The Mess That Greenspan Made: 2008-10-26

Saturday, November 01, 2008

The Wall Street Journal reports($) on a month to remember:

Wall Street closed a poor October on Friday but the 16.9% drop in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index looked pretty good compared with the hit taken by Asia and some other nations.

October brought a mauling to markets from Brazil, down 24%, to China, down nearly 25%. The culprit was a word unfamiliar to many: "deleveraging," or Wall Street jargon for the practice of unloading stocks and bonds bought with borrowed money, usually under pressure.

In the wake of the mid-September bankruptcy court filing by Lehman Brothers Holdings, that pressure became intense, and selloffs wiped out investments from oil to stocks, leaving few areas of the globe unaffected.

Dan Peirce, a portfolio manager at State Street Global Advisors, explained what happened this way: "Three words: global margin call."

Zeitgeist - The Movie: Federal Reserve

After watching what has happened over the last year, it seems that conspiracy theorists give central bankers way too much credit for being able to manage things.

From Wikipedia:

The third part is called "Don't Mind the Men Behind the Curtain", a reference to the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. The four main wars of the United States' 20th century are argued by the film to have been started or engaged in purely to further the economic strength of a group of men. Events attempted to be exposed as fraudulent or staged are the sinking of the RMS Lusitania, the Attack on Pearl Harbor, and the Gulf of Tonkin Incident; all occurrences which carried the U.S into the First World War, Second World War and Vietnam War respectively.

According to the film, the U.S. was forced by the Federal Reserve Bank to become embroiled in these wars not to win but to sustain conflict, as it forces its government to borrow more money from the bank, with interest attached, thereby increasing the nation's debt and the profits of those who own The Fed. The film gives a history of the Reserve, claiming it engineered the Great Depression to steal wealth from the American population and was responsible for the attempts to assassinate Louis McFadden, a congressman who attempted to impeach the Reserve.

This section also explores the possibility that there is a clandestine movement, promoted by the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, to usurp the American constitution and US dollar, by merging the United States, Canada and Mexico into a North American Union that uses a single currency, the Amero, without the ratification of Congress. This currency union would create a super-state similar to the European Union, which together with the African Union and the proposed Asian Union would gradually be merged into a One World government. The movie concludes that under such a government, every human could be implanted with a RFID microchip which would be used to monitor individuals and suppress dissent. The movie ends, however, on an optimistic note, expressing confidence in the possibility of overthrowing oppressive forces and the ultimate triumph of revolution through enlightenment.

Friday, October 31, 2008

It is truly amazing what some people do to their pets.
I do not know the source of these photos as they came via email - if anyone does know their source, please leave a comment or send mail and I'll be happy to provide a link. There are a few more below, my favorite being the one directly below ... brace yourself.

Luke...

Oil and gold contest update #1

Here it is - the anxiously awaited first update to the fifth semi-annual "Guess the price of oil and gold" contest. The yellow diamond indicates the current prices.
Let's see, oil ended the week at about $68 a barrel, up about $4 for the week but down a whopping 33 percent for the month. October has been equally unkind to gold which closed at about $723 an ounce, down $7 for the week and 18 percent lower for the month.

Crude oil went below $62 earlier in the week and gold dipped below $700 at one point sometime in the last few weeks.

Were the October lows the bottom? We'll find out soon enough.

Current prices put FJ's guesses ($66, $713) closest with Cuba ($70, 701) not far behind. Dave, abhikush, and another Dave (Dave R) hold down the next three spots in the top five.

For a list of all 89 guesses and other titillating information about this contest, see this item from earlier in the week - Oil and gold guesses - the fun begins.

This chart will be updated about every two weeks over the next month or so and then weekly updates will commence. The winner receives a free one-year subscription to the companion investment website Iacono Research where the model portfolio had a good week, but has a rather large hole to dig out of.

To learn more about investing in natural resources using commonly traded ETFs, stocks, and mutual funds, see this description at Iacono Research. Or, sign up for a free trial.

The savings rate is rising!

In this morning's report on personal income and spending, word came that the savings rate (after-tax income less spending) rose from 0.8 percent in August to 1.3 percent in September.

While this is indeed good news, and those inclined to torture statistics could conceivably write headlines such as "Savings rate surges 63 percent", this would be a gross distortion of the current condition.

While the improvement is welcome, there is a long way to go.

Unfortunately, despite what many economist believed just a few short years ago (including at least one Nobel Prize winner) the personal saving rate is going to have to be improved the old-fashioned way - by earning more and saving less.

