The Consumer Price Index (CPI) was released today and increased 0.4%, seasonally adjusted, but still down 1.5% from a year ago (not seasonally adjusted).
What's interesting are the gas details:
The 0.4 percent seasonally adjusted increase in the CPI-U was driven by a 9.1 percent rise in the gasoline index. This increase accounted for almost the entire advance in the energy index and over 80 percent of the overall increase. Despite the August increase, the gasoline index has fallen 30.0 percent over the last 12 months.
Seems we have another cash for clunkers wonder. Minus autos industrial production increased 0.4%. So, this is the second month industrial production rose.
Industrial output rose 0.8 percent in August, following an upwardly revised increase of 1.0 percent in July. Production in manufacturing expanded 0.6 percent in August, and the index excluding motor vehicles and parts increased 0.4 percent. The gain in July for manufacturing was revised up 0.4 percentage point, to 1.4 percent; in addition, factory output for April through June is now somewhat less weak than reported previously. Production at mines moved up 0.5 percent in August. The output of utilities gained 1.9 percent, as temperatures swung from an unseasonably mild July to a slightly warmer-than-usual August. At 97.4 percent of its 2002 average, total industrial production was 10.7 percent below its level of a year earlier. In August, the capacity utilization rate for total industry advanced to 69.6 percent, a level 11.3 percentage points below its average for the period 1972 through 2008.
The credit card charge off rates are astounding. A charge off is when the company believes they the card holder has abandoned the debt and won't pay it off.
Bank of America said write-offs rose to 14.54 percent, the highest among the six U.S. lenders reporting today. That compares with 13.81 percent in July, according to a federal filing by the Charlotte, North Carolina-based company.
Citigroup’s soured loans rose to 12.14 percent last month, from 10.03 percent, while JPMorgan said write-offs advanced to 8.73 percent from 7.92 percent in July.
Remember the entire concept of moral hazard in bailing out private institutions who done it to themselves? Remember how that backfired on Lehman Brothers?
bank employees and managers had asymmetric compensation structures
Second, shareholders had the same payoff structure
creditors had only limited incentives to watch over major banks
Then, they continue with proposals for financial reforms:
If the Obama administration is serious about preventing a future financial crisis, it will have to address these three forms of moral hazard. However, its proposals may not be adequate to the task.
One of the largest ideological barriers to establishing Job Insurance, just as was the case with Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, is that it would in a fundamental way reshape the composition and relations of the public and private sectors. This more than anything else is what terrifies Republicans (it’s the reason why the GOP has targeted the public option especially) because it undermines one of the most important justifications for anti-statist and pro-corporate ideology. If the public sector and the private sector are not diametric opposites – if in fact, the public can do things that the private can, instead of the private sector being the only repository of competence and efficiency (and thus, capable of replacing the public sector) – then there is no practical argument against government intervention in the economy, and increasingly fewer philosophical arguments against it.
And so the argument will be made that this is socialist, that it’s un-American. And none of that is true.
Sales. The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that the combined value of distributive trade sales and manufacturers’ shipments for July, adjusted for seasonal and trading-day differences but not for price changes, was estimated at $978.4 billion, up 0.1 percent (±0.2%)* from June 2009 and down 17.8 percent (±0.4%) from July 2008.
Inventories. Manufacturers’ and trade inventories, adjusted for seasonal variations but not for price changes, were estimated at an end-of-month level of $1,332.5 billion, down 1.0 percent (±0.1%) from June 2009 and down 11.8 percent (±0.4%) from July 2008.
Inventories/Sales Ratio. The total business inventories/sales ratio based on seasonally adjusted data at the end of July was 1.36. The July 2008 ratio was 1.27.
This is the longest inventory contraction since 2002.
Minus autos (vehicles and parts), the preliminary retail sales report gives an increase of 1.1% from July 2009. From the current press release:
The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for August, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $351.4 billion, an increase of 2.7 percent (±0.5%) from the previous month, but 5.3 percent (±0.7%) below August 2008. Total sales for the June through August 2009 period were down 7.6 percent (±0.3%) from the same period a year ago. The June to July 2009 percent change was revised from -0.1 percent (±0.5%)* to -0.2 percent (±0.2%)*.
The biggest and most secretive gathering of ships in maritime history lies at anchor east of Singapore. Never before photographed, it is bigger than the U.S. and British navies combined but has no crew, no cargo and no destination - and is why your Christmas stocking may be on the light side this year.
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It is so far off the beaten track that nobody ever really comes close, which is why these ships are here. The world's ship owners and government economists would prefer you not to see this symbol of the depths of the plague still crippling the world's economies.
The New York Attorney General's office is preparing charges against several high-ranking Bank of America executives over the bank's alleged failure to disclose details about its acquisition of Merrill Lynch, according to a person familiar with the investigation.
Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office is likely to file civil charges against the executives over their role in failing to alert shareholders to mounting losses as well as accelerated bonus payments at Merrill, said the person, who requested anonymity because no charges have been filed yet.
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