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dereksatkinson wrote: Microsoft just announced 18k layoffs. Since the economy is booming and all..
Or it could be they were a bloated company with too many layers of management that had displayed a lack of ability to respond to market forces for several years now finally shedding dead weight
It's not like layoffs are impossible even in good times. Intel cut tens of thousands of jobs in the mid 2000's before the 2008 crash, and it had nothing to do with the overall economic picture, they'd just mismanaged themselves and had over-promoted too many people than was necessary and had to retire product lines that were no longer relevant in the market.
So we are in good times? This is prosperity?
Consensus real GDP has already been marked down to 1.7%—the lowest rate of expansion since the financial crisis.
I still think it's pretty obvious we are in a recession here. I don't see why that is so controversial.
SFO investigates price rigging in foreign exchange market The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has launched a criminal investigation into allegations of price rigging in the £3tn-a-day foreign exchange market.
The probe will look into allegations of "fraudulent conduct", the director of the SFO said in a statement.
Around 15 international agencies are investigating allegations of collusion and price manipulation.
It is alleged that traders used online chatrooms to plan the fixing of benchmark prices.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said in October it had joined other regulators around the world in scrutinising firms over the potential manipulation of the foreign exchange market.
Several investment banks, including Barclays and HSBC have already suspended currency traders due to the investigation by the FCA.
And in March this year the Bank of England suspended one member of staff over the probe.
'Bad' markets
At the time the head of the Financial Conduct Authority, Martin Wheatley, said that currency manipulation was "every bit as bad" as the Libor scandal, where banks including Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS paid fines totalling $6bn relating to Libor fixing.
For the criminal probe the SFO will work in co-operation with the FCA and the US Department of Justice, which announced its own criminal investigation last October.
Earlier this year US prosecutors flew to London to question individuals over allegations of market manipulation.
Business as usual.
Its hard to be awesome, when your playing with little plastic men. Welcome to Fantasy 40k
If you think your important, in the great scheme of things. Do the water test.
Put your hands in a bucket of warm water,
then pull them out fast. The size of the hole shows how important you are.
I think we should roll some dice, to see if we should roll some dice, To decide if all this dice rolling is good for the game.
SFO investigates price rigging in foreign exchange market
Business as usual.
*sigh* so, so true. At this point, I'm honestly not sure how you deal with these sorts of entities. Foreign exchange, private equity markets, municipal bonds... pretty much just glorified "Nigerian Prince" type scammers at this point.
dereksatkinson wrote: Microsoft just announced 18k layoffs. Since the economy is booming and all..
Or it could be they were a bloated company with too many layers of management that had displayed a lack of ability to respond to market forces for several years now finally shedding dead weight
It's not like layoffs are impossible even in good times. Intel cut tens of thousands of jobs in the mid 2000's before the 2008 crash, and it had nothing to do with the overall economic picture, they'd just mismanaged themselves and had over-promoted too many people than was necessary and had to retire product lines that were no longer relevant in the market.
So we are in good times? This is prosperity?
Consensus real GDP has already been marked down to 1.7%—the lowest rate of expansion since the financial crisis.
I still think it's pretty obvious we are in a recession here. I don't see why that is so controversial.
I didn't say we were in great economic times, my point was that trying to use Microsoft's layoffs as a macroeconomic indicator was silly as there are lots of reasons unrelated to the larger macroeconomic situation for their layoffs.
IRON WITHIN, IRON WITHOUT.
New Heavy Gear Log! Also...Grey Knights! The correct pronunciation is Imperial Guard and Stormtroopers, "Astra Militarum" and "Tempestus Scions" are something you'll find at Hogwarts.
Vaktathi wrote: I didn't say we were in great economic times, my point was that trying to use Microsoft's layoffs as a macroeconomic indicator was silly as there are lots of reasons unrelated to the larger macroeconomic situation for their layoffs.
I never said it was a macro-economic indicator, it was tongue and cheek sarcasm. There was no implication of cause and effect. It's just a sign of the times. "Since the economy is booming and all.." was a reference to the narrative that the weather was the cause for the light economic numbers and Q2 should have a substantial bounce in GDP where we will reach escape velocity to the moon. Not exactly working out that way based on the data.
That being said, the macro environment does matter for businesses and most certain does impact if and when layoffs occur. During an expansion, you don't see "efficiency" moves like the one MSFT just did.
I agree there are problems with MSFT. However, MSFT is up around 19% on the year as I'm writing this. Could that be another sign of the herd not paying attention to fundamentals?
At the time the head of the Financial Conduct Authority, Martin Wheatley, said that currency manipulation was "every bit as bad" as the Libor scandal, where banks including Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS paid fines totalling $6bn relating to Libor fixing.
For the criminal probe the SFO will work in co-operation with the FCA and the US Department of Justice, which announced its own criminal investigation last October.
Earlier this year US prosecutors flew to London to question individuals over allegations of market manipulation.
Business as usual.
This is the reason why the BRICS setup their own version of the IMF.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/07/21 19:55:59
dereksatkinson wrote: That being said, the macro environment does matter for businesses and most certain does impact if and when layoffs occur. During an expansion, you don't see "efficiency" moves like the one MSFT just did.
