Temporary workers -- data from the front lines

Temporary workers are the first to be fired and hired by companies as they attempt to balance demands and costs.  As you can see temporary worker employment is very seasonal, usually peaking around October and quickly falling to a seasonal low around January.

The usual 'spike' in temporary workers did not happen last year and the dropoff in temporary workers this recession is much larger than in 2000-2001.  As such year over year data will be less predictive until we settle into a new normal but on a longer term basis this data set is a good way to sense the pulse of corporate hiring and firing.  How many temporary workers are around in the nadir of 2010 employment sometime in January / February will be the next time we can start to tease out any real information.  I'll keep you informed.

Drugstore.com and Complete savings scam followup

I recently posted about drugstore.com and the Complete Savings post transaction scam. Apparently it is rather widespread and even the US Senate has noticed.    Please go to the Consumer Reports blog and see how this is unfortunately very widespread. 

I don't intend this to be a consumer safety blog but this sort of behaviour just chaps my hide.  One of the cornerstones of any corporation should be respect for the customer and their ability to trust you with their purchase and your products.  It's part of the 'brand'.   These scams destroys trust in the consumers whom you have finally convinced to buy from you. Short term thinking like this will seriously harm your corporation in the long term.  Cut it out!

On an interesting side note I received an email within 24 hours from Complete Savings after my first post on the matter explaining how the transaction occured.  Telling me in detail how I was deceived does not defend your actions.  Why don't you spend your time coming up with techniques to sell your services that aren't deceptive?

Contrary Copper talk part 2

I recently blogged about the rising copper inventories worldwide.   Copper inventories keep growing at an accelerated pace.

So why are prices rising as well?  I see a few items driving prices higher right now, those being the dollar, an expectation for a recovering worldwide economy, and strikes at copper mines in South America.

The recovering world economy and China specifically has been the standard mantra for why asset prices are rising, whatever the asset.  If China is rebounding, why are Chinese copper exports rising?  If China has a desperate need for copper right now why are the traders sending copper out of the country?  Don't know, but this does not coincide with the bullish copper thesis. 

There have been several strikes in South America at copper mines and several large copper mines have their work contracts ending in the next two months (Reuters list) .   So far all the striking mines have gone back to work and contracts at some mines have recently been concluded. The long running (40+ days) BHP / Spence mine copper strike just ended.  (Bloomberg)   Spence mine produced about 500 tons of copper a day so you can add that to the 2000+ tons / day of excess inventory already going into inventories.

A recovering housing market has been the hope of copper bulls as well, but as you will note from my numerous housing posts I do not think new home construction will come roaring back in America any time soon.  I suggest you go to Calculatedriskblog for the full details on American housing.

I don't have any short positions on copper or copper miners as the momentum upwards is just too strong and it fits with the worlwide reflation theme.  When this theme ends I fear copper prices could revert lower if inventories keep rising.

Home loan foreclosures keep rising

From Calculatedriskblog a great post and several charts on how the home foreclosure and delinquency rates keep rising.  Go over and read the entire post.

I agree with Calculatedrisk, until the deliquency rates start dropping we won't see any meaningful recovery in home prices.

Inflation update

Inflation numbers came out today.  Interestingly all the components shown took a little bounce upwards. I wonder if this is due to statistical issues (12 months ago was an interesting time) or the start of a trend.  Bears watching in the future. 

Hey buddy, can you spare a city?

Ran across this on my daily blog troll.  I posted a while ago video by Hugh Hendry showing an empty skyscraper in China.  This video completely trumps such small matters as a single building, here's an entire city.... empty!



I spent some time on Google maps and found satellite photos of empty Ordos.  Wow. Scroll around and you will see just how big the place really is. Notice the new construction with no cars on the road or parked at the homes.   From the shadows it appears around noon time so you'd think there would be some activity, right?

I think there is a little bit of malinvestment going on in China.  When the populous does not have valid and efficient uses for their capital they end up buying apartments in empty cities.  Makes the chinese pig farmer hoarding copper look entirely rational, eh?   Like America property prices only go up in China, right?

Here's an article by the westerner interviewed in the video.

If this isn't a blatant example of a bubble, I do not know what is.  When this bubble finally bursts the world wide ramifications will be tremendous.

ht: zerohedge

Inflation expectations in the bond market

While gold continues powering upwards the US Treasury market is not confirming similiar concerns about inflation.  (If gold is climbing due to uncertainty regarding the entire paper fractional banking monetary system is another matter)  Looking at the comparative yields of nominal versus inflation protected bonds (called TIPS) issued by the US treasury is illuminating. 

As you can see inflation expectations in this market are actually lower now than before this crisis erupted in 2008.  If the bond market was truely concerned with inflation you would see the implied breakeven inflation rate go up, not down.