A spokesperson for the Association of Independent Tour Operators (AITO), claims that, paying that little bit more for your holiday, offers more peace of mind both before the holiday and while away.

Ian Bradley a spokesperson for the organisation stated that in the current economic climate, opting to book a holiday with a respected tour operator offers better financial protection in the event of any problems, even though the cost may be more.

Anybody wishing to take advantage of this extra peace of mind that do not have enough money to do so, could opt for a cheap personal loan to cover the extra cost. By funding a holiday with a loan, the cost of the trip can be spread over a longer period, offering more financial stability.

Mr Bradley said: “In the current climate people are prepared to maybe pay a little bit more just for peace of mind, so they know they are going to go with an operator who gives them so financial protection – like AITO members.” He added that while costs could be higher, the knowledge that there was a certain level of financial protection in place helps to justify the extra cost.

Also if a cheap deal offered online appears to be too good to be true, more often than not it will be, he claims. “In this economic climate the last thing you want to do is lose your shirt by booking with a dodgy operator.”

As well as the ongoing effects of the credit crunch, the recent rises in fuel costs have also had an effect on the cost of travel – and a number of airlines have in recent months reported an increase in costs as a result of crude oil price rises. But consumers who are keen to have their two weeks in the sun no matter what may possibly be interested in the use of a loan to spread the outgoings over a longer period of time.

Ebookers 2008 Travel Opinion report indicated that more than 50 per cent of people questioned stated that they had booked their holiday early because of the continuing effects of the credit crunch. Indeed the majority of people also considered a holiday to be either important or an absolute necessity, while 12 per cent of people saw a soujourn as a luxury.

Other research conducted earlier this year, by Kayak, found that 90 per cent of people surveyed believe at least one holiday a year to be one of the five most important factors for overall happiness. Other factors noted for their happiness-bringing properties included owning a home, being in a stable relationship and starting a family.

But as many as 98 per cent of the people interviewed claimed they would do without other luxuries so they could go on holiday.

Earlier this year, research conducted by the AA suggested that a number of British holidaymakers are now considering taking a domestic break as opposed to their usual trip overseas as a result of the ongoing effects of the credit crunch – which is putting further constraints on people’s spare cash.

Secondo un paper ABI presentato ad un convegno a Gubbio, sarebbe nata prima la “gallina” della produzione industriale e poi “l’uovo” della richiesta e dell’erogazione degli affidamenti. In base ad un modello matematico, pertanto, l’Italia, con buona pace di chi ritiene che sia in atto un vero e proprio razionamento del credito, sarebbe “sovraffidata”. Forse sarebbe il caso di rammentare alle banche italiane le quali, come dimostrano tante ricerche del passato -ed anche del presente- non hanno mai preso troppo a cuore l’analisi del fabbisogno finanziario delle imprese, che il fabbisogno nasce non solo per esigenze di sviluppo, ma anche di circolante che non circola, come in questo momento (vedi crediti che non si incassano). E che il pur giusto e sottoscrivibile richiamo alla ricapitalizzazione delle imprese, non può esimere le banche, per una volta, dal provare a capire perché le imprese hanno bisogno di soldi. Diversamente verrebbe da chiedersi in base a quali criteri sarà concessa, oppure no, la moratoria sui debiti.

As a long term business resident of Clerkenwell, (we first came here in 1989 when it was little more than a ghost town), I have watched the area develop beyond all recognition over the last few years.

As new businesses and private home owners moved into the area, it became apparent that more retail serviceswould be needed and only a few years ago, Tesco opened one of their metro stores across the road from our office. Ever since, it has become a hub of activitycleverly stocking products that target the indigenous population. I am sure the branch has done very well.

Last Thursday, Waitrose opened a spanking new store literally next door to Tesco. Boasting double the floor space of its neighbour, this Waitrose store has been beautifully fitted and the produce, layout, lighting – in fact everything, has made the Tesco offering look very passé.

With only a few days trading actually having taken place, it’s too early to say who will prevail, but watching these rival behemoths slug it out reminds me of two market traders side by side at their stalls selling the same produce. While Waitrose appear to have tried to claim the food higher ground by selling quality produce, they are both now competing for certain items on price and are not being particularly subtle about it. Special deals and promotions, a range of loss leaders, buy one get one free in fact all the usual supermarket techniques are being employed to try and grab market share.

As an interested onlooker, I am not convinced there is enough business in the area for both to be profitable and I suspect that Waitrose, with its more sophisticated and trendy offering will be the winner. However, I don’t expect Tesco to go without a fight and watching these big boys slug is out is very enthralling. Part of me feels that they could surprise us both by between them, increasing the size of the market by attracting more people from further away, (at the moment it really is the local offices and homes who are the patrons). What is absolutely clear is that the range of food choice has never been better.

 Anyway I am just off to get my breakfast from Waitrose/Tesco. Watch this space.

HG

When people talk about the economy these days, it’s easy to get wrapped up in numbers and data.  Just take a look at market activity on days when the BLS Unemployment figures comes out.  The hand-wringing.  The pontificating.  It’s enough to make your head hurt.

And it completely misses the point.  The economy is about people.  It’s about their lives & livelihood.  The choices we make about those issues are merely reflected in the data we twist, strangle, and well, possibly waterboard and apply electroshock therapy to.  It pays to get out of the office and actually see what’s going on.  So on that note, I went (somewhat belligerently at first) to the Southern Christmas Show.

The show is an annual event here in Charlotte, NC.  This was only my second time going, but my purpose was two-fold: 1) Do some research for friends who are starting their own artisan businesses. 2) Take the pulse of the holiday shopping season.

