Bloomberg: "GM Weighs Plans to Cut Union Health Costs...."

Rarely will I blog on single-company issues, but GM is in a way representative of what is left of America's manufacturing industry, and by extension, our economy. If they can do this, perhaps there is hope for the company.

If not, if the unions will drag the company and their own pensions and their own healthcare down to a sad end, then I'd say recalculate the pension obligations and the state of their funding, using conservative investment performance assumptions, and the resulting unfunded liability with all the other baggage the company bears, ought to be a sufficient basis to place the company in a Chapter 11 reorganization. Dump the whole pension plan on the PBGC, like the airlines did, and renegotiate with the unions. If they won't get real, move the company to Tennessee and the rest of the South. Or put the plants in Mexico. Let Michigan finish rusting away, if they won't get real. Do like Honda and the rest of the Japanese. Or sell the dadgum company to Daimler Benz!



Bloomberg.com: Exclusive

Bloomberg: "Heebner Says Home Prices May Fall 20% Amid Bad Loans"

Crucial words in the quote, missing from sensationalistic headline: "... in some markets, he said."

Big difference! Seriously, even if the prediction is correct, wouldn't it just be a case of reversion to the mean? Really now, home price shot up so much, so fast, well, wouldn't you expect some likelihood of this? Remember all the articles about the "real estate bubble"? Bubbles pop.



Bloomberg.com: Worldwide

CNN Money: 'Found! 1 million jobs' (job growth has been much stronger than first thought)

Interesting, very interesting ... did we not just have an election where the lack of jobs growth was used as an issue?



About 1 million more U.S. workers to appear in federal count - Feb. 1, 2007

FT - "Goldilocks still defies the bears"

FT.com / Wealth - Goldilocks still defies the bears

The three best things I've seen today (so far) all came from the Financial Times. It's good, but how often will you see that? A few choice quotes from the linked piece....

"Even Bill Miller, who last year suffered the end of his record 15-year streak of beating the S 500 index, is strongly bullish for 2007...'We expect 7 to 8 per cent earnings growth and, when you take into account other factors, such as dividends, and include our non-consensus view that the US dollar will rise not fall, that means that if you are a European investor, you could earn 30 per cent from the US stock market next year.'”

"John Hodge is the president and chief investment officer of Permal, the world’s biggest fund of funds, with $27bn. He says that the consensus among the 200 hedge fund managers that Permal invests with is that there will be a “soft landing” (the Goldi­locks outcome) for the US economy this year."

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from USN&WR: "Economy Keeps Rising From the Mat" (the Rocky Balboa economy!)

I saw this linked to on Larry Kudlow's (itself) excellent blog,
Kudlow's Money Politic$ , and as Mr. Kudlow says, it is just excellent.

It is here.

Bloomberg video - Gault of Global Insight Says US Inflation has Peaked

Bloomberg video, Mr. Gault interviewed Please note, you might need to run the video in Internet Explorer, I cannot get it to work in Firefox.

This is all sounding rather more positive that most of what we have been hearing lately. Does it imply another good year for the markets? I have no crystal ball, I just
aim to execute the game plan.