In this morning's WSJ Ahead of the Tape column, Mark Gongloff noted:

The Bureau of Economic Analysis on Friday releases data on consumer spending and income in September. Economists expect flat income and a decline in spending. That should boost the personal saving rate, the percentage of disposable income left after spending, which was 1.3% in the third quarter, down from 2.7% in the second quarter, when households socked away big portions of their one-time tax-rebate checks.

By comparison, the rate is more than 40% in China, which finances much of America's deficit spending.

U.S. savings have been shrinking for decades, briefly turning negative in the third quarter of 2005. All along, one camp of economists has bemoaned how little consumers were socking away, while another said rising home and stock prices made such worries foolish. That second camp has been awfully quiet lately.

The painful truth is that savings have to rise, either through a boom in incomes or slower spending. Otherwise, consumers will just have to keep borrowing. That is hard to do these days, and ultimately unhealthy in the best of circumstances.

The dimwitted view of the now-quiet economists who, a couple years back, figured that we had entered a new era where rising asset values were replacing traditional savings seems to have fallen flat on its face now that both housing and equity markets have fallen flat on their faces as well.

Nowhere was this view better expressed than by Nobel Laureate Edward Prescott who coined the phrase "unmeasured savings" back in 2006 to account for rising asset prices. Also in that two-year old post was this excerpt from a Wall Street Journal op-ed making the same argument:

Myth No. 3: Americans don't save. This is a persistent misconception owing to a misunderstanding of what it means to save. To get a complete picture of savings we need to investigate economic wealth relative to income. Our traditional measures of savings and investment, the national accounts, do not include savings associated with tangible investments made by businesses and funded by retained earning, government investments (like roads and schools) and business intangible investments.

If we want to know how much people are saving, we need to look at how much wealth they have. People invest themselves in many and varied ways beyond their traditional savings accounts. Viewing the full picture -- economic wealth -- Americans save as much as they always have; otherwise, their wealth relative to income would fall. We're saving the right amount.

This was back around the time that the Chicago Fed was writing papers that heralded the arrival of "wealth creation technology" also known as "innovative home financing", today known as "toxic debt".

Google searches on this blog (see the right sidebar) can produce some wonderful, interesting, and quite entertaining results.

Here's another blast from the past, another excerpt from the Journal on the 2006-era thinking about personal savings - Stop trying to re-define savings.

This month, the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis put the nation's personal saving at negative $116.6 billion for December 2006.

To get that number, the bureau starts with after-tax disposable income then subtracts "personal consumption" of all sorts.

Here's what doesn't get counted, though: the increased value of stocks or mutual funds in brokerage or retirement accounts, or the rising value of your home.
...
If you're already trying to figure out where you stand, pay attention to the nomenclature. Commerce's study of personal saving is all about the verb -- "saving" -- what you make, minus what you spend.

But a more complete snapshot may well come from also adding in your "savings," the noun -- an accounting of your total assets and how they've grown, even if you haven't realized the gains yet.

Priceless...

Our consumer economy

The pitfalls of an American economy that is so heavily dependent on personal consumption for growth is shown in graphic form below - without the consumer, it's slow going.
The 2008 recession is shown as having started earlier this year, however, this is just my best guess - the "official" beginning has not yet been determined by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Also note that the spike in late-2001 was a snap-back surge after spending slowed sharply immediately after the terrorist attacks. Finally, note that spending never plunged to current levels during the 2001 recession which is often referred to as a "business-led" recession.

Underwater loans, O'Neil's housing plan

Two housing stories are worthy of note this morning - an alarming estimate of homeowners with negative equity and former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil's quite sensible plan to fix the housing market. First, the stunning data on underwater homeowners.
From CNN/Money comes this report indicating that almost 20 percent of all borrowers owe more on their house than it is worth. Recall that about one-third of all U.S. homes have no mortgage (a novel concept, no?), so this figure would be about a third lower if measured across all residential real estate.

At least 7.5 million Americans owe more on their mortgages than their homes are currently worth, according to a real estate research firm's report released Friday.

In other words: If they sold their homes today, they'd have to bring a check to the closing. Ouch.

Another 2.1 million people stand right on the brink, according to the report by First American CoreLogic. Their homes are worth less than 5% more than the mortgages they're paying on them.
...
Home values in Nevada and some other states rose particularly high during the real estate bubble - and are now plummeting. So even those who put 20% down when they bought their home don't stand a chance.