Judging by the pictures, you wouldn’t think you were looking at a down year.  But it is a down year for the show.

I have to admit, it was easier to get around and see booths and vendors than I thought it was going to be.  But I only had one other year to compare it to whereas my wife had decades.  So anecdotally, we’ll note foot traffic is down.  Having said that, foot traffic tended to be concentrated around a select few vendors. Belk department stores had a huge amount of floorspace and a lot of the traffic was dominated by them.  Pareto efficiency in action.

Another thing worth noting: huge markdowns, discounts, and excessive inventory.  Vendor after vendor was offering their merchandise at steep discounts.  About the only ones who weren’t following along?  Food vendors, because they don’t have to.  When you put on a craft show like this in a convention center/merchandise mart, you have a captive audience when it comes to concessions.

Regarding the inventory: some of the vendors we heard talk about sales being lackluster or dismal.  One vendor we bought from said that on the previous day, Thursday, they only sold 3 items with the first sale coming after 5PM.  It was also interesting to note when we made our purchase from the same vendor, they had to go to their truck where they kept the bulk of their inventory to pull it.  Doesn’t seem like something to note, until you put that little observation together with what they said happened the day before.  My interpretation?  Sales volume/churn was much slower and lighter than they thought – they’re bloated with inventory.

Which leads me to the real question: if vendors like this are bloated with inventory, reducing prices at every turn to try and generate traffic and interest, what will more credit do for them?

Try pushing them over the cliff:

Trying to give businesses bloated with inventory more credit is tantamount to saving a drowning victim with more water.  It won’t help and it will kill them.  Businesses in this situation don’t need more credit, they need less.  They need to liquefy their balance sheet as best they can, as s0on as they can.  Yet Secretary Geithner, says credit access is the key to expanding our economy and we need to ensure credit is flowing.

Which brings up the latest Federal Reserve Senior Loan Officer Survey results:

Domestic banks indicated that decreased originations of term loans and reduced draws on revolving credit lines were generally more important sources of the declines than paydowns of outstanding C&I loan balances. More specifically, decreased originations of term loans and decreased draws on revolving credit lines were cited by 45 percent and 30 percent of banks, respectively, as “very” important sources of the decline in C&I loans this year.

Or if you prefer the chart, here it is:

Loan demand is collapsing, just not as fast as it was before.  The point is, with the uncertainty in the macro backdrop, the obvious slack and excess capacity in the economy now, there’s no way I’d expect a bank to make a loan right now.  And if it did, I’d expect the terms to be really tough.  Yet Geithner says we need to do the opposite.

I have nothing but contempt and loathing for Tim Geithner.  In an upcoming post, I’ll dissect a speech he gave in 2007 at a conference I attended and give you the play-by-play to what I can only describe is a total mental train wreck.  To say I think his thought process is misguided is unfair to misguided thought processes.

At any rate, what does my “boots on the ground” view show me?  Small businesses need customers, not credit.

And the customers are going to be few and far between with tight purse strings.

We have lost another great anthropologist recently. I have already announced the news and here is a few more links about Prof. Dell Hymes. and more of other stuff below…

Vale Dell Hymes

As Kerim noted, Dell Hymes passed away. My connection to Hymes is tangential—mostly the odd personal connections that come with the small world of academics—and others will be able to memorialize him better than I. The passing of Hymes and Lévi-Strauss so closely together is sad but also offers a time for us to reflect on these academics, their legacies, and their different personal style. Lévi-Strauss loved culture and, at times, seemed almost traumatized that he was forced to study people in order to get at it. Hymes’s writings are equally scrupulous, but deeply honor human life and are dedicated to finding the beauty and complexity in the ephemeral moments of our speaking and story-telling. In 1968 Lévi-Strauss’s structures took to the streets. In 1972 Dell Hymes published Reinventing Anthropology.

Dell Hymes’ Passing

While no obituary has appeared yet, there seems to be conclusive understanding via the moccasin telegraph that Dell Hymes has passed away. So soon after the death of Claude Lévi-Strauss, this is another significant loss in the fields of Native American studies, anthropology and folklore studies.

Dell Hathaway Hymes, 82, Penn education dean
Philadelphia Inquirer
Dr. Hymes joined Penn as a professor of anthropology in 1965. He was appointed dean in 1975. He left in 1987 to became a professor of anthropology and

AAA Mourns Passing of Dell Hymes, Past President

from American Anthropological Association by Dinah

We sadly report the passing of former AAA president Dell H. Hymes, who died Friday, Nov 13, 2009, at the age of 82. Hymes was Commonwealth Professor of Anthropology Emeritus at the University of Virginia. Prior to retiring, he taught courses in linguistic anthropology, Native American mythology, ethnopoetics, and Native American poetry. He authored numerous publications, including Ethnography, Linguistics, Inequality: Essays in Education, 1978-1994 (1997), and Now I Know Only So Far: Essays in Ethnopoetics (2003). AAA will publish a full obituary honoring Dell Hymes in a future issue of AN.

