting to think that Shadow Stats and other sites like that are way more believable than some others that I could name.

You know what I think? I think that someone is feeding us crab bait and BS to try and keep the lid on this thing. I think that someone is desperate enough to say and do anything it takes to keep the lid on.

Guess ya missed TAO speech that he was gonna get serious about concentrating on the economy and creating jobs. Amazing how literally right after that speech rosey predictions about the economy started springing up everywhere. Just saw the indicators today after Wall Street closed for proof. Don't mind the fact that gold, copper, silver have all increased verses the dollar.

Locally tho the economy is strong. Working huge amounts of overtime myself. Major roads are paved but think it has nothing to do with the elections in November.