In many bubble markets, home prices got so high that the only way that many buyers could get a loan was by using what Fleming called "affordability products." These included adjustable rate mortgages with rates that were set artificially low for a few years, until resetting much higher, as well as mortgages that required little or no down payments.

These loans left buyers with little equity to begin with, and when prices dipped, they quickly found themselves underwater.

Ahhh... Memories...

When home prices were soaring, the mortgage industry created "affordability products" so the boom wouldn't have to end - all with the blessing of economists and policy makers because we had entered a new era where "risk" was being distributed with the help of financial innovation in mortgage securitization and insurance derivatives.

Back to the present...

The views of former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil on how he might go about fixing the housing market mess were the subject of this report at National Realty News the other day.

The plan is simple and straightforward, albeit quite painful, with absolutely no chance of garnering any support from any elected official.

Former treasury secretary, Paul O’Neill said that congress should scrap plans for a new economic stimulus package and instead simply require mortgage lenders to only make loans for people with a 20% or higher down payment.

On Tuesday, O’Neill addressed reports and indicated that he was not surprised that neither presidential candidate supported his position.
...
According to a published reports O’Neill also said, "Unfortunately we've gotten to a point where people that want to run for president don't think they can tell the truth and still get elected. I'm hopeful whichever person gets elected, they'll be better than what they've said. An awful lot of presidential campaigns now are pandering to the lowest common denominator. They promise people everything."

As you might recall, O'Neil had a difficult time during his short tenure in Washington. His penchant for speaking his mind made for numerous political gaffes and, along with Christie Todd Whitman, hastened an early exit from the Bush Administration.

Friday morning links

Credit Crunch Song

Thursday, October 30, 2008

This video of the Credit Crunch Song is quite popular in the U.K. at the moment. British humor is often lost on me - this is one of those occasions.

Trump - a (late-20th century) American icon

Donald Trump will go kicking and screaming into the new American "culture of austerity" that was thrust upon us all last month. Throughout the two-decade long credit bubble, the New York real estate developer has been a symbol of American success and excess, rebounding from near-bankruptcy during the 1990s housing bust, then returning bigger and better than ever with a reality TV show that has since become something of a bad parody of itself.

Apparently exhausting viewers with the original format of The Apprentice, the show has resorted to celebrity editions, apparently a necessary prerequisite for NBC signing on for another season that begins in January.

The "new frugality" sweeping the nation runs counter to everything the Trump name stands for - borrow big, build big, spend big, and make a lot of noise in the process.

Can the Trump brand survive during an era when "layaway" payment plans are making a comeback (seriously, I heard an ad for Shane Company Jewelers this morning where they touted layaway plans as an exciting new payment option).

Anyway, it looks like the Donald may be in for a rough patch according to this WSJ report:

Donald Trump's tallest construction project ever is facing some tall challenges.

Many real-estate developers are under pressure these days as lenders and investors rush to cut their exposure to the market. But Mr. Trump's 92-story Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago, which will be the tallest building constructed in the U.S. since the Sears Tower opened in 1973, may be especially vulnerable because it's getting hit by a triple whammy of colliding forces: the credit crunch, the reversal in the housing market and weak retail sales.

The shiny glass skyscraper is one of the few that the brash Mr. Trump developed without partners. The situation also puts pressure on one of the project's major lenders, Fortress Investment Group LLC.

So far, Mr. Trump has lined up buyers for a bit less than $600 million of condo units and condo-hotel units in a residential market that has virtually seized up. Yet he owes lenders as much as $1 billion when the loans are due, according to public records and several people familiar with the project. He has closed around $200 million in sales so far, with roughly $380 million still in contract. The retail portion of the giant building is for sale, at a time of rising vacancies for retail space in Chicago and one of the worst eras for retailers in years.

Just what we need - more condo and condo-hotel units.

The article goes on at some length about all things Trump with a hideous sketch of the man himself, all in the free area of the Journal.

Like many others, I will welcome an end to the 'Trump era' if it comes, though I must confess that the first few seasons of The Apprentice were quite entertaining, if for no other reason that the Donald is so good at humiliating people who are in desperate need of being humiliated.

Premium for silver coins soars

Look what's happened to the premium for 90 percent silver coins at one coin dealer - from about a dollar under spot to three dollars over spot in just the last few months.

