JJ behen, can you please translate that to english? I'm curious now...
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Gurus,
Great blog. It has become my daily ritual to visit this blog and the analysis here is very well thought out. This being my first post, did not want to add to noise to signal ratio, however couldn't stop as this blog relies on facts and math: Spec, shouldn't it be n^5 instead of n*5
Here is an article from yahoo - Bernanke Models Prove Faulty as Fed Forecasts Succumb to Downward Revision
Some of the key things from the article
1) “We haven’t had any historical event that really would allow us to reliably statistically calibrate an event like the one we’ve had,” David Stockton, director of the Fed’s Division of Research and Statistics.
2) Stockton calls the 2007-2009 period “an unprecedented financial crisis in the lives of almost every economic agent.”
“That had profound effects on people’s balance sheets, on their spending, and their impetus to deleverage,” he said in the interview. “Something beyond transitory factors are at work.”
3) “Something new and different is going on,” said Allen Sinai, chief global economist at Decision Economics Inc. in New York. “Neither monetary nor fiscal policy is giving us the kind of bang we have traditionally got. The household sector is simply not spending as it has in the past.”
4) And the grand finale of the article! It ends by saying --
“This is a standard-of-living shock,” Coronado said.“What we thought we could afford, and what we leveraged to, is much more than we can afford at present and in the future.”
p.s. - I haven't formally studied economics other than a couple of courses in MBA. However my hunch is that all this mess has its origins in the republican tilt of american politics which reflected in economics by downplaying keynes and giving importance to freedman. And while both may have pluses and minuses. I think the loose monetary policy and a disbelief in fiscal policy certainly has its roots in freedmanian thoughts. That's what then gave rise to stupid reagonics thoughts like deficits don't matter and the subsequent increase in war spending.
Breaking news...Just go to CNN main page.S&P has cut the AAA rating for the Usa.
http://money.cnn.com/2011/08/05/news....htm?hpt=hp_t1
This is happening for the first time .
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...235575386.html
From the article
"A cornerstone of the global financial system was shaken Friday when officials at ratings firm Standard & Poor's said U.S. Treasury debt no longer deserved to be considered among the safest investments in the world."
The last shreds of doubt in my mind are removed. Wall street will get butchered on Monday. This is not an move that is to be taken lightly. This shakes up everything from the bonds market to USD status. Now the chances for a recession get even more strengthened,only the severity is in question.
Interest rates will have to move up .
P.S Moody's and Fitch still retain the rating for Usa but the move by S&P will be enough to shake up the markets.Also this muddies the waters because many european firms rely on S&P to decide safe havens for money and now they will find it hard to park it in US markets.
For me this downgrade has more political component than financial. US credit was in this shape for a long time as long as we can remember. Nothing has changed now. Why this sudden downgrade which coincides with raising of debt limit by lawmakers ?
S&P executives might have felt that they have to steal some limelight from lawmakers.
gcq
There are some political tangles with the downgrade .S&P wanted to get back at the regulators (Dodd-Frank) for reducing the power of the ratings agencies.
However the biggest reason for the timing is this
1.With the debt deal there is no more an possibility for one more stimulus. Wall street is now acting like a spoiled child.
2.Entitlement programs were not cut sufficiently so this leaves long term question marks on the health of the US debt.
3.Consumers are finally waking up to the global economic reality ,that there are no more magic bullets and stocks are way overvauled.
Anywaz there are deep structural problems too. Wallstreet as expected is tumbling hard today...and key support levels will get tested.
Makes sense. Here is the view of Moody's. This view seems to be more realistic.
Moody's cautious about U.S. deficit cuts plan
Quote:
In his first comments after the move by rival rating agency S&P, Moody's analyst Steven Hess sounded a note of caution about Moody's rating of the U.S., repeating that the August 2 plan to cut deficits by $2.1 trillion was positive for the U.S. credit standing, but not enough to keep its rating on a stable outlook.
Geithner blasts S&P rating
Quote:
WASHINGTON – The credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s showed “terrible judgment” in lowering the U.S. government’s credit rating, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Sunday.
