There was a significant drop off at the end of the day, but, we are still hovering at the 8500 mark.

8,378.95

–312.30

–3.59%

Losses are still around 4%, but, if that continues to be cumulative it will be a far different scenario that avails itself next week. I really think all this government 'bailout' mess causes more problems in the market than it helps. If I were an investor and the governments of the world continued to throw money at failure, I would believe there was more coming that somehow my slide rule didn't pick up. I do not believe these bailouts are a good idea. Helping homeowners at the 'payment schedule' is the only bailout the USA needs.

OPEC has to cut the supplys of oil. It is appropriate and necessary. (video)

The answer to enegy costs is NOT finding more carbon based fuels, its giving them up and using 'natural' forms of energy such as wind and solar.


...OPEC President Chakib Khelil said because Opec members produce about 300,000 barrels a day more than the official quota of close to 29 million barrels, the total reduction by the end of the year would be about 1.8 million barrels a day.
Mr Khelil rejected the suggestion that the decision would hurt the global economy.
"There's not going to be any impact on inflation, there's not going to be any impact on growth."
Opec oil ministers said that they would review their decision at their next meeting in December, leaving open the possibility of further cuts beforehand if necessary....

Homeland Security has issues

Another Republican 'technology' wrongly applied. People are NOT consumer goods. They walk, talk and think which does not lend to 'inventory control.' Another WASTE of the USA Treasury.


Compliance Remains King among Consumer Goods Manufacturers Says ABI Research, but Other Benefits Begin to Prompt RFID Adoption (click here)
Last update: 10:03 a.m. EDT Oct. 1, 2008
...According to research director Michael Liard, "While compliance remains the primary motivator for RFID uptake in the consumer goods sector (in contrast to the overall RFID market) respondents to this ABI Research survey cited three other considerations that increasingly influence their decisions to trial and deploy the technology. They are: ease of scalability, business process improvement, and removal of human intervention."...

But is 'securing' inventory paying off? Is 'compliance adding expense to consumer products in a way that burdens inventories?

Attrition is a fact of life in the marketing of any product. That attrition should be statistically tracked and added into cost components for products. There is nothing wrong with security and maintaining the integrity of inventories from theft and fraud, however, the 'idea' that every item can be tracked to purchase is a bit 'ideological.'

There was a time when this form of 'inventory tracking' was considered a benefit to national security. Has that proven to be the case or does this overburden business costs with components of unproven fear?



At the borders of the USA, do we want machines dictating the traffic across those borders?

I don't think so. There is nothing like finger prints or retinal scans to insure compliance with indenity 'insurance.' Scanners that are also double checked by human contact.

(click title to entry. thank you) ....The information in these tags could be copied on to another, off-the-shelf tag, which might be used to impersonate the legitimate holder of the card if a U.S. Department of Homeland Security agents at the border see the card itself, the researchers said.
Another danger is that the tags can be read from as far as 150 feet away in some situations, so criminals could read them without being detected. Although the tags contain personal information, they could be used to track a movements through ongoing surveillance, they said.
Another danger is that hackers could cause EDLs to self-destruct by sending out a certain number, they said....

Madonna wants the kids, while Richie plays around with his ex.

Madonna never knew the security of fidelity with Richie. Will she ever?

...The singer was reportedly plagued by suspicions the British director preferred his former flame Tania Strecker - a 6ft tall model with 37 in legs - especially after Tania claimed Guy was still seeing her when he began romancing Madonna....

Consumer stocks are falling. People have to go back to work "TAKING BACK THEIR COUNTRY"

When the markets are this depressed, the 'incremental' issues of profit and loss turn up like sore thumbs. Fine tuning what seem like 'minor' impacts on the bottom line will only increase exponentially in their benefit of redress when markets pick up again. Kindly click on title to entry. Thank you.

...Research has uncovered a great imbalance in retailer-supplier negotiations. Using a database compiled from a group of more than 400 suppliers, over 15,000 trade promotions were analysed across 30 different categories over the past five years.
Incredibly, it has found that over the past year, the leading grocery retailers held on to 86% of the total incremental profits generated from "joint" retailer-supplier promotional activity. Many suppliers may not even know the exact figure for their business. And worse still for them, this lion's share of profit being kept by retailers has grown by 10% in the past five years.
What's more, the percentage of sales made on promotions are increasing each year for heavy promoters. The data shows that 46% of suppliers now sell 40% of volume on promotions - up from 16% of organisations three years ago.
A Cabinet Office report earlier this year showed that £10bn-worth of food is thrown away each year, and that we should cut back our spending. The Government has claimed that buy-one-get-one-free-style promotions, key consumer goods sales tools, are a major contributory factor to this level of waste. But price promotions play an important part in driving volume through consumer goods companies' factories.
Not surprisingly, therefore, the smart money is going into finding ways of redistributing the wealth - by increasing the manufacturer's share of the promotional profit pie. This is because trade spend is probably the biggest area of expenditure where there is genuine scope for immediate and significant improvement. It is the biggest "win".
As they say in the US, just do the maths. A company making a bottom line 10% margin, spending 20% on trade promotions, only has to increase trade spend efficiency by 1% to generate a 2% improvement in bottom-line profitability.
In spite of this, there are still consumer-goods manufacturers stuck in the past, bemoaning the rising cost of manufacturing on the one hand and the increasingly aggressive retailer on the other.
The traditional, default solution is to cut "discretionary spending", and at the top of this list is usually advertising investment. The argument is that "brand preference" is less important than "promotional discount" at a time of economic downturn, and that short-term volume returns (and sometimes profit) are almost always higher for promotional activity.
With the packaged-goods sector investing nearly £2bn each year in advertising, cutting back media spend in order to fuel trade promotions seems like an easy answer. But the evidence suggests that this approach may be more flawed than even the most ardent advocate of (or apologist for) media spend might imagine - not least because it makes no allowance for a long-term advertising effect.
More enlightened thinking now favours looking at advertising and promotional strategy as interdependent pillars. One should not be compromised to the advantage or otherwise of the other.
The advertising needs of the brand, which are usually long-term, have an enormously important role to play, provided their role is properly co-ordinated with promotions.
Swapping one for the other is less effective than introducing a programme of promotional best practice which can benchmark your performance against that of your peers....