And these are their buy prices - their sell prices are a dollar or two an ounce higher.
[Note: Sell prices would be used in the chart above except for the fact that it's hard to make a nice graphic when you go to look up a price and, more often than not, you see "Out of Stock" instead of a dollar amount.]

This is all part of the rapidly growing disconnect between the "physical" and "paper" prices for precious metals - the "paper" price being set on futures markets and the "physical" price being set at coin shops.

Normally, there is a fairly steady relationship between the two but, over the last year (a period which has been anything but normal) that has all changed as coin dealers have recently begun raising prices relative to spot amid short supply of precious metals and heavy demand.

The chart above contains data from just one coin shop, California Numismatic Investments, and, while it doesn't necessarily reflect the pricing at other coin shops, CNI is one of the country's largest precious metals dealers and its prices certainly are representative of bullion prices in Southern California.

For many years now, I've owned both gold and silver bullion in various forms and have long encouraged others to do the same for a number of reasons.

Having looked at prices for each form of bullion on a weekly basis for so long, it wasn't hard to see how the premiums for both silver bars and silver coins had risen sharply in recent months as shown to the right as of last Friday.

A few weeks ago, it was noted that spreads between spot silver, the iShares Silver Trust ETF (AMEX:SLV), and 100 ounce silver bars at CNI had changed dramatically this year. The chart you see at the top of this post just adds 90 percent silver coins to the list, the star silver performer so far in 2008 - down just 14 percent versus 34 percent for the silver ETF.

Of course, even bigger spreads can be seen at eBay and Bullion Seek.

They say that this is just a temporary supply disruption amid recently "unprecedented" demand from the public (which actually isn't unprecedented at all) during uncertain times where more and more individuals feel the need to add a little hard currency to their investment portfolio.

We will see where these growing spreads between "paper" and "physical" go from here - at some point they are sure to converge. Exactly where they converge is the interesting part.

Full Disclosure: Long gold and silver in various forms

Richard Russell looks at gold

From 321Gold come these musings on paper money and precious metals by Richard Russell of Dow Theory Letters notoriety. It seems that the financial media has left out one key element in attempting to understand the recent crisis - money itself.

The one area that no one touches, that no politician will mention, that no investigative journalist will dare discuss is the value and viability of fiat money. Yet, we know that throughout history, no fiat currency has ever survived. My thinking is that fiat money was expressly forbidden in the US Constitution. The Founding Fathers in their wisdom expressly stated that the US was not to resort to fiat money. Today, the US government can "print" Federal Reserve Notes and decree by law or fiat that what they are printing or creating by computer is legal for the payment of all debt. In other words, fiat money is indeed money by government proclamation. It's as if the US government proclaimed by fiat that "all cats are now dogs." It makes that much sense. Since money is wealth or payment for work done, the question is -- is fiat money really wealth? To ask that question today is almost treasonous.
...
Every central bank on the planet is now grinding out their brand of fiat currency -- and in large quantities. I believe that somewhere ahead doubt will rise as to the validity and logic of fiat money. Fiat money has existed and been accepted for recent decades. My belief is that ultimately this bear market is going to expose the great fraud of fiat money. Right now, for some reason, gold and gold bars are being swept off the market. Call up any coin dealer and ask about his inventory of gold coins. He'll tell you he has none. Why? What's happening? I think this is the first stirring of distrust in fiat money. The little cloud, now no bigger than a fist, is growing. The little dark cloud is distrust in fiat money. And it's growing.

There are a few who speak of fiat money as one of the prime culprits in the current mess, notably Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas) who has been a staunch supporter of sound money for many years, but this topic does seem to be off-limits for the mainstream media.

Economy contracts, spending turns negative

The Commerce Department reported that real gross domestic product fell at an annualized rate of 0.3 percent in the third quarter, driven by a sharp slowdown in consumer spending.
The broadest measure of economic activity in the U.S. was down significantly from a second quarter growth rate of 2.8 percent and real growth has been negative in two of the last four quarters.

Overall economic growth during the last year remains positive at 0.8 percent, however, this was aided by the $150+ billion economic stimulus plan earlier in the year.

Consumer confidence has recently fallen to record lows and this is evident in the personal consumption component which posted its first decline since 1990 and its biggest decline in 28 years, dropping at an annualized rate of 3.1 percent.

Bloomberg reported spending on non-durable goods, items such as food and clothing, fell at an annualized rate of 6.4 percent, the sharpest decline since 1950.