Dell Hymes, 82 Linguistics, anthropology scholar
Washington Post
Dell Hymes, an influential scholar of linguistics and anthropology who helped pioneer the study of how people use language in their everyday

Dell Hymes, Linguist With a Wide Net, Dies at 82
El Paso Inc
At his death, Professor Hymes was the Commonwealth professor of anthropology emeritus at the University of Virginia, where he had taught from 1987 till his

American Anthropological Association 2009 Annual Meeting

The American Anthropological Association will hold its annual meeting December 2nd through the 6th at the Philadelphia Mariott Downtown hotel in Philadelphia, PA. The theme for the 2009 meeting is “The End/s of Anthropology”.Below is my annual partial list of panels and meetings of interest to linguistic anthropologists, including those sponsored by the Society for Linguistic Anthropology.There

LSE academic awarded prestigious Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing The FINANCIAL The FINANCIAL — Dr Matthew Engelke|, a senior lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at LSE, has won the 2009 Victor Turner Prize for his ethnography,

Archaeology & Interpretation

“There is always a tension between past and present in archaeological interpretation; between the past meanings and processes which we wish to reconstruct from the material remains, and the meanings which we wish those remains to reveal to us in the present. This tension is nowhere greater than in accounts of past cultural groups.”

Surfing the credit crunch with Abdul Aziz

Keith Hart www.thememorybank.co.uk

The fall of the Berlin Wall was famously heralded as ‘the end of history’, but in fact it restored a sense of history for many of us by catapulting us back to before the Cold War and even to the origins of the USSR in the Russian revolution. Questions that had been frozen for decades reappeared, such as ‘What will be the glue of the new Russian Federation?’, ‘Will Germany resume its dominance of Central Europe?’, ‘What should be the boundaries of the European Union?’ and so on. The war in former Yugoslavia reopened the history of genocide in Europe and Serbian nationalism confronted the complacent powers of Western Europe with an ugly reminder of their own history.

Anthropology and Journalism: Submit Your AN Article Proposal by Dec 18

Anthropology has long had a complex relationship with news media. In many ways, increasing collaboration between anthropologists and print, broadcast or online journalists offers great potential for making our research more accessible and theoretical perspectives more mainstream, in addition to boosting public understanding of and engagement with anthropological research findings. However, journalistic anthropology and anthropological journalism also pose several key challenges for practitioners in both fields, including difficulties in balancing the goals, priorities, timelines and communication styles of journalism and anthropology.

Policy Events @ the Annual Meeting

The Committee on Public Policy has compiled a list of policy-related events taking place at the annual meeting.  To view the detailed list, please click here.

The Autopsies Project

The Autopsies Project explores how objects die. Just as the twentieth century was transformed by the advent of new forms of media – the typewriter, gramophone, and film, for example – the arrival of the twenty-first century has brought the phasing out of many public and private objects that only recently seemed essential to “modern life.” ………..

Further information on this new research project, seminars, lectures, as well as the regular ‘Autopsies’ blog can be found here: http://www.autopsiesgroup.com

Psychoanalytic metaphors and mythical medical realities in Claude Lévi-Strauss’s contribution to medical anthropology

There are few subject areas in anthropology untouched by the seminal thought of the late Professor Claude Lévi-Strauss. Though he published only two or three essays concerned expressly with medical subject matter, his theorization in those places of the role of myth and shamanistic authority in symbolic/magical healing opened up questions with lasting significance. I would like to briefly review his ideas with the aim of proposing an alternative reading of them, particularly as they may be applied to contemporary debates in psychiatric anthropology.

0.179: Imperialism, Americanization, and the Social Sciences

Cultural imperialism rests on the power to universalize particularisms linked to a singular historical tradition by causing them to be misrecognized as such. (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1999, p. 41)

If the social sciences are Eurocentric, does this also mean that they are imperialist?

Where Immanuel Wallerstein finds liberalism as the underpinning of the geoculture of the capitalist world-system, rooted in Eurocentrism, Bourdieu and Wacquant (1999) find their counterparts in the hegemonic theories current in academia. They speak of commonplace notions and theses with which one thinks, but about which one does not think (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1999, p. 41). And why not?

Man happy with simple life in Utah cave United Press International Suelo took up his lifestyle nine years ago despite having a master’s degree in accounting and a degree in anthropology. He says he will never embrace a

Quattro giorni dopo aver parlato di calo di credito alle imprese, l’Abi puntualizza che il credito è in crescita (+4,5%) nonostante il crollo della produzione industriale (-16,8%). Nessun “credit crunch”, quindi, ma anzi un extra-credito per 80 miliardi di Euro.

Dati negativi sarebbero invece quelli relativi agli investimenti a causa di un’assenza di domanda.

Viene richiesta una semplificazione normativa, causa la necessità di rafforzare il patrimonio delle banche. Le medesime banche starebbero allo stesso tempo procedendo alla moratoria per i mutui di famiglie in difficoltà, e rilancia sull’utilità dei Tremonti-bond, i quali avrebbero permesso la ricapitalizzazione delle banche.

Qui il link all’articolo completo.

The new book by Raj Patel begins to explore the alternatives beyond the free market economics that have brought us to the brink of ecological collapse.

“We mortgaged our future and called it freedom…”

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JOIN MOOGEE’S CRUSADE AGAINST MEDIOCRITY

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Name:
School of MOOGEE V School of Saatchi
Category:
Entertainment & Arts – Fine arts
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JOIN THIS GROUP IF YOU BELIEVE THIS IS SIMPLY PR FOR SAATCHI NOT ART AND THAT CONTEMPORARY ART IN THE U.K. HAS BEEN TURNED INTO A SUCCESSION OF PR STUNTS FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE CREATORS.

X-FACTOR FOR ART?

Artists bid to catch Saatchi’s eye

(UKPA) – 17 minutes ago

Six hopefuls are aiming to be the next big thing by being granted the tutelage of art world supremo Charles Saatchi in a new TV talent search.