"I'm not saying there's any cause and effect, but look at this cause and effect".
I agree there are problems with MSFT. However, MSFT is up around 19% on the year as I'm writing this. Could that be another sign of the herd not paying attention to fundamentals?
Or, as you've already been told, layoffs are not directly related to a company's health. For example, Microsoft recently ended support for windows XP, which seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do with an obsolete product. So now everyone who was working on windows XP is redundant, along with the support staff for that part of the company. And those layoffs would have absolutely nothing to do with the company's future development or any current products. In fact they might justify an increase in stock value, since profits might increase based on cutting those redundant salaries. Now, obviously I'm just making this up as an example, but the point is you have to go into more detail and ask WHY a company cut jobs. If you just assume that layoffs = bad then your "fundamentals" are nonsense.
Now, a general trend of layoffs is a bad sign for the economy, but that's very different from trying to turn every random hiring or firing decision into some kind of meaningful comment on the market as a whole. You're just doing the equivalent of those morons who say "the market declined as a result of {team} losing {sporting event}".
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/07/21 21:49:27
There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices.
It is alleged that traders used online chatrooms to plan the fixing of benchmark prices.
Fantastic, we should then have full and comprehensive records of what exactly was said, when it was said, and what every person in the world was doing when it was said.
"So, do please come along when we're promoting something new and need photos for the facebook page or to send to our regional manager, do please engage in our gaming when we're pushing something specific hard and need to get the little kiddies drifting past to want to come in an see what all the fuss is about. But otherwise, stay the feth out, you smelly, antisocial bastards, because we're scared you are going to say something that goes against our mantra of absolute devotion to the corporate motherland and we actually perceive any of you who've been gaming more than a year to be a hostile entity as you've been exposed to the internet and 'dangerous ideas'. " - MeanGreenStompa
"Then someone mentions Infinity and everyone ignores it because no one really plays it." - nkelsch
dereksatkinson wrote: I never said it was a macro-economic indicator, it was tongue and cheek sarcasm. There was no implication of cause and effect. It's just a sign of the times.
Once again, picking out a single piece of news in a whole world of financial news is junk. There's a couple of thousand little pieces of news floating around at any one time - you want to find some bad news you'll find it, just as people who want to find good news will always find some. And given the world is basically never completely fine or completely ruined, both the eternal optimists and the eternal pessimists are pretty much going to be wrong all of the time.
It is bad to be wrong all of the time, and so you should stop it.
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Peregrine wrote: Now, a general trend of layoffs is a bad sign for the economy, but that's very different from trying to turn every random hiring or firing decision into some kind of meaningful comment on the market as a whole. You're just doing the equivalent of those morons who say "the market declined as a result of {team} losing {sporting event}".
Yep, or to take another example from this thread - 'the small cap market dropped because of a wobbly Portuguese bank'.
There's a point where financial narratives writers are pretty much indistinguishable from conspiracy theory nutters.
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dereksatkinson wrote: That being said, the macro environment does matter for businesses and most certain does impact if and when layoffs occur. During an expansion, you don't see "efficiency" moves like the one MSFT just did.
No, that's just not a thing at all.
First up, not every industry is defined by the economy as a whole. An overall economy can be flatlining while a specific industry can be expanding rapidly - have you been paying attention to US oil & production lately? At the same time, an economy can boom while certain industries continue a long term decline, or undergoing a transfer from labour intensive to capital intensive production. An example of the latter is coal - from 1980 to today the US economy has grown about 2.5 times in real GDP, but employment in coal has declined to about 30% of its peak employment, 250k jobs is now about 75k jobs.
And then we have to consider individual companies, which can grow or shrink not in direct relation to the industry they are in. And then on top of that you have to realise that single instances of hiring and firing aren't necessarily indicative of an overall trend - a company might be on an overall growth trend but might shed jobs on one project or operation while still undertaking overall growth.
At which point you should start to realise your claim above, that efficiency cuts don't happen in expansion is just the wrongest of wrong things.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2014/07/22 02:52:54
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
(Reuters) - Portugal's president warned on Monday that fallout from the financial troubles of the founding family of Banco Espirito Santo (BES) could affect the wider economy, while the bank said it was appointing a special financial advisor to help boost its capital structure.
President Anibal Cavaco Silva is the first high-profile politician to warn of a possible economic impact from the Espirito Santo crisis, after the family asked for creditor protection for one of its key holding companies on Friday.
Last week another of the family's companies failed to repay on time over $1 billion in debt owed to Portugal Telecom, which had a knock-on effect on the latter's merger with Brazil's Grupo Oi, forcing it to take a cut in its stake in the new entity.
"If some citizens, some investors suffer significant losses (from the Espirito Santo group) they may delay investment decisions, or some of them may find themselves in very big difficulties," Cavaco Silva said in comments during a visit to South Korea, which were aired on local television.
"We cannot ignore that there will be some impact on the real economy."
Portugal, which in May emerged from an EU/IMF bailout it had to take during the euro zone debt crisis, is expecting its economy to grow by 1 percent this year, the first year of growth since 2011.
