On Mar 17, 8:57*pm, "Tom Gardner" wrote:
"Too_Many_Tools" wrote in message

...
On Mar 17, 10:27 am, Wes wrote:





"Karl Townsend" wrote:
"The Kid" got laid off Thursday. Last day of work on Friday. He's got a ton
o' payments - house, car, student loan, credit cards.

It took him till 10:00 A.M. today to get another good job. He's lead man -
programmer, setup, order tooling etc. in a five man shop. Quite a change
from the large corporation. Pay is close to the same at $25 but little OT,
vs. 10 - 20 hours before.

Glad that your son was able to rapidly gain another job. I hope he took
reflection on how his choices and obligations require a fairly constant
stream of income.

Ask him how long he could have lasted if the economy was totally down and he
had to rely on unemployement and savings.

Your son has good marketable skills but he needs to always keep in mind what
would happen if... If you get hurt outside of work, most places don't keep
you on for long and poof goes the health insurance unless you can make the
cobra payments.

He needs to have a reserve fund in liquid funds. Hopefully he has it but I
bet he doesn't.

Wes

And prepare for the next layoff...the economy is tanking and has not
seen the bottom.

And then there is that small matter of daily bank failures...

It's time to be eating beans until the debts are paid off...

TMT

That's one look. *Another, more realistic is that this is a HUGE opportunity.
If you're so doomy-gloomy you should take all your worthless money and all you
can borrow and use it to buy hard goods that won't loose all their value like
money will. *I'd recommend wire brushes, but lead time are getting longer as I'm
booked for months even running over-time and weekends, and hiring warm bodies as
fast as I can.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

LOL...Good to hear times are good with you...you are an
exception...that is if times are actually good.

Times were good at Bear Stearns last week...not so good today.

A dose of reality might help correct your mispreception of what is
really going on.

If you feel lucky maybe you might want to use all your worthless money
to buy some of Bear Stearns.

TMT


Deepening slump envelops factory sector By Glenn Somerville
Mon Mar 17

A spreading economic malaise seeped into U.S. factories in February
and March as waning demand more than offset the export benefits of a
cheaper dollar, a series of reports showed on Monday.

A Federal Reserve report on industrial output showed factories ran at
their slowest rate in more than two years during February while a key
gauge of factory business in the Northeastern U.S. slumped to a record
low in March.

Taken together, the reports reinforced concern that the world's
largest economy stalled during the first quarter and was in an actual
downturn, though Bush administration officials refuse to concede a
recession has started.

The New York Fed said its "Empire State" gauge of general business
activity plunged in March to a record minus 22.23 from minus 11.72 in
February, far worse than analysts had expected, as was the case with
the broader industrial production report.

The Fed report showed overall industrial production by the nation's
mines, factories and utilities fell an unexpectedly steep 0.5 percent
in February. That followed a slight 0.1 percent January gain and was
the biggest decline in total output since last October.

Market participants, transfixed by developments in the U.S. financial
sector after a weekend collapse of one large firm and new Fed action
to add liquidity, paid scant attention to the latest economic numbers.

After see-sawing throughout the day, the Dow Jones industrial average
ended up 0.18 percent at 11,972.25. The Nasdaq Composite Index posted
a 1.6 percent loss to close at 2,177.01.

Investors scrambled for safety into U.S. Treasury securities, driving
prices up for longer maturities and yields down ahead of a Fed policy-
setting meeting on Tuesday that is widely expected to deliver the
central bank's next move, a hefty cut in its benchmark federal funds
rate.

The stress on factories showed up in the measure of manufacturing,
with output down 0.2 percent in February after being flat in January.
That left the manufacturing sector running at 79.3 percent of total
operating capacity, the lowest rate since 79.2 percent in October
2005.

"The implication for the economy is that the manufacturing sector,
even though it benefits substantially by a weaker dollar, is in
decline, hurt by a domestic slowdown," said economist Cary Leahey of
Decision Economics Inc in New York.

"This report is saying that the economy is in recession in the first
quarter," Leahey added.

Separately, the National Association of Home Builders said builder
sentiment remained near historic lows in March. Its NAHB/Wells Fargo
Housing Market Index was unchanged from February at 20 -- with any
reading under 50 signaling that more builders see conditions as bleak
than view them favorably.

The latest signs of economic distress occur against a backdrop of
mounting woe in the U.S. financial sector, where the Fed once more
stepped in on Sunday night to cut a lending rate to try to keep
financial markets from panicking and seizing up.

That came hours after a deal was announced for a takeover of ailing
investment bank Bear Stearns by JPMorgan Chase & Co for a bargain-
basement price of $2 a share. That deal committed the Fed to fund up
to $30 billion of Bear Stearns' less-liquid assets and highlighted a
loss of investor confidence in the health of the U.S. financial
system.

President George W. Bush, who met his top economic advisers on Monday
morning, said afterward the economy faced "challenging times" but
played down fears cited by some analysts that it was confronting its
worst set of conditions in decades.

"In the long run our economy's going to be fine," said Bush, who
leaves office next January and does not want to leave presumed
Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain in any worse position
than necessary when November elections occur. He said the United
States was "on top of the situation."

A Treasury Department report showing net overall capital inflows to
the United States fell sharply in January underlined the skepticism
that foreigners have about the direction of the U.S. economy.

Inflows dropped to $37.4 billion from $72.7 billion in December -- not
enough to cover the month's $58.2 billion deficit on trade with the
rest of the world and therefore likely to maintain pressure on a
steadily sliding U.S. dollar.

The only glimmer of hope came in a report from the Commerce Department
showing a modest improvement in the broadest gauge of total U.S. trade
with the rest of the world.

Soaring U.S. deficits are cited by academic economists as a root cause
of deepening problems in the economy because they reflect the
propensity of U.S. consumers to spend rather than save and to borrow
endlessly from abroad to finance spending.

The U.S. current account deficit narrowed in the fourth quarter to
$172.9 billion from a revised $177.4 billion in the third quarter, the
Commerce Department said.

(Additional reporting by Burton Frierson, Pedro Nicolaci da Costa and
Gertrude Chavez in New York; Editing by Dan Grebler)