At stake is the chance to be given exposure on the international scene by art industry “kingmaker” Saatchi by featuring in one of his exhibitions.

The virtual unknowns – Suki Chan, Matt Clark, Eugenie Scrase, Saad Qureshi, Ben Lowe, Samuel Zealey – have been whittled down from an initial 12 who will be seen starting the series in the first episode of School Of Saatchi, broadcast on BBC Two.

Despite lending his name to the series and making the final judgment on the winner, publicity-shy Saatchi is not actually seen on screen.

Expert panellists in the show, including Tracey Emin, art collector Frank Cohen and the critic Matthew Collings, helped to advise Saatchi during the selection process

The six artists – chosen for their raw talent and creative edge – will be seen attending a unique art school, established just for them, where over the course of ten weeks they were able to develop their skills.

Collings said: “Opportunities like this do not arise every day and in most people’s lives they never arise. These artists have got to come up with something that’s got to be impressive so there’s a great deal of pressure that Saatchi is putting on them.”

Saatchi will eventually choose one of the artists to exhibit their work at Newspeak: British Art Now, his exhibition at The State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg.

Also at stake is a free studio which the winner can use for three years.

(read less)
JOIN THIS GROUP IF YOU BELIEVE THIS IS SIMPLY PR FOR SAATCHI NOT ART AND THAT CONTEMPORARY ART IN THE U.K. HAS BEEN TURNED INTO A SUCCESSION OF PR STUNTS FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE CREATORS.

X-FACTOR FOR ART?

Artists bid to catch Saatchi’s eye

(UKPA) – 17 minutes ago

Six hopefuls are aiming to be the next big thing by being granted the tutelage of art world supremo Charles Saatchi in a new TV talent search.

At stake is the chance to be given exposure on the international scene by art industry… (read more)
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Il Presidente della BCE, Jean Claude Trichet, dinanzi ad una platea di banchieri, ha rivolto  una pressante esortazione affinché le banche usino i denari che i Governi e le Autorità di Vigilanza hanno dato loro per fuoriuscire dalla crisi, non per pagare bonus e dividendi, ma per aiutare famiglie ed imprese.

Nei manuali definiremmo la salutare lavata di capo di Monsieur Trichet come moral suasion, ovvero come incitamento ad assumere una certa condotta sulla base dell’autorità, appunto morale, di colui che la rivolge.

Tuttavia, stando all’esperienza degli ultimi mesi, la moral suasion non basta e dunque non serve più: l’esperienza italiana delle commissioni prefettizie che dovevano vigilare sul credit crunch sta a testimoniarlo. Forse di potrebbe accordare alle banche la piena deducibilità delle perdite su crediti, incentivo peraltro “di giustizia”, dal momento che non è pensabile che sia equo trattare le perdite come se fossero ricavi. Sarebbe un incentivo interessante, rischierebbe di rimanere nell’ambito della moral suasion.

Ci sono però anche altri sistemi per vigilare sul dovere dei banchieri di erogare credito alle imprese. Chi ha avuto modo di esaminare i verbali ispettivi della Vigilanza della Banca d’Italia, sa che gli ispettori possono andare molto a fondo nelle loro osservazioni, spingendosi a valutare il merito, oltre che il metodo. E, d’altra parte, sulla base delle segnalazioni periodiche di Vigilanza effettuate alla Centrale dei Rischi, non dovrebbe essere improponibile pensare di verificare ammontare e destinatari dei nuovi crediti, rilevando quali banche facciano o no il proprio dovere. Peraltro è noto, o dovrebbe esserlo, che uno dei pilastri di Basilea 2 era rappresentato dall’esplicitazione delle politiche di rischio assunte da ogni banca. Ed anche qui non dovrebbe essere difficile ipotizzare che la Banca d’Italia richieda requisiti più stringenti, con periodicità per esempio mensile, di comunicazione.

Si tratta di volerlo.

Per le imprese, e per le famiglie, si tratta, invece, di scegliere, ora più che mai: ricordando che le banche non sono tutte uguali.

Last week my older brother Gareth mailed me the very final edition of the Neath Guardian, a local weekly newspaper published in South Wales, every week for the last 84 years. it’s owners Media Wales cited “challenging economic conditions affecting local advertising markets and a declining trend in weekly newspaper sales”.

The current editor of The Independent, Simon Kelner, was once an editor of the Neath Guradian, read about his experiences here…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2009/sep/30/local-newspapers-trinity-mirror

Also last week my son phoned letting me know the latest in the administration of FQR Group the owners of the Threshers off licence chain, where Tom is the manager of the Whalley shop. Although they have closed half their shops, Tom’s isn’t one of them as in the last year he has turned his store into a profitable outlet, so it is now attractive to buyers. FQR blames ‘cut price supermarket competition’.

Yes, the challenging economic conditions put the nail in the coffin but the Neath Guardian, Threshers, and Woolworths before it, were dying anyway it was only a matter of time.

So why were they dying. Simple answer…competition. People still have a desire for news, arguably more than ever before. People still have a desire for wine and beer, arguably more than ever before. What is changing is the way that people are acquiring these products…so if they aren’t buying from the Neath Guardian or from Threshers, they must be buying it from the competition.

Logic says then that if people have a desire for the product you sell, then to continue being successful you have to stay ahead of the competition. And to stay ahead of the competition you have to continually look at the way your market is acquiring your product, and develop and evolve your offering, so that you can give them something that your competition can’t. Oh, and then you have to tell them about it.

