Posted by
Brian Peters on Saturday, August 18, 2007 2:09:37 PM
I've seen this one coming for awhile:
Run on banks in LA amid crisis; Wal-Mart CEO says customers are 'running out of money'
08/17/2007 @ 9:23 am
Filed by John Byrne
Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott Jr. says customers are "running out of money."
Earlier this week, consumer juggernauts Home Depot and Wal-Mart reported softer than expected earnings.
Penned the New York Times, "the sober forecasts reverberated across Wall Street, sending the Dow Jones industrial average and the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index down by nearly 2 percent, with the Dow dropping more than 200 points. Shares of both Wal-Mart and Home Depot fell around 5 percent.
"Economists said the sluggish performance of the chains — Wal-Mart missed its profit forecast and Home Depot’s earnings dropped — could signal broader troubles in the economy."
Buried in the article was a sobering remark indeed: “Many customers are running out of money at the end of the month,” said H. Lee Scott Jr., the chief executive of Wal-Mart.
In Los Angeles, economic concerns hit close to home.
Anxious customers of Countrywide Bank jammed its phone lines, branches and website after the nation's largest mortgage lender -- which owns the bank -- announced it was facing problems from a credit meltdown.
"Countrywide Financial Corp., the biggest home-loan company in the nation, sought Thursday to assure depositors and the financial industry that both it and its bank were fiscally stable," wrote the LA Times Friday. "And federal regulators said they weren't alarmed by the volume of withdrawals from the bank."
"The rush to withdraw money -- by depositors that included a former Los Angeles Kings star hockey player and an executive of a rival home-loan company -- came a day after fears arose that Countrywide Financial could file for bankruptcy protection because of a worsening credit crunch stemming from the sub-prime mortgage meltdown," the paper continued.
"At Countrywide Bank offices, in a scene rare since the U.S. savings-and-loan crisis ended in the early '90s, so many people showed up to take out some or all of their money that in some cases they had to leave their names," the Times added. "Bill Ashmore drove his Porsche Cayenne to Countrywide's Laguna Niguel office and waited half an hour to cash out $500,000, which he then wired to an account at Bank of America."
"It's because of the fear of the bankruptcy," Ashmore, president of Irvine's Impac Mortgage Holdings, which escaped bankruptcy itself recently by shutting down virtually all its lending and laying off hundreds of employees told the paper. "It's got my wife totally freaked out. I just don't want to deal with it. I don't care about losing 90 days' interest, I don't care if it's FDIC-insured -- I just want it out."
The American consumer, the average, born and raised American, is running out of money. The average American is what holds this Country up. It's not the big CEO's and their companies that make the 'jobs'. It's not the 'concerned' Washington D.C. politicians who tell you what you want to hear in every sound bite. It's not Rush Limbaugh's, Sean Hannity's, Neal Boortz's, Michael Savage's, Ring Of Fire flavor-of-the-week announcer's advice and opinions. It's the average American who trudges off to work day in, day out. The people that ARE at the stores you go to when you want to buy something, it's the people that pick up your garbage, it's the people that come at all hours of the night and day in ambulances, fire trucks, law enforcement cars when you call or someone calls for you. It's the farmers you never see face to face but who produce you use daily. It's the men and women that stuck are in the Iraq quagmire due to the lack of intestinal fortitude of our Politicians (see them twice here for a reason don't you??!!). It's those annoying radio personalities you hear in the morning on your way to work. It's those men and women you drive by on the roads who are fixing the roads you drive upon. It's that kid in the drive up window of that fast food place you just left. It's the teachers in the all the public/government schools who endure your brat/undisciplined/unconcerned kids day in, day out. It's those people in all those delivery vans, trucks, and semi's. It's the multitude of people you pass by on the subway and sidewalks on their way to a nine to five job. These and more, who are struggling to make ends meet on a weekly to daily basis. While our Government for the past forty years has wasted our tax dollars overseas, kissing the derriere of governments and groups overseas, those tax dollars and our jobs have gone overseas leaving 'us', weaker and weaker.
Did you watch Fox & Friends this morning?? We had it on when F&F showed the implosion of a building somewhere, a rather good looking new builiding, but it was brought down, expertly and well done to that crew of demolitions experts. Do you know why it was brought down? To build, get this, a 'shopping mall'. A primo example of Third World USA-itis. Customer service industry. No manufactoring/factory jobs, no high tech production jobs. No dear reader - customer service which pays what?? Diddly. And where will most of the goods for this 'shopping mall' come from? China of course for one, and two - anywhere but 'Made In USA'.
The DOW closed over what 12,000 on Friday (12845.78) . Who really is making this money? What, 5% of America's population. The rest are most likely comes from the average American investing into a hopefull retirement. But most Americans make peanuts in the grand scheme of things on the stock market. But even the supposed rich (Countrywide Financial Corp) are in big trouble and that spells even bigger trouble for the average American. The foundation that holds this Nation up. The fifth nail in America's coffin as a great Nation before it becomes just another Third World playground for the empires of China and Islam. Mark my words.....if the road our Politicians and CEO's keep on......Third World USA.