But there are early, tentative signs that the economy is getting up off the mat.

…

Good news “too soon” would be bad news for the massive $850 billion stimulus package Obama and the Democratic Congress wish to pass. If a recovery has visibly commenced, who, besides their pork-addicted constituencies and the endless line of bailout beggars who should know better, will need stimulation?

Obama, Biden, and the Democratic Party are engaging in their sharply negative jawboning on the economy for the same reason a mob hit man sends a person he knows to attend his target’s funeral: he wants to make sure he’s dead. Obama et al. want to make sure the economy seems dead, and that consumers don’t do something unhelpful like start spending again, until shortly after their party’s precious stimulus package becomes law — after which they, with the help of their lapdogs in old media, will joyously announce a resurrection.

Overall I am seeing all indications of a bottom forming in the market. It sure looks to me like things bottomed around the 20th of November and are currently building a base. It might not be until Q2 of next year before we see a full-on rally but I believe one is coming sooner rather than later. Government can’t dump free money into the economy without heating things up.

The automotive industry is the real sore spot. Nobody knows what kind of car to buy. Should you buy one that’s frugal on gas even though oil prices are low and forecast to stay low for at least another year or so? Or should you get something a little more useful but not as easy on fuel? After the whipsaw we have taken over the past year or so in oil prices, it is no wonder the public is skeptical of today’s prices and is in a “wait and see” mode.

I also don’t see the car companies acting in the sales area with any real desire to sell cars. I mean, I am currently in the market for a car. I heart is with Toyota but I looked at GM and Ford (Chrysler just doesn’t have anything that interests me right now). Neither of them were offering any deep discounts on their product or anything like 0% financing on any of the models I am interested in. Toyota offers 0% financing on 11 models. GM did have 0% financing on some models … after they raised the base price of the vehicles.

Toyota and Honda are the only ones acting like they want my business.

I don’t register on the unemployment stats because I’ve not ever been employed long enough to qualify – but I’m sure many of the ‘registrations’ and ‘forms’ I fill out – log me into that catagory (most especially when the liberals need to use it against a sitting POTUS or to magically make all things better once their guy gets in).

Personally – I am still not (purposely) employed – and we are having a banner year and most especially a banner Christmas. Second car for the holidays and all.

Take that you socialist wanna be liars and enabling msm.

I’ve mentioned this before, but last year a 50″ plasma HDTV may have cost $3000. This year they cost $2400.

That means if last year a store sold 100, this year they’d need to sell 125 just for their sales numbers to remain “flat.”

Couple this with the massive sales stores have been having to drive traffic, and more net goods are being sold, but at lower prices.

Thus a drop in sales numbers are a self-fulfilling prophecy when your store has been offering “30% off everything!” or more since December 1.

This is the same reason why in many areas real estate sales are “down” – because the price of homes has fallen, even if more homes are sold sales will be reported as “down.”

But it isn’t the biggest factor.

The biggest factor is government intervention, particularly interventions that force uneconomic actions. Notably, CRA, and many of the bailout actions.

If accounting were the main problem, the accounting could have been easily changed months ago. and besides, sox has been around for years.

They certainly are.

Some have asserted that Sarbanes-Oxley legislation has helped displace business from New York to London, where the Financial Services Authority regulates the financial sector with a lighter touch. In the UK, the non-statutory Combined Code of Corporate Governance plays a somewhat similar role to SOX. See Howell E. Jackson & Mark J. Roe, “Public Enforcement of Securities Laws: Preliminary Evidence” (Working Paper January 16, 2007). The Alternative Investment Market claims that its spectacular growth in listings almost entirely coincided with the Sarbanes Oxley legislation. In December 2006 Michael Bloomberg, New York’s mayor, and Charles Schumer, a US senator, expressed their concern.[21]

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act’s effect on non-US companies cross-listed in the US is different on firms from developed and well regulated countries than on firms from less developed countries according to Kate Litvak.[22] Companies from badly regulated countries benefit from better credit ratings by complying to regulations in a highly regulated country (USA) that is higher than the cost, but companies from developed countries only incur the cost, since transparency is adequate in their home countries as well. On the other hand, the benefit of better credit rating also comes with listing on other stock exchanges such as the London Stock Exchange.

The impact of SOX on foreign listings was also examined by Piotroski and Srinivasan (2008). They compared new foreign listings onto US and UK stock exchanges between 1995 and 2006. They found no impact of SOX on the listing preferences of large foreign firms choosing between US exchanges and the LSE’s Main Market. In contrast, they find that the likelihood of a US listing among small foreign firms choosing between the Nasdaq and LSE’s Alternative Investment Market decreased following SOX. The negative effect among small firms is consistent with these companies being less able to absorb the incremental costs associated with SOX compliance. This suggests that SOX had a mixed effect on the costs and benefits of a US listing based on characteristics of the foreign companies seeking a listing. [23]
…

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, courtesy of the Republican Party, cost American companies upwards of $1.2 trillion. The capital flight it initiated caused the London Stock Exchange to become the new hub for capital markets[34]

21- http://www.senate.gov/~schumer....._FINAL.pdf
22- http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa....._id=876624
23- http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa....._id=956987
34 – http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=57617

The above from Wikipedia.

You might also want to read T.J. Rodger’s recent article at Pajamas Media. He says he can’t even make sense out of his balance sheets anymore. He has to show he has no cash when there is cash in the bank. It just gets eaten up by paper “liabilities”.

