News Cut: August 4, 2011 Archive

The economy in four acts

Posted at 10:53 AM on August 4, 2011 by Bob Collins (10 Comments)
Filed under: Economy

The economy is beyond the means of mortal people to understand, which doesn't prevent me from trying.

Let's take a look, for example, of this morning's economic reporting, in the order I consumed. it.

Act 1: I heard this on Marketplace last evening....

Right now about 75 percent of companies have reported, and we're on pace to have record earnings. You know, that beats 2007, when the earnings were all phony banking profits.

Act 2: - Unemployment dips in sign of improved job market

The number of people seeking unemployment benefits dipped last week, a sign the job market may be improving slowly.

Sweet.

Act 3: Target reported its earnings this morning. Phil Picardi reported on them as I drove in this monring...

Minneapolis-based Target says a key sales figure rose more than 4 percent last month as shoppers bought groceries and health and beauty products. Target says overall sales for the four-week period climbed 6 percent from the same quarter last year to 4-point-8 billion dollars.

Six percent? That's great, right?

Over to you, Wall Street. Bring it on home!

Act 4:

Ruh roh.

First world problems

Posted at 1:00 PM on August 4, 2011 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Economy

(If you don't see the WCCO story above, go here)

It's a good life when the worst that can happen is Caribou Coffee runs out of cards for its summer sticker promotion that gives people a free cup of joe every so often.

In other news....

The view from the ledge

Posted at 1:30 PM on August 4, 2011 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Economy

The stock market, you may have heard or felt in your portfolio, is having a lousy time of it.

The last time I checked, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 372 points to stand at 11,501. That's a big drop, of course. The Dow is down more than 1,000 points from its recent high, which means you don't want to be hitting "one step update" on Quicken anytime soon. Oh, and you don't want to retire.

Clearly, there's lousy economic news to feed the bear. But the "lousy economic news" is also a media narrative that creates even more lousy economic news. To feed the narrative, you have to work harder for new angles to explain just how lousy the economy is. That's simply the way it works in the news business.

That's not saying things aren't lousy; they obviously are.

But you see that picture up there? We're using it to accompany the story today about how lousy things are and it's clearly captioned as a file photo from May 25, 2010 (No sense buying a new one; all pictures of stock market traders look the same). Things were perceived as lousy on that date, too, apparently.

Those panicked traders had no idea what August 4, 2011 would bring. On May 25, 2010, the Dow lost 22 points and closed about 1,500 points lower than it will today.

Everyone come in off the ledge. There's something terribly wrong if I'm the half-full guy around here.

How to lose a quick $1.5 million

Posted at 3:05 PM on August 4, 2011 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Economy

Timing is everything.

3M boss George Buckley told the Securities and Exchange Commission in a filing that he plans to sell a third of his shares in his company by the end of the year.

The filing said Buckley could sell up to 376,037 shares, worth about $32.4 million based on the stock's Wednesday closing price of $86.18 a share, the Star Tribune reported this morning.

In the egg Wall Street laid today, 3M's stock dropped almost 5% in value, to $82.23 a share. Buckley's value of the shares he intends to sell dropped $1.5 million. It lost $364,000 in the last 20 minutes of trading.

He'll probably be OK, anyway.