This is where a good marketing and communications agency will help. The knowledge and experience of your agency can help you with ideas on how to stay ahead of your competition. I’m not saying we can resurrect products whose time is clearly past, but  good agencies, like Workhouse Marketing, aren’t just concept and artwork providers, we are there to help achieve the long term success and sustainability of your business.

Time to go, just nipping out for a paper and a four pack……or will I have to go to Tesco?

Mark Jones. Workhouse Marketing.

I do not understand how Blair the warmonger could ever have expected to have been the EU president. He had too much baggage as a result of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Blair didn’t join in with the Americans to attack Iraq in order to remove Saddam Hussein and his thug sons!! If that was justifiable then think how many other countries we would need to invade for the same reason!

As far as I am concerned Blair set out to con the British public by scaring them over the weapons of mass destruction! The most cynical step was putting tanks on the streets and at the airports!

We did not have a terrorist problem until Blair and Bush went to war against Iraq. This was a significant point in the history of the world and there are many consequences, mostly bad, that have stemmed directly from the actions of Blair and Bush.

History will not see these two leaders in a positive light.

Business people also use internet to communicate with each other. They make websites to promote their company, they use it to communicate witch their customers and their colleagues.

 Since a couple of years they also provide online conferencing, that means that a company in the Netherlands can have an online meeting with a company on the other side of the world. Several websites worldwide provide these kind of service, were you can buy and download a program. The prices can run up from €15,- to €1000,-, it depends on the number  of participants, the tools you want to use and the time you need for the meeting. The benefits for a company to use online conferencing are; fast International communication, low costs because the company  don’t have to pay for flights, hotels or expensive phone calls to foreign countries and the employees who are normally going for a business trip can stay at the office and continue their work. There are also some unprofitable things about online conferencing; you are not always sure of a good internet connection, you need to calculate time difference, you can’t use body language, eye and personal contact.

Because of all these negative points there is a change that the meeting is not that successful as the company wanted to have. That’s why it is still not really popular, but at the moment with the credit crunch it is much cheaper than a business trip and more companies are using the online conferencing.

Friday evening started out much like any other, with a quick dash to the station to get home and go out for the evening. Casually flicking through my copy of LondonLite on the train I turned to the middle page to discover that this was yet another publication to fall victim to the credit crunch and as of that evening this would be the last ever edition. Although I was surprised I would be lying if I said my reaction was strong. I mean come on, its fine for a quick scan through to see which D-List celebrity flashed a nipple the night before as they stumbled out of Whisky Mist but it’s hardly War and Peace. And then I remembered, no London Lite meant no London Lite distributers and no London Lite distributers meant no Smiley. Smiley is the apt though highly unoriginal nickname myself and my friend gave to the London Lite distributer outside the Cafe Nero on Fenchurch Street and he was without doubt the happiest looking man you will ever see in your life. Every evening his yellow jacket was a beacon in the distance amongst the greys of corporate life and he would eagerly hand me a paper with a ‘good night’ and his huge beaming grin. Just seeing him made you forget even the most nightmarish of days. He was quite simply, fabulous. Re-reading the above, I don’t think I have conveyed effectively just how happy this man was; the first day that I ever saw him I was on a later train than my usual travel buddy and once seated I simply had to text her, from her reply it was clear it wasn’t just me who had noticed him and fallen under his spell. On the rare occasion he had a day off, it felt like I was cheating to take a paper from another less enthused distributor. The one event that permanently fixed him atop the pedestal I had erected however, was the day I was late out of work and as I arrived at the station the LondonLite distributors had all finished and were standing together chatting, waiting to be picked up. As I walked past them Smiley saw me, grabbed one of the last remaining copies and ran to give it to me so I wouldn’t miss out. It was like Walter Raleigh laying his cloak in the puddle all over again. I never knew his name or anything about him but for a few months we had something special. Thank you Smiley, I’ll miss you!

Today it’s from Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner:

“This credit crunch is not over,” Geithner at a small business financing forum in Washington hosted by the Treasury. “It may feel dramatically better for large companies, but it is not over for small businesses across the country.”

This is the last part of a series I wanted to do to look at countries that have had debt crises in the recent past.  The first one was obviously Japan, but I also wanted to explore other plausible scenarios.

And that led me to Thailand.  The Asian debt crisis in ‘97 is widely assumed to have started in Thailand, with real estate and bad loans (and I’d bet even worse underwriting) being the issues that led the Thai government to eventually float the Thai bhat.  Are you sensing a theme, here?  Sloppy underwriting, real estate speculation, should I go on?

At any rate, I wanted to look at Thailand because after the 3.5% GDP print, it became evident we could be dealing with a shift in aggregate output (i.e.  actual GDP & potential GDP).  Here’s a chart of Thailand’s GDP, post debt crisis:

I drew in the dotted lines to show you the changes in the trajectory of GDP.  It keeps shifting lower and to the right.  Which means the economy as a whole is less & less productive and standards of living are not rising like they were in the past.  In fact, they could be falling.  But what about unemployment?

And of course, there’s the labor force to consider:

So you have more people working and their economy is producing less.  All the while the government is taking on more & more debt:

To explain, this chart is a moving 12-month total of net lending/borrowing  by the Thai government.  A line at 0 would mean the government was balanced – neither a saver nor a borrower – just a conduit.  But as you can see, they’ve tended to be a net borrower.

Just like us.  Actually that’s wrong.  The Thais may be a debtor nation, but we wrote the playbook and the appendices on how to do it.

So, after looking at Japan and Thailand, what do we come away with as big picture macro themes if our recovery follows one of the two? 

