Politician denies he told the truth when he called it a “depression

In the weekly question and answer session in parliament, [UK Prime Minister Gordon] Brown said there needed to be agreement “as a world on a monetary and fiscal stimulus that will take the world out of depression.”

Brown’s spin doctors immediately said it was a slip of the tongue by the PM.

I think his comments were taken out of context.

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New Hyundai warranty covers job loss*

*Mostly.

In a mark of how bad things are “Hyundai is providing a complimentary vehicle return program for the first year on every new Hyundai that is financed or leased for owners who experience an involuntary loss of income within 12 months of the purchase date.“

What that actually means is Hyundai is offering to cover up to $7.5K of the debt on a new car in case of

• Involuntary unemployment
• Physical disability
• Loss of driver’s license due to medical impairment
• International employment transfer
• Self-employed personal bankruptcy
• Accidental death

Details: You have to have made at least two payments; you are still on the hook for everything over $7.5K and; they get the car back.  Which means if you bought the bottom line Accent with nothing added to it (MSRP $9.9K) and make just the two payments you are only on the cuff for about two grand. Not great but so far it’s better than anything else out there. (What dumbass wrote that? Truth is below)

You are on the hook for only the depreciation OVER $7500. Example: if the car had an msrp of around 25 grand and you were on the peverbial hook for the whole magilla and the depreciation over the first 10 months was 30% ( 7.5 large ) you would owe nada.

The deal looks even better when you consider that none of your tax dollars have gone into propping the company up.

So the new motto is, “Hyundai — the car to buy if you think you’re going to get canned.”

Staples goes vulture: “Will Office Depot closings affect you?”

The next hot trend is upon us: Vulture marketing. As in: to feed on the carcass of your now bankrupt competition in hopes that the same doesn’t happen to you. Witness today’s email from Staples:

There is nothing wrong with this, of course. It is just far from comforting.

The estimable Shaun Abrahamson points out that UPS went one better than Staples and put up a whole website for former DHL customers. Any other examples?

Cut the bull and call it a Depression already

More of my happy thoughts from over at BlownMortgage:

Two weeks ago the National Bureau of Economic Research officially confirmed what we already knew: We have been in a recession for the past year. This begs the question, how long until we declare World Depression II?

The (disputed) technical definitions of Recession and Depression make them lagging economic nomenclature. Economists debate whether we are in a swamp while everyone else worries about the ever-increasing number of alligators. The lack of an official declaration of recession mostly just gives the chattering classes something to do while avoiding taking action.

“Is it a crisis?”

“There is no crisis!”

“Is there a large, green creature eating my leg?”

“There is no large, green creature eating your leg!”

Allow me to go out on a very, very sturdy limb and declare a Depression. The economy isn’t going to recover by the end of next year. There is a only a dim possibility it will recover the year after that. But no one in an “official” position is willing to be the bearer of that piece of bad news.

Doubt that it is (or soon will fit the technical definition of) a Depression? Look at the actual numbers…