“They’ve handled themselves very poorly. And they’ve shown a stunning lack of knowledge about the basic U.S. fiscal budget math,” Geithner said in his first public comments about the credit rating decision.
Q I noticed that and also some of the closest policy advisors for the President are Desi's like the Tech Czar.It is interesting to see the ascendence of the desis in America in politics as well.
Gcq
Geithner is the last person I would trust with the economy.He is just an policy hack and toes the party line often. Leaving aside the politics of the S&P downgrade, the economy really is in trouble . NYtimes has an good article about the second recession possibility.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/bu...the-first.html
I will add,
media are always looking for negative news to add some sensationalism. In most recessions, it is the talk of recession that gets the economy into recession. As for S&P ratings it is the same agency that rated bad mortgages as AAAs which ultimately led to the downfall of Lehman brothers and the 2008 meltdown. There is something fishy about this S&P downgrade.
gcq
I am not definetly discounting the effect of media on consumer confidence or the ability to sway opinion. Even if we leave aside the ratings agencies and even if the public is led to beleive the economy is doing great ,ultimately the floor of this economy is going to fall out.We do not have the required job growth rate to get us out of recession.Neither do we have growth in the manufacturing sectors ,inflation is roaring its ugly head.People have to spend a ton on gas and milk . Possibility of an stimulus is totally removed .Housing market is shot through for the next decade.
How on earth will we avoid an second recession. Even if the Media tries to pump good news ,it will not take us far. S&P is definetly acting fishy .It is just like one of the criminals turns approver in a court case and drags the names of the others out.
Recessions are caused by the unrational and longfounded beleif enshrined in economics that
1.Markets will regulate themselves
2.People will behave rationally given an controlled set of circumstances.
3.World Combined GDP is around 70-80 Trillion. The US derivatives market is alone 670 Trillion !!!!!! If it loses 10% of its value...it will take the whole globe on a spin of global depression.
If this is not the pinnacle of greed ,nothing else will be. Countries and people will prosper when there is exchange of real goods not virtual derivatives.
S&P slammed after U.S. downgrade
Days after Standard & Poor's downgraded the United States' credit rating, a powerful backlash has set in against the move. Washington leaders of both parties, as well as investors, have seemed to shrug off the ratings agency's verdict--and some analysts have even raised questions about S&P's basic competence and credibility.
On Friday, S&P lowered its rating for long-term debt issued by the U.S. Treasury by one notch, from Triple A--its highest rating--to AA+. Explaining the move, it said Washington hadn't done enough to reduce the long-term deficit, and expressed doubt about the ability of political leaders to work together to solve the problem.
After the recent crisis over raising the debt ceiling, those concerns--especially the latter--appear valid. But by lowering the U.S. rating, S&P is saying that it now sees an increased chance that the Treasury won't repay its debts in the future--even though Congress did ultimately vote to raise the ceiling, avoiding a default.
And that's where many observers differ with S&P. Take a look at the financial markets: It's true that, so far this week, Wall Street and foreign markets have nosedived. But that descent began last week, before the downgrade. More important, far from running away from U.S. Treasury bonds, investors are flocking to them, suggesting that they see the chances of a default as slimmer than ever.
"The downgrade of U.S. sovereign credit by S&P on Friday reflects facts that have been well known to the market for some time," said Blackrock, the world's largest asset management firm, in a statement Monday. "So, it does not imply a fundamental increase in risk, and we don't believe that investors should change their behavior based solely on the downgrade."
President Obama appears to agree. "No matter what some agency may say, we've always been and always will be a AAA country," he declared Monday.
Former Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan, too, said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he sees no risk in investing in U.S. Treasuries--though the judgment of the economic planner known as "the maestro" hasn't always proved infallible.
Many economists argue, essentially, that the United States isn't going to fail to pay its debts. "The debt is issued in dollars. That means it is payable in dollars. The U.S. government prints dollars," wrote Dean Baker of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research Saturday. "This means that if for some reason the government was unable to tax or borrow to raise the money to pay its debt then it could always print it. This may carry a risk of inflation, but S&P is not in the business of making inflation predictions, they are in the business of assessing the likelihood that debt will be repaid."