If it’s Japan, we tread water in terms of aggregate output, unemployment rises and goes higher because of improving efficiency while the nation continues to age (the retirement of the baby boomers is imminent), all the while the government continues to spend money it can’t recover (persistent and rising deficits).  Sovereign credit ratings will be impacted at some point, yet the Yen hasn’t collapsed – yet.  Probably because domestic demand for Japanese gov’t. bonds (JGBs) has forced Yen to be brought back to Japan and put to work in JGBs earning 100bps.

If it’s Thailand, the economy grinds higher in terms of aggregate output, but at lower and lower rates of efficiency and standards of living improve at lower rates over time.  The labor force may continue to expand, and in my mind that one fact seems to be the difference maker between stagnating GDP and expanding GDP, albeit with a significant shift from its previous growth path. 

Neither outcome is certain, but both are certainly ugly.  Both certainly speak to a more activist government in the economy, and innovation and new business creation that gets stifled at a minimum.  And since small, private businesses are the backbone of job creation and provide the spark for innovation, that doesn’t bode well for our future economic landscape.

It’s time to break out the Schumpeter and read about the benefits of creative destruction and the entrepreneurial spirit…

We’ve never known a catastrophic crash.

We’ve seen recessions and maybe a depression. But there is something precipitous about a crash.

According to Jung and parapsychology it is already in everyone’s subconscious. Perhaps on the surface many of us are concerned with maintaining order, but like a landslide, a rockfall, a deluge – there are unstoppable events.

Not being a TV watcher, instead a frequenter of conspiracy and alternative web sites, I was quite horrified that by chance I heard the 6.00 o’clock news in the UK. Essentially one horrific murder after another, probably they wouldn’t even make it into the national news in the USA.

But in our holistic earth, we are seeing mankind go mad, across the board, and in every way…

Insolvent insurance companies, fort Knox empty, man-made pathogens, too many sparks waiting to happen.

Sarah Palin says the Jews will be leaving the USA very soon, and she says it deliberately. (Always have to add a Jewish angle) I guess the Israelis will be happy about that: supporting demography and Israel’s raison d’etre….

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Islam will inevitably be the friend of the Zionists, cause the West will be less forgiving for the wholesale barbarity brought on by the Israel firsters.

Let’s all say a eulogy for the humanist Jews, the ones relentlessly persecuted, gagged, defamed by the murderous oligarchy that rules.

A new survey by the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR) finds that three quarters of public authorities believe the economic situation has worsened since the first quarter of the year.  ”Respondents representing 90% of Europe’s population say access to borrowing for investment has not improved since April this year, with the CEMR warning this will put the brakes on investment in infrastructure projects in the meantime.”  Only Cyprus, Norway, Portugal and Sweden—accounting for 6% of the population covered by the survey—express optimism about the prospects for 2010, whereas 44% are pessimistic for 2010 and 50% do not foresee any change. The authors of the report specify that even if GDP growth picks up, the need to consolidate public debt will hit the level of services provided to citizens hard.  (EurActiv and CEMR)

By David Henderson

Santa will be behaving more like Scrooge this Christmas as the credit crunch curbs spending on toys. The festive bestsellers chart is dominated by presents costing under fifty pounds.

Parents are putting value at the top of their Christmas lists. Britain’s toy shops are preparing for reduced consumer spending and children are being warned not to expect their stockings to bulge with gifts as the recession sends a chill through the holiday season.

Luckily for children, Santa’s sack won’t be completely empty; value and quality presents are selling in big numbers. “Pocket money-priced toys are making a big comeback this year, so we are in for an affordable, family-orientated Christmas this year,” predicts Gary Grant, chairman of  The Toy Retailers Association.

Ben10 set to be a credit crunch Christmas bestseller

Ben10 to the rescue! The children’s hero battles aliens on TV and now tackles…the global recession. Priced at an affordable, the Cartoon Network favourite features on the toy sellers’ ‘Dream Dozen’ presents list. If your child would rather play with a cardboard box than Ben10’s Alien Force Action Cruiser,  there’s always a pink palace for pre-school TV favourite Peppa Pig, toy hamsters and Transformers. Lego is on this years best seller list over three decades after it first built it’s reputation with Britain’s children.

• Bakugan Battle Pack, Spin Master (RRP £19.99) Battle Strikers starter Set, Mega Brands (RRP £9.99)
• Ben 10 Alien Force Kevins DX Action Cruiser, Bandai (RRP £29.99)
• GO GO Pets Hamsters, Character Options (RRP £9.99)
• GX Racers Tightrope Terror, Flair (RRP £22.99)
• Kidizoom Multimedia Digital Camera, V-Tech (RRP £49.99) 
  

  Click to view an episode of Peppa Pig

   

• LEGO Games Minotaurus, Lego (RRP £17.99)
• Monopoly City, Hasbro (RRP £24.99)
• Princess Peppa’s Palace, Character Options (RRP £39.99)
• Sylvanian Families Caravan, Flair (RRP £44.99)
• Transformers Movie 2 Voyagers Figures, Hasbro (RRP £22.99)

A lucky dip of hi-tech and traditional toys is expected be left gift wrapped under the nation’s Christmas trees: “The toy industry has turned the latest trends into up-to-the-minute concepts to provide today’s kids with innovative and creative toys. The top toys demonstrate how forward-thinking and pioneering the toy industry is. This year’s list also reveals a trend towards nostalgic characters and brands which have been updated with a modern twist. Consumers are reverting back to heritage brands which last longer than the Christmas season,” revealed Grant. As toy and games technology gets cheaper, the hi-tech presents have come done in price at a time when consumers crave value for their money.

