Saturday, July 31, 2010

Wet Noodles.

A couple of quick notes about the local economy.

I think the deferred building fees is a wet noodle. No real demand.

I suspect the small business loan program that is being hatched in Congress is the same thing.

In both cases, I'm not sure it's even the proper response. Borrowing more money for already struggling business's? Trying to encourage more houses when we already have a huge oversupply?

Both seem sort of short sighted.

I know that in my store, I'm not going to be borrowing money to expand until I see demand increase. For instance, I talked lately about installing a couple of more shelves of paperback books, but my estimate was at least 1,000.00 to put it in, which I would have to either pull out of savings of use the credit cards.

With the slowdown in sales I saw this month, I'm going to delay that. Or install it over a three or four month period within my cash flow.

In other words, borrowing money in the face of falling demand seems kind of like borrowing from the future.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Too much to say here, in general an SBA loan is always a big FUCK for small biz. Enough said.

Most interesting is that nationally in the past ten years community's have increased building fee's for a home from 100's of bucks to 1,000's and some places like PDX or Bend to 10,000's. Who could have guessed folks would have second thoughts? So the GUBMINT offer's guess what? Loans on Building-Fee's, who could have guessed? Property tax interest in Oregon is now legally a whopping 16%, anybody foolish enough to sign up for a loan on building fee's down the line is going to see credit-card type legal usury theft.

The GUBMINT is now the enforcer, the MOB, the loan of the last resort. The SBA loan is much of the same, sure the GUBMINT will give the small biz a 'loan', but in reality they send you to your favorite 'private bank', who is guaranteed, but still fucks you to death. Only a loser need borrow under such 'terms', given that you can now get money for less than 4% from most banks if you have equity.

On the one HAND the town that HOLLERN built never spent enough money on SDC's so our future is standing in SHIT. On the other hand its all a PONZI scam and now building fee's are so high that nobody will ever come forward to build, unless the fee's are somehow hidden from view and re-packaged. Will they ever again fall to earth?

How long ago was when a kid could buy a couple acres in this area for a few $100, and get a permit for $25, and build a fucking place to live? Not that long ago folks. But GRIFTERS came to OUR AREA, and brought with them illusions of grandeur for ALL. Now our city-hall folks get 5 digit salary's built on the backs of building permits, back in the day, you were lucky if 'planning&permit' was a blind widow stamping paper and taking $25, now beautiful people run this racket we call 'government' in Bend.

Welcome to Bend.

Anonymous said...

let's not forget that in the beginning god created bp, hp, and dp, ... its not clear that any of this was good,

dp was always a pussy, and will always be a pussy, and cut from the same cloth as hp,

it's fitting that the end days of bend be composed of fraudsters and pussy's all 'empathizing' with each other,

the pussy's never get angry, and the fraudsters never quit thinking up new grifts,

the pussy's banter, and the fraudsters cash checks at the bank,

'wet noodles'??? The only wet-noodles in Bend, are the limp wet noodles between the legs of Bends victims.

Carl said...

Your right, it isn't a credit availability problem, it's a demand problem. But then this the Fed Government thinking it knows best. Here is another one for you to waste more time on Duncan, Tucked into the new Obummercare law is a requirement that could become a paperwork nightmare for nearly 40 million businesses. They must file tax forms for every vendor that sells them more than $600 in goods.How many of these will you need. I know businesses, who might have a couple of hundred vendors.Business didn’t create this problem; Democrats did by passing a bill without proper debate, and without having a clue how its provisions would hamstring the private sector in red tape.Add this on to the increase in taxes coming, a possible energy tax, and mandatory Obummercare costs and wonder who wants to expand? Hell, just sit on the money and let the economy double-dip.

Anonymous said...

Democrats did by passing a bill without proper debate, and without having a clue how its provisions would hamstring the private sector in red tape.

*

Yes, but think of all the new jobs that the dem's have created with this new law. Every biz like dp's will need an army of paper pushers. Employment for all. Or maybe we'll offshore this new paperwork to folks in India?

50 years ago WRT to small-biz they ask "where did the wooly mamoth go?" The fact is the system is rigged toward BIG-BIZ, because BIG-BIZ is OUR democracy.