Also see: http://online.wsj.com/article/.....25207.html

Sarbanes/Oxley is absolutely killing our economy. What it does is amplify downturns by making accounting rules that exacerbate any reduction in value of assets. It is great when you have an expanding economy and you want to control hype. It is a disaster in a declining economy as it acts to accelerate the decline.

And if your assumption was true – the actual value of said property , when sold would show a real profit, considering you must factor in a lower tax rate based on your example (200k home is really worth 300k, regardless of “on the books”) and the real value of the home sold.

Companies are not fleeing to foreign exchanges as listed public entities, if you want to avoid the SOX “turmoil” you go private. More ADR’s have been filed and listed in the past 10 years than the previous 25 years, % wise. And off shore accounting simply allows companies to pay lower corporate tax rates (see Ireland, Scotland, Cayman Islands) and due to certain laws, don’t have to show a carry over loss.

AIG got invloved in shady accounting years ago, hence why Eli Broad and Hank Greenberg can no longer sit on a public board or serve as public company Directors. They also were knee deep in debt swap assets, which are at a 10 times default rate of actual defaulted mortgages. They , along with others, knowingly kept reselling bad debt for bad debt, taking the commissions for each transaction while hoping no one got caught. They didn’t – a bailout happened instead.

What you described isn’t even close to the financial issue the world is facing today. Cash is reported on any basic balance sheet – of which analysts would reward. They aren’t, because it isn’t there.

Remember how people thought it was “funny” the dollar was being devalued by the Yuan and Euro… opps – the greedy foreigners failed to look after their INVESTMENT and are reaping what they sowed. The fact China’s investments in Americna companies and credit is worth 1/3 of what it was 2 years ago is the result of greedy morons.

Companies are having serious problems with these new accounting procedures and it is causing them to artificially write down assets due simply to accounting rules. They might have loads of cash in the bank that they are not allowed to lend or show as an asset because it is wiped out by other artificial markdowns. These rules are forcing them to show losses when bank balances are increasing. But they can’t lend because according to these asinine rules, they don’t have any assets to lend. What S-OX has done is try to eliminate investor risk by making every balance sheet an absolute worst case scenario. You have to assume that when ONE mortgage defaults, that they ALL will default and when one sells for $200,000, they will ALL sell for $200,000 and so you have to carry these imaginary losses on your books as if they were a reality. So business carries these imaginary disasters on their books and it isn’t long before it creates a real one. If you give your employees an option on stock and the option is $1 and your stock price is $10, you have to take a $9 hit for every outstanding option. You are forced to assume that every single option outstanding will get exercised at the current market price and as your stock goes up, it forces you to take an even larger liability. It acts as a brake on growth. It turns every single balance sheet from “what the reality is today” to “what is absolutely the worst possible thing that could happen” in order to eliminate investor risk.

So then you have perfectly liquid companies that are cash positive suddenly being “broke” by the new accounting rules when they would have been just fine under the previous rules. AIG suddenly needs to be “bailed out” because on paper it is way under water with huge paper losses yet has billions of dollars of cash in the bank and is taking in more than it is paying out, but can’t use any of that cash because of the paper liability. Same story with Bear Stearns. Cash positive, paper negative.

One result is that companies are either moving offshore or listing their stock in London instead of New York. Another result is companies going broke when they aren’t.

“We are having a great season so far, already beat last Dec as of Sunday morning…”

Proreason is right – the actual numbers, reality, etc of the economy cannot touch the corrupt MSM and financial markets bombardment of news story perceptions every single day. From day 1 of Bush’s presidency, we have heard how bad our economy has been, 5M new jobs wasn’t really “good”, as long as they could lie about a comparative pulled out of thin air, like Clinton’s fantasy numbers. GDP at 4.5% was “fair”, etc etc.

I am an earnings junky – and when you actually look at company’s who have nothing to do with the self-made subprime Alt A mortgage meltdown – you see respectable growth across the board.

But this is the exact perception the MSM wants to create – that Obama is really a savior, who inhereted the “worst recession since the Depression (laughable if it wasnt so funny)”, will be the alchamist we have all been waiting for – and even if he doesnt succeed – will have accomplished enough “traction” to get reelected in 2012.

Same game book Pelosi used.

Personally I dont have the liquidity to wait until the 2010 correction, so I will do what I have always done – earn, toil, invest and spend. I don’t need a Finance novice reporting for Reuters to show me the way nor will Obama do anything significant, unless you count taking more of my tax money and leveraging white guilt…

But when the results for Q4 are published, unless the next few days provide a miracle, the evidence will be that there are 2 consecutive quarters of negative growth. Q4 will be very negative. Q1 is also likely to be very negative.

So although it isn’t official until it’s official, we are in a recession.

And it’s a bad one. There is no way the stock market can lose 40% of it’s valuation and companies not layoff a ton of people. Unexmployment might well go over 10%. In addition, there will be millions of foreclosures, which will also be very detrimental to the entire economy.

I would say the media got its wish, except that the 2 years of wishing was only part of it….the rest is the criminal actions taken by Obamy supporters to get him elected.

But watch what happens now. The ectasy over the economic turn-around will be orgasmic. The twinge in Chris Matthews leg will become a volcano of optimism.

And that ecstacy, although it will also be a pack of lies, will actually help the economy, because people form there opinions and take actions based on what the lying media tell them…..just like voting for the Iidiot Obamy.

All that said, I am NOT seeing the problems now that I remember during the Carter administration. Does anyone actually remember 10% unemployment? The “Rust Belt”?

But as usual, we can go here and make known how credible you think the article is. Journalists actually pay attention to places like that. Oh, and he works for the The Washington Post, not AP though AP carried the story and bylined it oddly.