All that writing last week

All that writing last week wasn't super-awesome for my hands, which are cranky, so I just want to point you at a few things today.

The stock markets exploded yesterday over Lowes having less-bad-than-expected earnings, with profits down only 22%. That's still bad, but all the rally monkeys needed. (Well, that and a tiny uptick in builder optimism, from "suicidal" to "very slightly less suicidal.") Home Depot has outright good numbers today - increased profits, up 44% - boosting today's markets up, slightly, again.

By contrast, please consider this chart of S&P500 profits, from Chart of the Day:

Now, take that data, and read this article noting that at traditional typical price-to-earnings ratios, the S&P500 should be in the 390-400 range.

You might also find this series of charts on earnings during profit freefalls interesting, if somewhat less intuitive, and Zero Hedge found commentary about market manipulation, and provides a partial transcription and link to full video. Marketwatch reports that business "insiders" have been selling heavily into this rally.

Incidentally, Home Depot's the forward guidance is negative, and Home Improvement is falling as a percent of GDP, down to 1.15%. (That number is still over the traditional 50-year average for this segment, indicating, as Calculated Risk notes, "future downside.") In that context, we have yet another record low in housing starts in April - down another 12.8% month-to-month, going into building season. (Down 54.2% vs. one year ago, down 79.9% from peak.) Permits - a future-building indicator - are down 3.3% month-to-month, or 42.3% down from a year ago. Single-family housing is down to 0.8% of GDP, compared to its 50-year average of 2.35%, and its peak of 3.65-ish%.

Oil hit US$60/barrel yesterday, by the way.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard thinks China and Japan will implode if they trigger a US bonds crisis by not buying T-bills, and has a couple of juicy quotes from Chinese bankers. Russia has already lost a lot of interest in dollars, but fortunately isn't a huge reserve holder. The US dollar index is skating on a rather thin support level (and even that may be my imagination - see January 2009 and late October 2008, for what little it's worth) at 82.

Mish thinks commercial real-estate is about to fall off a cliff based upon a Wall Street Journal study indicating a $200B in losses in small and medium-sized banks. Howard Davidowitz (chair, Davidowitz & Associates) is extremely unhappy with the current situation and policy reactions to it. (Link is to both video and a text summary; warning, the video will start to play on its own. Annoying.) There are rumours, and I emphasise rumours, of an emergency FDIC assessment on banks to build up more funds - which the FDIC needs, badly. But these are very high numbers being bandied about.

That's all. I hope those in Canada had a good Victoria Day; the US has a three-day weekend coming, so next week will also be short. Reports should be thinner this week, I have to be nicer to my hands. Good luck.

eta: Business Week has interesting - by which I mean disturbing - numbers on "professional" employment, which means things like software, engineering, design, the "creative" classes (e.g., writers, artists, musicians - me) and the like.

The Fierce Urgency of Whenever

Saved up in tabs - I hate it how I just HAVE TO post this crap sometimes:

You should read Andrew Sullivan's short essay from last week, The Fierce Urgency of Whenever, on the Obama administration's plans - or lack thereof - for dealing with GBLT issues. He wrote it right after spending a couple of days talking to people on the Obama team last week. Here's a taste:

Here we are, in the summer of 2009, with gay servicemembers still being fired for the fact of their orientation. Here we are, with marriage rights spreading through the country and world and a president who cannot bring himself even to acknowledge these breakthroughs in civil rights, and having no plan in any distant future to do anything about it at a federal level. Here I am, facing a looming deadline to be forced to leave my American husband for good, and relocate abroad because the HIV travel and immigration ban remains in force and I have slowly run out of options (unlike most non-Americans with HIV who have no options at all).

And what is Obama doing about any of these things? What is he even intending at some point to do about these things? So far as I can read the administration, the answer is: nada.

Dan Savage concurs, unhappily.

Note that the end of the HIV travel ban was actually passed by the previous Congress and signed by Mr. Bush. Mr. Obama's administration has actually delayed implementation. "Oops."

eta: more today! Lesbian and gay soldiers are being kicked out at the same, steady rate as under the Bush administration (eta2: according to the radio story I heard on NPR, the trend has continued through this year, but I don't have a link so they could have got it wrong or I could have misheard or misremembered it; the data in the print story I link stops last September), and the Pentagon says there are no plans to repeal the policy. Let me emphasise: no. plans. No plans, no planning process, no movement, including the anticipatory work you'd do if you thought this was coming down the line. New York Magazine has commentary here, talking about the political reasons to put it off, then noting, "None of that, of course, changes the fact that Obama could get a bill to repeal 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' on the floor in Congress if it were really important to him. Gay activists and journalists alike are just coming to terms with the fact that, most likely, it isn't."

And all these things go on

Mr. Obama had quite the week last week in general, really - and I was a bit surprised at how little I heard about this in my friendslist, but, well. First out of the gate, Mr. Obama broke a campaign promise, and suppressed more evidence of American torture. Andrew Sullivan thinks - or hopes, really - that Mr. Obama is playing rope-a-dope with torture supporters, but between that and retaining Mr. Cheney's military commissions at Gitmo and appointing a commander with a known history of torture - including torture to death of prisoners - to Afghanistan, and threatening the British government with withholding of intelligence if they let American torture practices come to light in their courts, I have to wonder, of Obama voters:

Do you feel suckered yet?

By the way, The Weekly Standard crowd has just been thrilled, as has The Wall Street Journal's crazy, crazy editorial board, and the Sheep Chorus that make up the beltway media have all been rallied together to celebrate Mr. Obama's embrace-and-extend approach to most of Mr. Bush's policies as "centrism" and - most gratingly of all - the Good and Necessary Rejection of the Civil Liberties Left, in a Sister Soulja moment. Wretched, as ever.

By the way, the American public still wants torture investigations. Not that this stops the political media from lying, continually, about that.

Meanwhile, this video is making the rounds - Jesse Ventura talking again about torture. You might remember how he said last week give him an hour with a waterboard and he'd have Dick Cheney confessing to the Sharon Tate murder - which is the entire point, of course. Not about getting people to tell you the truth, but getting them to tell you whatever you want to hear, so you can then use that against them. It is the opposite of truth.

eta: Oh look! Guess what it looks like won't get funded! The closure of Gitmo. Guess what gosh-golly-darn-it just can't be closed 'till funding!

Here, watch this

Here, something to make you laugh. (Link posted previously by kevin_standlee, pointing to corwynofamber who linked to a youtube video.)