Wall Street Starving?

Pitter patter.. Pitter patter.. my heart goes Pitter patter .. NOT!

I'm breaking a news story here. This came out of the Vicksburg Post 7/8/08 Ameristar Casinos, which is a Vegas owned Casino,is downsizing. Nationwide they're laying off 269 employess. And this includes thier largest casino here on the Miss River. Over 25 employees have been downsized here. Despite improvements with thier casino like a parking garage,enlarged poker floor etc. Employees were layoffed. Their CEO stated thier is fine financial health. But are they? Case in point about this small casino market: Two casino here are already in Fedeeral bankruptcy court and another casino is schedlued to open in October. Could Ameristar casinos be in some sort finacial bind to trigger downsizing of this nature? Now to some analysit 269 employees layed off is a small number. But in small market like this it begs a question: Is there trouble on the horizon? Cheryl I know that feeling when u know some one whose loses thier jobs. Believe me I've been there. U tell those who are being layed off by the brokerages on Wall amd Broad to hang in there. Seriously. When times get tough the tough get going,Billy Ocean. I like to tell you more about my experinces in the RIF I went through ten years ago. Frankly downsizes aren't pretty. When I hear about the numbers of employees layed off from the Wall Street firms it staggers my imagination. But tell your friends to hang in there. Show them some support:)

Yep, and it definitely something to worry about. We all see big changes happening, yet the media cheerleaders are acting like there's barely a problem; and it will be gone tomorrow. If there has been a huge impact on the economy already, what will happen when things come to fruition? I think we are beginning to see how greed and corruption have slain the U.S. economy.

On the sudden shift from oil prices having a continual discussion of up, up and up. The words of disaster to the American economy of $200 a barrel prices, $5 and $6 dollar a gallon. It seems to be either as a result of a single action by ONE man or it is a HUGE coincidence. Anyone even recall when President Bush signed an Executive Order to rescind restrictions to drill for oil off shore and tossed it back to congress to have them approve the off shore drilling? If anyone is paying attention; since then oil prices have gone ONE direction --- DOWN! This sends a clear message that the oil suppliers are listening. They may not be talking much; but at least their ears seem to be working. Let's go over just a FEW options available IF Congress can get the brown ring from around their necks. We created this energy mess with decades of bad energy policies overall. It also does not help that we have THE MOST DO NOTHING CONGRESS that has EVER been assembled anywhere in the WORLD! Bad policies are this. First, we have more oil reserves than anyone else apparently. Yet, we would rather BUY theirs than use ours. Drill, Drill, Drill... Drill here, drill there, drill everywhere. YES, we CAN DRILL our way out of this!!! Not only DRILL, but how many oil wells are capped at this moment? BUNCHES and BUNCHES!! USE THOSE WELLS we have and watch the price of oil DROP like a ROCK!! Back to $50 a barrel or less? Sure. We have MORE restrictions on the production of oil and refining to gasoline than building a rocket to land on the moon. We seem to have only SOME of the technologies in place to help. We have even MORE technologies that we DON'T or WON'T use. They are ready to put into place TODAY!! Let's look at a few. Europe seems to be able to get cars with over 40 MPG, Toyota seems to be able to do it (Prius) and other countries seem to have a way to get cars that are economical to drive; why can't we? Do we really have that much regulation to put a car on the road as well? Why don't we IMPORT some of these smaller cars that are already out there? Our domestic car companies have also blown it. They have spent time and time again building their "profit" cars and neglecting the economic feasible cars. Because; let's face it; that big word for companies bottom line "PROFIT". How much do they make for their stock holders, investors, and all the other people involved in the company to build up the bottom line. Services seem to be the secondary factors ONLY. The main questions they have seems to be "how do we increase our INCOME STREAMS, increase our PROFIT". Not "how can we build a car that gets 75 miles to the gallon or MORE?" I am sure they COULD build one tomorrow if they REALLY wanted to do so. There really is not any incentive for them to do so; is there? Why can Brazil build cars that work on multiple fuel sources and we can't build them here? Ford and Volkswagon can do it in other counties; but we can't do it here in the MOST advanced country in the WORLD! Government policies have not built a new refinery in 30 years, we seem to have supplies in oil; but not the capacity to make it into gas fast enough. There are other means to run cars on as well. The government COULD sponsor a program to run cars on Alcohol as a DUAL fuel. It is NOT that difficult to do. All you need is basically a still, (they are easy to build and overall inexpensive; you can build a good one for personal use for under $2,000) make 180 proof alcohol, (no, I am not advocating a gallon for the car; a pint for me attitude, however this reality does have merit as a fuel source independent of oil markets) have a secondary tank on the car or truck, change a couple of the settings on the carburetor and put in a couple points higher on the spark plugs and alcohol WILL run in current cars. Look at Bio diesel. There are other fuel sources available today. We just don't use them very well or even very much. Contrary to Obama's belief; very little oil actually goes to produce electricity. But if we have more electric cars or something closer to a modified golf cart for short errands (which we CAN do TODAY), this would be of some help to use LESS oil for gas. Cars CAN be converted to propane in almost nothing flat; we have an abundance of propane in this county and it is less than half of the cost of oil or gas. We have the ability to run dual source fuels. Has anyone looked up the stats on the Arizona dual fuel cars they did a few years ago? Only now are solar panels becoming efficient enough and cost effective enough to even be considered as a source for power. At 19.9% efficiency for this technology is good. They will be getting better. If we want to send a message to our friends who we IMPORT and BUY our oil from; that message needs to be that WE control the destiny; not them. They will in turn LOWER the prices and increase their output. By the way; what would happen if those foreign fields ever "dried up"? Just a thought. Thanks, Dave Lawrence Morgan Texas

For years Wall Street was pressing for more lax mtg credit standards, and they have been helping stoke the price of crude with the exponential rise in futures and options trading.. When they were collecting their fancy salaries and bonuses, I didn't hear any of them complaining about being overpaid or empathizing with people of more regular means.. Why should anyone worry about the Wall Streeters now?? Things will eventually shake out as they should.. unless of course, there is too much gov't interference and subsidizing of the financial industry.. Then the regular people will have been taken advantage of twice ...

When I was reading Fox Business headline this morning I read an interesting article about the Credit Unions. It was a real big surprise. Why? Credit Unions were playing the mortgage game too and they lost. Frankly this could be a mistake if all Federal Credit Unions large and small are involved. The board of directors should consider their own shareholders and thier despositers. This is going to have a detremental affect on the credit unions should more are involved with mortgage game. Quesion is how many?