©2009 kradeleet. Released under Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution License.

Seriously, this isn’t funny:

I don’t understand how commodity (or currency) traders can possibly figure out the direction of their holdings.

Actually… I don’t think they do.

(See also)

I thought perhaps, I could gain a greater understanding of the direction of oil (and thereby gasoline) prices, if I added a news box for the term “oil” to my Google Homepage.

Not so much.

“Nothing you have ever experienced can prepare you for the unbridled carnage you’re about to witness.”

- Louis Winthorp III (Dan Aykroyd), on the way to the NYSE stock market trading floor, Trading Places (1983)

The Treasury’s plan to bailout the failing banking and lending sector equals:

$2,324.50 per American.

I’ll take a check.

(By the way, that’s Korean for “please give me a lot of money.”)

And if so, why doesn’t it get me more cool points?

I bought a compact car in 2000. At the time, gas was $1/gal. Today it has over 180K miles on it and still gets 34mpg or better on the highway doing 70 with a full trunk and four riders. It was recently listed as one of the top 16 most economical used cars to get. SUVs and other gas guzzlers, once popular status symbols and family “necessities” are now being discarded like Betamax tapes.

I’ve also been riding the bus to work since I started my current job about two years ago, when gas was under $3/gal. A few times here and there I also take the train.

I beat the first trend by 6-8 years and the second trend by 1-2 years.

Now, to figure out what trend to be ahead on next.

Apparently, if you used direct debit to pay any taxes you owed…. you cannot use direct deposit to get your rebate.

Um? Why?

No one told me. Not even TurboTax, which asked me for both sets of information. Even though the first one made me ineligible for the second one.

I suppose that knowing that I’m probably getting a paper rebate check now is better than assuming the IRS screwed up on my rebate deposit. But instead of getting it May 9 I’m due to get it after June 27. (Yeah, yeah, dial 922, I know.)

A few random links dug up for a search on offshoring this morning reveals some new beachheads for the offshorers:

• Phillippines
• Africa
• Egypt
• Amerikka

Stories like this make me smile inside a little. Basically, Indian call center contract houses are turning down contracts from big Western corporations who got way too used to paying fractional labor costs for essential B2C services. Plus, the fact that offshored call centers are basically powerless to actually help any but the most casual customers raises the stress and load on the operation, making the workers and shops less able to get the work done for the same money.

Not only is this a case of Western corporate psychosis biting it in the ass, but it’s also good for the people in the onshored nations, as they are now demanding higher prices to keep up with demand. I presume the workers of these operations are also starting to get competitive with their shops, for whatever reason (like the physical needs from the stress of having to deal with angry, underserved, Western customers).

This may or may not mean an improvement for Western workers, although the offshoring trend has already shown signs of cooling. At very least, wholesale slicing-and-dicing of local operations and dropping offshored labor in their places is coming out of vogue; the new CW is only using offshored labor to augment, not replace, local operations. The incredible hidden onshore costs of offshoring, which workers were immediately aware of, but managers not aware of until workers started dropping off, are being noticed.

However, the fact of the matter is, there are still plenty of countries that, with a few good OC lines and computer trainers, could start being the new cheap labor havens.

[From Slashdot]

If you think that the consolidation of banks or telephone companies is disturbing, you’ve probably been totally unaware of the scope of supermarket consolidation:

Supervalu, 1500 stores, including all:

• Bigg’s
• Cub Foods
• Farm Fresh
• Hornbacher’s
• Save-A-Lot
• Scott’s (Indiana)
• Shop ‘n Save
• Shoppers (D.C.)
• Sunflower Market (Indianapolis)
• Soon to own Albertsons, 2500 grocery and 700 drug stores, including all:
• Acme
• Albertsons
• Bristol Farms
• Grocery Warehouse
• Jewel
• Lazy Acres
• Max Foods
• Save-A-Lot
• Shaw’s
• Star Market
• Super Saver Foods
• Acme Express
• Albertsons Express
• County Line Liquor
• Jewel Express
• Osco Drug
• Sav-on Drug

Kroger, 2500 grocery stores, including all:

• Bakers
• Barney’s Discount
• Bell Markets
  
• Cala Foods
• City Market
• Dillons
• Food 4 Less
• Foods Co
• Fred Meyer
• Fry’s Food and Drug
• Gerbes
• Hilander
• JayC Food Markets
• King Soopers
• Kroger
• Owens Market
• Pay Less Food Markets
• QFC
• Ralphs
• Smith’s Food and Drug

Safeway, 1800 stores, including all:

• Carrs (Alaska)
• Casa Ley, (Mexico)
• Genuardi’s
• Pavilions
• Tom Thumb (Texas)
• Dominick’s (Illinois)
• Pak ‘n’ Save
• Randalls (Texas)
• Vons (California/Nevada)

Ahold, lots of locations in the US and Europe, including all (in the US):

• Stop & Shop
• Martin’s Food Markets
• Tops
• U.S. Foodservice
• Peapod
• Giant Food (Maryland)

Kmart, which also owns Sears, for god sakes — though I guess they’re not quite grocery, but are worth a mention here considering how much traditional department retail is moving into hypermarketry;

Wal-Mart, 3300 stores (most if not all sell at least limited groceries), which also owns Sam’s Club, 550 stores, as well as 375 grocery stores in Central America and 300 ADSA stores in the UK;

Target, 1800 stores (some if not most sell at least limited groceries);

followed by a handful of major locals like Publix (880 stores), A&P (600 stores [Can/US]), Winn-Dixie (600 stores), Piggly Wiggly (600 stores), H-E-B (300 stores), Giant Eagle (200 stores), and Meijer (170 stores). In Canada, there are also the Loblaws, Metro, and Sobeys conglomerates.