BES, Portugal's largest listed lender, is under scrutiny following disclosures of financial irregularities at Espirito Santo International (ESI), which filed for creditor protection in Luxembourg on Friday. ESI indirectly owns 49 percent of the company that holds the Espirito Santos' stake in BES.
The troubles have shaken financial markets outside Portugal, although government bonds, which initially took fright, have since steadied.
BES was controlled and managed by the Espirito Santo family until just a few weeks ago, but they have since reduced their stakeholding and left top jobs at the bank. Respected economist Vitor Bento is the new chief executive after Ricardo Espirito Santo Salgado, the family patriarch, resigned from the position.
Bento told clients in a message on Monday that he was "working hard to regain the confidence of markets, to generate sustainable benefits and to open a new chapter for the bank".
The bank also said on Monday it was finalising the appointment of a special advisor that would help it to better structure its capital base.
Portugal's central bank has said BES has enough capital to cope with any losses resulting from the fallout of the financial troubles of the family, whose companies owe the bank 1.2 billion euros, and that it could tap private investors if there is a further need.
BES raised 1.045 billion euros in a capital increase in June but subsequent details about its lending to Espirito Santo family companies and its troubled operations in Angola raised fresh questions about whether it needs more.
So now that's 3 entities all going under because of a single company having a capital shortfall. Pray it doesn't jump to Spain or Italy.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/07/22 18:36:21
When I think about global stock markets these days, the image that springs to mind is the final scene of The Italian Job — the 1969 original, not the tacky 2003 remake.
‘Hang on a minute, lads,’ says Charlie Croker, Michael Caine’s heistmaster-in-chief, as he and his rogue brethren balance precariously in a bus loaded with gold on the edge of an Alpine cliff. ‘I’ve got a great idea.’
There’s no shortage of commentators (and stockbrokers) insisting the outlook is rosy and share prices will keep on rising. And almost all political punditry assumes the UK economy is improving fast and, as next May’s general election approaches, will get better still.
Yet alarming evidence is amassing that the global recovery is shaky, stock markets are over-hyped and the large western banks, for all the talk of reform, remain a serious liability. The reality, and it gives me no pleasure to write this, is that we could see a re-run of the ghastly credit crunch of 2007/08.
Its hard to be awesome, when your playing with little plastic men. Welcome to Fantasy 40k
If you think your important, in the great scheme of things. Do the water test.
Put your hands in a bucket of warm water,
then pull them out fast. The size of the hole shows how important you are.
I think we should roll some dice, to see if we should roll some dice, To decide if all this dice rolling is good for the game.
There's an old line about people who've predicted 1,298 of the last two market crashes.
Keep saying it, over and over again every single fething day and sooner or later you'll be right. And then the job is to con everyone in to forgetting that you were wrong for a long time before you got it right once, and then trick everyone in to forgetting all the gains made when the market wasn't crashing that vastly exceeded the short term loss.
Well you guys are doing the first part, but the tricky part is when the market does finally wobble in the direction of your predictions.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/07/28 01:39:29
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
At some point in the future, the stock market will go down.
When I'm proven right, I would like you people to give me all of your money, so that I can "invest" it. The current investment that I'm looking at is a 15,520 sqft mansion in Los Angeles at 384 Delfern Dr. The asking price is 75 million, but I think I can negotiate down to an even 70. That might seem like a lot, but consider that its a 10 bedroom 7 acre property in LA.
LoneLictor wrote: At some point in the future, the stock market will go down.
When I'm proven right, I would like you people to give me all of your money, so that I can "invest" it.
Being able to explain when and how something is going to happen isn't a case of a broken clock.
----
Meanwhile.. In Portugal.. The President of Portugal is warning that the failure of Espirito Santo (now blowing up their holding company) is a systemic problem and is likely to spread to other nations. Specifically Italy and Spain.
Euro went from 1.35 to 1.05 since June.. Basically straight down since I started talking about it here. It's almost as if I picked the exact moment where the European banking system started collapsing on itself or something..
Most likely they are done with the Euro for now but the next crisis should be the US dollar probably starting later this year and that should be similar to how the crisis in Europe went where there were phases. Pretty soon here the equity markets will wake up to the impact of these currency changes and how it impacts corporate earnings and we should have a correction again. Not a crash but at least a correction.
Now it's pretty much just a waiting game as the damage has already been done. This is going to get ugly.
That’s not how it works. That’s not how anything works. Saying that the euro has declined (by comparing it to the USD) and then saying that the next to fall will be the USD is straight up gibberish.
Currency price is given by comparing to another currency. The decline in the Euro is also, in the exact equal amount, a story of appreciation of the USD. The little story could be just as equally told as ‘USD has surged in value, from able to buy 1.05 Euro to 1.35 today. Next in line to surge is the Euro.’ And I hope you realise how ridiculous that is.
The actual story of the declining Euro is that Europe simply hasn’t recovered from the slump, while the US is in the midst of recovery. Improving US economy compared to Europe sees the USD rise in relation to the Euro.
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