S&P is the world's largest ratings agency. In most cases, its business model is based on charging the issuers of debt--private corporations, local and state governments, for instance--in exchange for a rating. The issuer then uses a positive rating to give investors confidence in the solidity of the investment. But S&P also rates the debt of 126 countries. And, like many of the countries whose debt is rated by S&P, the United States neither requests nor pays for its rating.
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There has been lots of ups and downs (actually downs and ups) in stock market. but i am going to stick with this theory for till d end of this quarter. Plus Last week's weekly unemployment stayed at 400,000 (as i said a day b4 dat) and i am hoping it will continue to stay close to that number for few weeks because of the planned jobs cuts and local government layoffs (hoping it won't go up because of lay offs like csco and borders) and hopefully it will come down close to 375-380,000 and we will start seeing Job market recovery along with hopefully some retail spending will increase based on "NEED" from September. And on top of that the corporations holding over a trillion in cash will start spending too. All together will be lead to a (not great but) decent recovery in 2012.
Was S&P downgrade an act of revenge?
You might think Standard & Poor’s has something against the U.S. government, the way the ratings firm treated the nation's credit rating on Friday.
In fact, it does.
It's hard to view the monumental ratings downgrade in context without understanding the long-running feud between the government and ratings agencies. In April, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., issued a scathing 650-page report contending that malfeasance at ratings bureaus like Standard & Poor’s was as much to blame for the housing bubble as any bank, and included a series of smoking gun e-mails that suggested that the firms knew they were profiting from unethical behavior. A little-known section of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill also hits the rating agencies with new limits destined to undercut their lucrative business; the Securities and Exchange Commission is discussing right now just how to implement the new rules. The public comment period on new rules ended Monday.
Is the timing a coincidence? Or could the ratings downgrade from Standard & Poor’s be viewed as a shot back at a government that's been taking plenty of shots at the ratings industry lately?
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Hello all,
I've been reading this forum everyday for about a couple of months now, and finally decided to register. I am a EB2I PWMB with a PD of 04May07. I was hoping that my PD will get current this September, but like everyone was disappointed. Anyways, kudos to all the gurus for the great number crunching that you do and the other members as well. I really appreciate the camaraderie on this forum.
I have some information that I wanted to share - a lot of people from the company (in SanDiego) that I work for, have moved to A (in Cupertino). There was a sudden need for people with experience here and so the company decided to bring a bunch of people from the branch in India, promising them that they would file GCs for them in EB1. These are not very senior guys either and have about the same experience as me. Over the past 3 months, I have seen several people who came here from the India branch. Our company filed for them in EB1 and to my surprise almost all of them got FP notices by now. And I thought to myself - here I am slogging for five years, and most likely will have to wait for one more.
I have read posts about Kazarian memo and how difficult things are for filing in EB1, but I guess that only applies for students/researchers who got their PhD here. I wonder what kind of restrictions exist / how strict USCIS is about the applications filed for manager positions in EB1. Apparently, our company lawyers seem to have found a quick way to get around those! Not very fair IMHO, and I am a victim of this as well!!
Knight,
My understanding is that there is a clause for multinational managers in EB1. I am not exactly sure about the requirements for this but I know of couple of my friends who work for Indian IT services companies who got their GCs under EB1 using this channel. Apparently you need to have a certain number of years of experience and at least one year of experience with the same company outside US to be eligible for this.
Yes, I agree, it's amazing and not fair. These people are in same league as the outstanding PhDs and Researchers and Nobel Laureates ?...
knight, sandeep, let's hope for our sake, this does not become a rising trend. Now there is even PP for EB1C and will lead to more SYA.
knight
Generally I am very defensive about EB1C use by Indian companies but in this case I do agree that if true this is absolutely outrageous. I wonder if this practice is really widespread within all of EB1Cs ...
May be USCIS should really make EB1C very strict or simply abolish this category. Your example shows the fallacy of EB1C.
Sandeep I am sorry I can't help with an advice on this one. My gut feel is that this should be a non-issue. The reason being any corporation has hundreds of legal entities through which they do business in any country.
Your position is always with a particular legal entity in a country but somehow all of this folds nicely into the parent company as far as USCIS is concerned. But worth spending money and confirming with Lawyer.