‘Ben10’s appearance in the Christmas Dream Dozen toys list follows 2008’s success when the character’s 10” and 15” action figure was named Toy of the Year. That title was first awarded in 1965 when it went to the James Bond Aston Martin die-cast car; Action Man, Sindy and Spirograph also had success in the sixties. The early 1970’s saw the arrival of Lego, Playmobil and the Peter Powell stunt kite soared to the top of the sales charts in 1976. The eighties started with back-to-back successes for the Rubik’s cube. Star Wars toys, Transformers and Sylvanian Families were also popular with the children of Thatcherism. The 1990’s was the decade of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Nintendo and Thunderbird’s Tracey Island. Kids TV show ‘Teletubbies’, featuring strange gurgling furry puppets, won Toy of the Year in 1997 followed a decade later by ‘In The Night Garden’, another kids tv show featuring strange gurgling furry puppets. Maybe it’s the sherry…

Children should be dreaming of a green Christmas, with eco-presents increasing in popularity as Britons become more switched-on to earth issues. Children’s gift website Spotty Gift Boxes predicts that parents will dig deep into their pockets for a worm farm. The worms could crawl to the top of the pile and become the website’s number one seller this year!

Computer Worm. Worm farm is online seller

The good news is that the Earthworm Nursery costs just £17.99; the bad news is that you have worms in your home! Children learn about the full life cycle of the worm and can observe them hatching from their cocoons and growing into full length wrigglers. Yes, all in the comfort of your own home. Your clean home.

Once the worms are safely outside, then why not leave the kids outside playing with their toy gardening tools, another popular choice this year?   This Christmas, think of the environment. Think of the fresh air. Think of the mud. Think of the new hall carpet.

The top selling toy in the run-up to Christmas is a one kids can enjoy weeks before Santa even jumps aboard his sleigh! Internet super power Amazon is enjoying a pre-Christmas rush for the LEGO City 7687 Advent Calendar. Costing £14.99, it’s dearer than a chocolate calendar, but it’s kinder to milk teeth! There aren’t many internet shopping days left until Christmas and you’ll need to buy your advent calendar 24 days earlier – opening night is December 1!

Apparantly the Times Top 100 graduate employers are planning to recruit 5% more people into graduate roles in 2010 compared to 2009.

This is good news, but when you read that in real terms this is an increase from 15,057 to 15,884 I can’t help but think that it still does not sound like enough jobs to go round!

By all means apply to graduate programmes such as those listed in Times Top 100, if you are interested in those types of opportunities, but it is a good idea to broaden your search to consider smaller employers as well.  The Careers Service website advertises many jobs with smaller companies as well as the big names everyone has heard of.

Tonight was definitely one of the highlights of Global Entrepreneurship Week for me. Our event in the British Library conference centre In conversation with Lord Sugar was full to bursting.

As time is short and it is now after midnight, I am going to post my notes of his gems and leave it at that.

Is now a good time to be setting up a new business?
Lord Sugar’s route into business was by learning business skills by working in a company and then applying these to his new business.

He is concerned that people wake up one day and decide to start a business, but don’t have the relevant skills or experience to make a go of it.

Opportunities currently exist in the property market if you have the money, but the banks will not be interested in lending.

His move into computers was a natural development of his business selling transistor radios, rather than a revolutionary move.

What is the best piece of business advice he has ever taken?
He used his bank as a barometer in his early days in the 1960’s to find out how fast he could and should develop. This is in contrast to more recent times when the banks give too easily and freely.

He encourages youngsters to start small with their own money and grow from there.

I have not been very successful in investing in the property market. I took all the money I earned from technology and put it into safe and boring properties. There was no rocket science in what I did.

What do you think about MBA’s in entrepreneurship
You can’t train entrepreneurs, you either have the spirit or you don’t. Business training is important but not a substitute for an entrepreneurial spirit.

Has reading business books been useful?
No, not really, I last used one for a wobbly table.

How important is a business plan?
The key point is the business idea any good. For instance if it is a service it is all about the quality of the person providing the service. No excel spreadsheet is magically going to make it work.

There is no point of any business support unless the idea is any good.

How important are work teams?
The team found Lord Sugar rather than vice versa.

Tell us about challenging periods and mistakes made.
Over 40 years in business made less mistakes than good decisions. You learn by your mistakes. He encourages young business to do a weekly health check. What has gone right this week and what has gone wrong?

How do you use sweat equity?
I’m a thick bloke from Hackney, so keep it simple. I don’t understand what you are talking about.

Advice on partnerships
When you need to add a level of expertise to your business you can either add a partner or find a suitable employee.

Can government employees give help to small business when they read them from a computer screen?
Business Links centres have the tools to take some of the burden away from business people with practical advice on employment law, tax regulations etc. They are not giving business advice, but practical help.

Common attributes for entrepreneurial spirit?
(Exasperated) I wish someone would give me an answer to this one.

Have you had a mentor?
Yes. In my business career my mentors were people I aspired to. In my family there was only my uncle. Later on my supplier of electrical equipment became my mentor. Grew beyond them on to the likes of Lord Weinstock at GEC and Rupert Murdoch. Looked, listened and tried to replicate what they were doing.

The role of PR
Differentiates the role of business PR and personal PR. Editorial on a product or service is worth more than advertising. Has a lot to do with connections with media. PR companies who don’t specialise are not as successful as the ones that don’t.

Selling and the art of closing a deal
I the person running the business is not a good sales person then why are they in business. This is another art that can’t really be taught. If you can’t do it, employ someone who is.

