Wretched Clownsumers

Just catching up with the virtual world and reading some news about the black friday and aftermath. I came across this disgusting piece about a Walmart employee who died on the job due to the American clownsumer's last hurrah.

This is horrific, ridiculous, and most of all it is downright scary. Imagine a further devolving of the fake standard of life the American clownsumer has been feeling they're entitled to having. To save a couple hundred bucks on items that are not necessary which results in manslaughter can make one think further down the line and into the face of an economy where people's needs are no longer met than their simple superficial idiotic wants. This is something that keeps me up at night and scares the heck out of me in a non-tinfoil type of manner.

Retail Implosion: Steve & Barry's Bankruptcy

Steve and Barry's just can't find its way out of bankruptcy and has declared for bankruptcy again and announced liquidation of all its stores.

Around the pike are 5,000 layoffs, which is its employment count, and some woes for commercial real estate owners of properties they will vacate. Its been a while since we wrote about store closings and the impact on the commercial properties owners, but I expect to accelerate stories like that into the new year after the clownsumer holiday period.

Steve and Barry's is based in Port Washington, New York.

Related:
Rumor: Circuit City to close 150 stores within 60 days
Retail Closure and Unemployment
Kumar Would Be Upset: Harold's Files Bankruptcy
Consumer Spending Drops Most In 28 Years

Falling Oak, Up a Creek Without Paddle: Viasystems Closing Oak Creek and Layoffs

Viasystems Milwaukee Group Inc., a maker of PCB and a surprise that it isn't all already shipped out to Taiwan and China, has declared the closure of their Oak Creek facility in Wisconsin, the cheese state, causing 238 layoffs.

It came as a surprise to me that this type of business is still ongoing in America. Even more surprising is that it will still be ongoing even with the recent dollar strength and shipping price reductions. Serving domestic demand with employees in middle America with lowered wages seemed to have had potential with weak dollar, high gas prices, high Baltic Dry Index freight shipping prices, and relatively low wages. Alas, most of those elements turned around.

Viasystems Milwaukee is surprisingly based in St. Louis, Missouri.

Related:
Dynamic Shared Pain: Thilmany to Reduce Work
Cut the Staff: Miller Electric Saws Off 6% in Layoff
No Walk in the Park: Park Electrochemical Lays Off

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles: Rolls-Royce on Global Purge, Layoff of 5%

Rolls-Royce, who is involved in two of the three businesses listed in the title of this post with the trains excepted, has decided to globally cut 2,000 employees off their books in their announced layoff program.

Automobiles and Planes, wow, what a bad combination of businesses to be involved in at this stage of the economic cycle. Although their autos are for a different class of people, I am sure there's plenty of the fabulously wealthy blowing themselves up in hedge funds and their own malinvestments like Yahoo, their own company's stock, and oil prices. These people might think twice before purchasing a new automobile.

Additionally, the planes area is hit hard by the commoners. With reduced credit lines and no cash, many people will have no means to use the airplanes. In fact, the airliners have much less use for their existing airplanes let alone new product.

Related:
Where's Atlantis?? Oh Yeah That's Right, Underwater!
Cessna Comes Crashing Down
Down the Slope and Off a Cliff: Yellowstone Mountain Club LLC Files Bankruptcy
Thriftyness in High End

If the Key Don't Fit: KeyCorp Further Reduced Dividend

KeyCorp, a bank, has slashed its dividend a second time after declaring comfort with the dividend level a month ago. It is now down to 6.25 cents a share from the prior cut at 18.75 and even more massive of a mark down from the 37.5 earlier in the year.

Some fixed income folks and mutual funds are going to be distributing less because of actions like this across the market. Banks, Shipping, and Real Estate have been some notable sectors doing heavy dividend cuts in this climate.

Related:
Dividend Cuts
Out of the Sky and Into the Ash: Ashland Trashes Dividend Almost 75%
Property, not the Place to Be: AMB Property Hit
The Rock is Chipped: Prudential Dividend Cut Nearly in Half

Malinvestment Staff Not Needed: JPMorgan to Layoff 10% of Perpetrators

JPMorgan is due to layoff about 3,000 folks from the investment banking business. Will they take a page from Citi and layoff more than expected when the announcement comes surfaces?



Reportedly this company will also freeze salaries for people who Obama considers rich, in the 60k range and higher. Loss of a high paying job or a frozen salary will both put a damper on the consumption scene of New York. The city will also be impacted in reduced tax collection, so expect to begin to see expanded cost cutting measures by the city.



Investment banking was the place to be for a short time. Where else could a person go to their desk and underperform their job meanwhile collect on high 6 and into 7 figures for salary plus bonus? These jobs are now gone and there's going to be no need for them to come back in the next economical upswing. Wonder what field many of those who came under the gun will move into?



In short, their job skill consisted of following a formula set forwards by the creative Ranieri which involved packaging up trash with several neighbors trash and marketing it as a bond. Meanwhile convincing some governments and financial institutes to invest in the bond and selling insurance against defaults on the bond that they could not cover and finding another insurer without enough money to cover the bond and dumb enough to underestimate risk on the bond and making an arbitrage spread.



Related:

Rainy Days: Ranieri Co-founded Bank Franklin Bank Saves No More Pennies

Lost Golden Boys: Goldman Sachs to cut 10%

Finance sector layoffs? Predictable as the sun rise.

Massacre in City That Never Sleeps: Bank of New York Mellon Layoffs

Bank of New York Mellon has introduced a fairly massive layoff by announcing a reduction in force of almost 5% of their staff eliminating 1,800 employees jobs.

The bank acquired a financial company, which quite possibly was a smoking gun for why they're having underperformance and resorting to layoffs like all their sector buddies. New York high-end excesses is going to be a ghost town over the next couple of years.

Related:
Citi Under Siege: Citigroup Announced Layoffs Larger Than Expected
Lost Golden Boys: Goldman Sachs to cut 10%
Finance sector layoffs? Predictable as the sun rise.