Month: June 2011

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Horror for US Economy as Data Falls off Cliff
Published: Wednesday, 1 Jun 2011 | 2:09 PM ET Text Size
By: Patrick Allen
CNBC EMEA Head of News

The last month has been a horror show for the U.S. economy, with economic data falling off a cliff, according to Mike Riddell, a fund manager at M&G Investments in London.

“It seems that almost every bit of data about the health of the US economy has disappointed expectations recently,” said Riddell, in a note sent to CNBC on Wednesday.

“US house prices have fallen by more than 5 percent year on year, pending home sales have collapsed and existing home sales disappointed, the trend of improving jobless claims has arrested, first quarter GDP wasn’t revised upwards by the 0.4 percent forecast, durables goods orders shrank, manufacturing surveys from Philadelphia Fed, Richmond Fed and Chicago Fed were all very disappointing.”

https://www.cnbc.com/id/43239586

>“Interest rates are amazingly low and that, thanks to Ben Bernanke, is driving everything,” Yastrow said. “We’re on the verge of a great, great depression. The [Federal Reserve] knows it.

Wall Street Baffled by Slowing Economy, Low Yields: Trader
Published: Wednesday, 1 Jun 2011 | 11:06 AM ET Text Size
By: Margo D. Beller
Special to CNBC.com

Wall Street is having a hard time figuring out what to do now that the U.S. economy appears to be sputtering and yields are so low, Peter Yastrow, market strategist for Yastrow Origer, told CNBC.

“What we’ve got right now is almost near panic going on with money managers and people who are responsible for money,” he said. “They can not find a yield and you just don’t want to be putting your money into commodities or things that are punts that might work out or they might not depending on what happens with the economy.

https://www.cnbc.com/id/43236764

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“There’s nothing in my practice or in conversations with the brain surgeons I interact with to suggest an increase in brain cancers at the same time there’s been an explosion of cellphone use,” said Dr. Anthony L. D’Ambrosio, director of the Neuro-Oncology Disease Management Team at the Institute for Brain and Spine Radiosurgery at The Valley Hospital in Ridgewood.

Cellphones are ‘possibly carcinogenic,’ World Health Organization says

TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2011    LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY MAY 31, 2011, 6:59 PM
STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
ASSOCIATED PRESS

A respected international panel of experts says cellphones can possibly cause cancer, putting them in the same category as the pesticide DDT, gasoline engine exhaust and coffee.

Classifying agents as “possibly carcinogenic” doesn’t mean they automatically cause cancer, and some experts said the ruling shouldn’t change people’s cellphone habits.

https://www.northjersey.com/news/053111_Experts_say_cellphones_are_possibly_carcinogenic.html

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• We have not added even one additional nickel to the County’s debt.
• We have eliminated hundreds of cars from the County fleet and will be selling these excess vehicles at auction this spring and have cancelled all no-bid contracts saving millions of taxpayer dollars in the process.
• I have vetoed the minutes of the Bergen County Utilities Authority, Bergen County Improvement Authority and Northwest Bergen Sewer Authority whenever these agencies have violated my strict rules on unnecessary spending and as a result have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process.
• We brought accountability and transparency to Bergen Community College without impacting the college’s mission.
• We cancelled the Democrats plan to spend $2.6 million of your money to purchase a private theater.
• Through our strict, conservative, fiscal policies we have not only frozen your County taxes but have actually reduced County taxes overall by some $75,000.

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Pro-Obama media always shocked by bad economic news

As megablogger Glenn Reynolds, aka Instapundit, has noted with amusement, the word “unexpectedly” or variants thereon keep cropping up in mainstream media stories about the economy.

“New U.S. claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly climbed,” reported CNBC.com May 25.

“Personal consumption fell,” Business Insider reported the same day, “when it was expected to rise.”

“Durable goods declined 3.6 percent last month,” Reuters reported May 25, “worse than economists’ expectations.”

“Previously owned home sales unexpectedly fall,” headlined Bloomberg News May 19.

“U.S. home construction fell unexpectedly in April,” wrote the Wall Street Journal May 18.

Those examples are all from the last two weeks. Reynolds has been linking to similar items since October 2009.

Mainstream media may finally be catching up. “The latest economic numbers have not been good,” David Leonhardt wrote in the May 26 New York Times. “Another report showed that economic growth at the start of the year was no faster than the Commerce Department initially reported — ‘a real surprise,’ said Ian Shepherdson of High Frequency Economics.”

Read more at the Washington Examiner: https://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2011/05/pro-obama-media-always-shocked-bad-economic-news#ixzz1Nyl7RzHk