With a long history of volatility, the Nikkei took a 10% decline. But, here again is another bailout plan scheduled for 2009. A 'reserve pool' is probably a better approach and any fiscal relief from the pool can be measured before it is released in anticipation of volatility.

East-Asian leaders set up regional economic safety net (click here)
Albuquerque Express
Friday 24th October, 2008
East Asian leaders have agreed to set up an 80-billion-dollar fund by mid-2009 to fight the global economic crisis.
A major Japanese share fall during the week provided the impetus for the meeting, in which leaders of South Korea, China, Japan and the ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, agreed to accelerate multilateral cooperation to create an 80 billion dollar fund and establish an independent market surveillance organization for the entire region.
The new fund will take the place of the Chiang Mai Initiative, which came into being in 2000 in the wake of the 1997/98 East Asian financial crisis.



7,649.08
–811.90
–9.60%


China to continue efforts on regional forex reserve pooling scheme (click here)
www.chinaview.cn

2008-10-24 00:51:58
BEIJING, Oct. 23 (Xinhua) -- China welcomed the scheme to establish a foreign exchange reserve pooling arrangement under the framework of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), as well as China, Japan and Republic of Korea, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said here on Thursday.
"The ASEAN members plus China, Japan and Republic of Korea, had unanimously agreed on the arrangement," he said at a regular press conference....

Arnie H. Carlson: At a critical juncture, Obama is the better choice

Former Minnesota Two Term Republican Governor endorces Barak Obama. (click here)
Arne Carlson has been a bit of a maverick as he became a Republican after first signing on as a Democrat. His turn in the Governorship was hard fought and he won by a narrow margin of 3%. He served for two terms while staving off a hostile and ultra-conservative Minnesota Republican Party. He was not his party's favorite, but, he was the people's favorite.


We face serious problems, and he's shown the idealism, but also the discipline, to address them.
By ARNE H. CARLSON
Last update: October 23, 2008 - 7:17 PM

Without question, this election will be the most important in my lifetime. Traditionally, national campaigns have focused on which party and which candidate could best improve our lot in terms of peace and prosperity. Today, I truly believe our very survival as a successful and independent nation is at stake.
This may all sound dramatic, but consider the following:
•We are engaged in a war that should never have been launched and does not lend itself to an easy exit.
•Our true national deficits when put on the accrual system of accounting exceed $53 trillion, or $450,000 per household. Much of that debt is owned by other nations, including Japan and China.
•Since the 1970s we have promised ourselves that we would significantly reduce our dependency on foreign oil, but every effort toward success was offset by the allure of cheap oil, SUVs and massive trade deficits, and our dependency has increased.
•The American dream of a growing middle class continues to be threatened. In April of this year, the Pew Research Center found that "for decades, middle-income Americans had been making absolute progress" and then concluded, "but since 1999, they have not made economic gains." In the six months since that finding, the middle-class plight has significantly worsened, with the mortgage and liquidity crisis along with growing fears of a deep recession.
Politically, the Republican Party and its candidates are in full flight from this wreckage and the name "Bush," while Democrats continue to pin the tail on the elephant.
It had been my hope that Sen. John McCain would have seen these series of challenges as an opportunity to redefine the Republican Party as Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower had done. This would require a global vision, financial discipline and a sense of confidence reflecting the best in American idealism.
The choice of Gov. Sarah Palin as a running mate, and the resultant shallow campaign based on fear and suspicion, looks frighteningly similar to the politics of Karl Rove.
Sen. Barack Obama arrived on the political scene as a wind of freshness, unity and idealism. He saw America as it could be if we reached across all divides. This long, grueling campaign has revealed a remarkably disciplined and focused leader who has the potential to become a truly great president.
President John F. Kennedy spoke of the opportunity of America to pass the torch of leadership to a new generation. This is entirely appropriate for today's history, in that we need the benefit of a longer-term vision on the compelling issues of our time, ranging from global warming to exercising financial discipline.
Obama is the right choice for these challenging times.
Arne H. Carlson was governor of Minnesota from 1991 to 1999.