How do you like people to communicate in Business?
Very openly in my place, everybody shares the story and knows what is going on.

I admire people who have reached contentment with their lives and know how to enjoy themselves.

How challenging have you found this new Business Champion role?
This is not a challenge, I’m not looking for a headache. I won’t don’t it if I didn’t enjoy it. I wanted to give something back to young people

Do you invest outside of the UK?
We have in the past with electronics. I don’t have any at the moment. There are problems with investing in Africa. It is a difficult market. It needs some African entrepreneurs to create the new markets and some business traffic.

What is the main cause of the 95% of business start-up failures.
Should do a weekly health check. Immediately you know where you business is going. Do not lose track of the basics. Do the simple maths every week.

How do we encourage an enterprise culture in the UK? Rachel Elnaugh – ex Dragons Den
Programmes like Dragons Den and The Apprentice have provided a great service to this country to spread the message that there are no free gifts or free lunches. That you actually have to do it yourself. There is too much of a culture that expects to be spoon fed.

If someone could invent a positive journalist then this would encourage people. Get away from this blame culture.

I don’t like the way we have changed to a knocking culture in recent years.

What could schools do to improve things for business?
We need to make plumbing cool again.

Do you set yourself goals?
Right at the beginning it was just to earn more money than in the job I had just left. If by Wednesday I had achieve £60 of net profit then I had achieved my goal.

I never had a five year plan. In the electronics business this is bullshit. You can’t see that far ahead.

Ideas have to be endorsed by a third party, it is no good getting your friends and family to say how great it is. You need a wake call.

You make people believe in your potential by your past successes.

Yep, you read that header correctly — more than ten billion dollars of available credit has disappeared for small business while Wall Street and big banking rolls in federal funds.

Disappointing.

From the link:

The 22 banks that got the most help from the Treasury’s bailout programs cut their small business loan balances by a collective $10.5 billion over the past six months, according to a government report released Monday.

Three of the 22 banks make no small business loans at all. Of the remaining 19 banks, 15 have reduced their small business loan balance since April, when the Treasury department began requiring the biggest banks receiving Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funding to report monthly on their small business lending.

Recently ran across a post from a favorite blogger of mine, Mike Shedlock, aka Mish.  I started reading him in early ’05, and have been reading his stuff ever since.  He wrote a post recently that I thought was again, important, but not juicy enough to get folks to salivate over.  The basis of his post was an article in the Wall Street Journal.  From the article:

Corporate failures have slowed, as companies once on the verge of default have found a new life. These companies are now refinancing their balance sheets with new debt, pushing out maturities on existing loans or using distressed-debt exchanges to avoid a bankruptcy filing.

Speculative-grade companies — or those with “junk” credit ratings — have issued about $123 billion in new bonds this year, compared with roughly $48 billion in all of last year, according to data provider Dealogic. That’s on pace to challenge 2006’s record issuance of more than $143 billion, Barclays Capital analysts said late last week.

Many analysts worry the refinancing wave is just “kicking the can” down the road, without fundamentally fixing companies’ deeper problems. Among weaker companies, about $1.4 trillion in bonds and loans will still come due in the next five years, said Dominic DiNapoli of FTI Consulting, a business advisory firm.

Instead of “kicking the can down the road,” I have another visualization in mind: Luca Brasi standing over someone with a pillow, ready to suffocate them in their sleep.  As an example, I found this snippet in an article about hotels, by Steve Van:

The race between LIBOR and RevPAR will start to sink most floating loans as soon as the economy starts to recover. When each of the past recoveries has taken hold, LIBOR increased around 300-400 basis points in 12 months. So today’s fairy land of 2 percent hotel loans (175 over LIBOR at 0.24 today) will evaporate, and payment rates will increase by 150 percent to 300 percent. Some of these loans won’t even make it to the end of the canyon.

What Van is talking about, pure and simple, is the deterioration we will see in one of those God-awful ratios that nobody likes to deal with (Because that involves math and thinking.  Collectively, we as a nation hate that.), called Interest Coverage.  From Investopedia:

So we want this ratio to be higher as opposed to lower.  Typically, a ratio of 1.5 indicates a healthy company, while a ratio below 1 means the business does not generate enough income to meet interest on its debt – an obvious bad sign.  But let’s put numbers around this.  The following comes from Starwood Hotels (NYSE: HOT) 9-30-09 10-Q:

Interest expense increased year-over-year, so let’s see how this impacts interest coverage.  I posted the calculation over on Scribd:

You can see the deterioration clearly.  Because you have interest expense moving higher at the same time operating income is heading lower.  This isn’t really a knock on Starwood.  I love their hotels and in the interest of full disclosure, I’ve been an SPG member for far longer than the 3 whole days I’ve been blogging.  The point is income will take a lot longer to improve than it will take rates to worsen.

And here’s another thing to think about: the longer metrics like interest coverage, debt-to-EBITDA, etc. get worse, the eventual default will end up with a bigger charge-off.

Which then leads to bigger hits against allowance and capital for the banks.

Who will be more reluctant to lend, and rightfully so.

Which would prompt our current government to offer more taxpayer money in an effort to make it go away.  But as you can see, it won’t.

So again, what are we supposed to do to get ourselves out of this mess?  We need to start by being realistic.  Not all of the hotels/resorts, retailers, manufacturers, wholesalers, etc. who have debt to service are going to be able to service it.  Some will, some won’t.

But extending & pretending won’t help anyone.  Like I said: extend & pretend is not our friend  in the end.