Hard Times at Wal-Mart.

“There are families not eating at the end of the month,” said Stephen Quinn, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at Wal-Mart Stores, and “literally lining up at midnight” at Wal-Mart stores waiting to buy food when paychecks or government checks land in their accounts. (via Kedrosky)

Into the Gunfire.

It takes great courage to do what she did. Sgt. Munley saved the lives of "countless others."

Keb Mo


Saw Keb' Mo' last night at the Tarrytown Theater. If he comes to your town, get tickets, go. He is simply sensational.

Post-Election Analysis.

Mike Barone provides a concise recap of what happened yesterday. It's actually two columns (here's the other one) and it pretty much covers the waterfront.

The parallels to 1993/1994 seem especially ominous for Team Obama, as well they should. The aftershocks of the 1990-1992 recession made 1994 the year of going sideways and backwards and down. Veteran Wall Streeters still shudder at the memory of it. The aftershocks of the nearly complete collapse of the global financial system in 2008 and the recession of 2007-2009 will likely be much more vicious and much more painful.

Soon enough, perhaps sooner than people think, the great flood of free money (which was necessary to keep the financial system afloat) will begin to abate. Interest rates will begin to creep up as the Fed exits from the stage. The dollar carry trade will no longer work. Markets will deflate. Cost cuts will resume. Unemployment will get worse, not better. 2010 will likely bring nothing but economic pain.

If you're the party in power, you're going to get hammered as a result. Assuming the GOP can adopt a very simple platform -- spend less money, create more wealth -- they can recapture the House, the Senate and most of the key statehouses. This being the modern GOP, I'm certain that they'll figure out a way to snatch some defeats from certain victory. But the wind is at their back and all they really have to do is raise a big spinnaker and point the ship dead down-wind.

Few Posts.

Deep into work flow. Not posting much at all.

The Warnings

The Frontline broadcast, "The Warning," obviously suffers from the non-participation of three key players; Treasury Secretary Rubin, his successor Larry Summers and former Fed Chief Alan Greenspan. It's nevertheless worth watching and, thinking ahead, quite chilling. You can feel the same mistakes re-gathering. You can hear the same wishful thinking. You can see it all unfolding again and faster.

Martin Wolf addresses this issue (what do we do now?) forthrightly (as ever). It's worth reading. I suspect that everyone will agree with him and simultaneously ignore everything he says.

76-10.

Those are the second half scoring stats for the Denver Broncos this year. They've scored 76 points in the second halves of the six games they've played. They've allowed just 10 points over the same 12 quarters. That's indicative of good conditioning and very good coaching.

Last night the Broncos defeated, decisively, the San Diego Chargers. The Chargers have "issues." The Broncos exposed them, completely.

Rhode Island Adds Six (6) Jobs.

Your multi-billion dollar stimulus plan at work.

If You Thought He Could Win....

Chris Daggett, the Independent candidate for governor of New Jersey, continues to gain ground. A new survey shows him with 18% of the vote in a sample of 611 "likely voters." Daggett has now entered a campaign phase that requires him to assert that he will win if people think he can win. It sounds convoluted. It's not.

In 1992, in what was then the largest national exit poll ever conducted, the Voter News and Research Service asked (see page 15 of the link) more than 11,000 voters: (paraphrased) if you thought Ross Perot had a realistic chance to win today's election, for whom would you have voted? The results were Perot 40%, Clinton 33% and Bush 27%. In the actual balloting, Perot got just over 19% of the vote.

So it seems to me that the next polling outfit that interviews New Jersey voters about their upcoming gubernatorial election should ask this very question: "If you thought Independent gubernatorial candidate Chris Daggett had a realistic chance of winning the election, for whom would you vote?" The answers would tell us a lot about the real state of the campaign.

No Sale.

The New York Times announced Wednesday that the Boston Globe was no longer for sale. It appears that the reported offers of $35 million in cash and the assumption of $59 million in unfunded liabilities collapsed when the two remaining bidders, Team Taylor and Platinum Equity, learned that the unfunded liabilities were actually north of $100 million.

The New York Times says that because of concessions made by its labor unions, paycuts for management, higher subscription rates and operational consolidation, the paper is on the "path to profitability." One hopes that that is true. It would be a very bad day indeed for everyone who works there if the paper collapsed.

That said, it is not clear how the "path to profitability" will lead to actual profitability. The Globe continues to lose money, advertising revenues are "less bad" but still dreadful, the paper's cost structure is not sustainable and Boston.com's business model isn't working. Perhaps a rising economic tide will lift all boats, the Globe can be put back on the market next year and some tolerable purchase price will be proffered.

But the more likely outcome is that the grim slide will continue and that an already poisonous culture will grow yet more toxic. What's the end-game there? How long can the NYT afford to carry the net operating losses? When does it make more sense to just shut it down?

Whatever else happens, the paper must do everything it can to keep the Sports Section talent happy. Absent Bob Ryan and Dan Shaughnessy and one or two others, the Globe Sport Section is no different from any other sports section. Lose them to ESPN or Comcast and it's game over.