Archive - Aug 8, 2010 - Blog entry

The US is suffering from permanent unemployment at the current levels, much like Germany saw in the eighties and nineties. Just emerging from the near death experience of the century, companies will only hire a few temps which they can jettison with a mouse click. The drag from the states and municipalities is a long term structural issue that has only made a few halting baby steps towards solution. Managers don’t want to hire in front of a diminished long term GDP growth rate of 2%. There is nothing either political party can do about this but blame each other. A new interstate system, anyone?

It looks like private equity is emerging from the deep as investor confidence is returning, and there is increased interest in long-term asset classes. But the boom years are over, and only the strong will survive the coming shakeout in the PE industry.

The Trust Fund report to Congress suggests that US payrolls are about to skyrocket. That is the least likely outcome. The rose is off the rosy report.

Distillates demand, which tends to track economic output closely, is reflecting all the economic reports over the last two months--falling off a cliff.