As shown below, it was the decline in consumer spending that drove overall growth into negative territory during the third quarter as government spending and net exports both made large positive contributions and private investment was only slightly negative.
Note that this is the "advance" estimate for GDP, the first of three readings for the third quarter, to be followed by the "preliminary" estimate next month and the "final" estimate in December. There are often large revisions between the "advance" and "preliminary" readings as incoming data replace sometimes unreliable proxies for some components.

While the news for the third quarter was bad, the fourth quarter is shaping up to be much worse with initial estimates for economic growth between minus 2 and minus 4 percent with a further slowdown in consumer spending expected.

Thursday morning links

I think this is the bottom

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

From Tom Toles at the Washington Post:

My house has still got to be worth...

There's a new poll up at the Zillow blog where homeowners all across the U.S. were asked what they think happened to the value of their home over the last year and what the year ahead might bring.

As expected, many homeowners remain blissfully unaware of the carnage that has recently occurred in the nation's housing market and are far too optimistic about what the future holds.

But, some of this is quite understandable - after all, we don't all obsess over this stuff.

If you've been in a place for years with no plans to move, haven't had the need to "tap" your home equity only to find less of it there, and don't see the need to keep track of what nearby houses sell for, you're probably not really qualified to offer an opinion on this anyway.

It's like asking someone who doesn't know or care about the S&P500 where stocks have come and where they're going. Despite what the National Association of Realtors might tell you, housing hasn't always been viewed as an investment by everybody - many people still look at their house as an asset that depreciates in real terms when upkeep, taxes, and insurance are factored in.

For those who do view their home as an investment, it's easier than ever to get some kind of an idea what real estate is worth with the rise of websites like Zillow. I became painfully aware of Zestimates after we sold our Southern California house a few years back, only to watch the Zestimate rise to $805,000 during the 2006 peak - it's now at $535,000.

Anyway, the survey data for how homeowners think home prices have moved over the last year is interesting, but, in my view, not all that surprisingly.

Here are the results by region:
And, a short excerpt:

There’s no doubt we’ve been deluged with depressing economic and housing news over the past few months. Every day is a new headline, every channel has a new pundit and the recession debate has shifted from “if” to “how long.”

Given this, when fielding our Q3 Homeowner Confidence Survey earlier this month, we expected the results to be markedly different than last quarter, when 62% of homeowners thought their home’s value had increased or stayed the same (despite 77% of homes losing value). The Q3 Survey, fielded October 7-9 (the worst week in stock market history, by the way), asked homeowners their perception of their home’s value over the past year, and what they think will happen to their home’s value in the coming months.

The results — kind of baffling. While the perception gap did narrow, still half of U.S. homeowners do not think their home’s value has declined over the past year. Specifically:

* 32% think their home’s value increased in the past 12 months
* 17% think their home’s value held steady
* 51% think their home’s value declined

In reality, three-quarters (74%) of U.S. homes lost value in the past 12 months, according to Zillow’s Q3 data.

What was surprising about the survey was that optimism about the future is still quite strong, with 61 percent believing their home will maintain its value or increase over the next six months.

Only 49 percent felt this way about the last year, but in the period ahead, somehow people think things will improve.

Given what's been in the news for the last few months, that seems far too rosy a view for anyone, except of course for those people who have been living in a cave since August of last year.

And ... a half point it is!

With today's half-point cut to short-term interest rates, the Federal Reserve is once again back out "in front of the curve"... well, at least in front of the curve from a few years ago.
This morning's announcement that the Fed has once again lowered short-term interest rates to the freakishly low level of 1.0 percent was widely expected, particularly since the effective Fed funds rate has been below that level for weeks now, averaging just 0.82 percent since October 10th.

There were some major changes to the policy statement as shown below. In fact, Compare It!, the software program used to detect subtle changes to the wording was stymied, finding many, many more differences (in red) than similarities (in blue).
It's good to know that certain passages have remained unchanged - that "the Committee expects inflation to moderate" and they "will monitor economic and financial developments carefully and will act as needed to promote sustainable economic growth and price stability".

As for what has changed, there is a rather sobering assessment of the current state of the rapidly deteriorating economy with special emphasis given to the slowdown in consumer spending and business spending.

They really do "monitor economic and financial developments" and "act as needed".

Nouriel Roubini blames the Fed

Nouriel Roubini is everywhere! You have to wonder if he's starting to make odd requests for his media appearances like asking for a bowl of M&Ms with one color removed.

Last night, he was on the Nightly Business Report and was asked a very simple question, "Who or what is the major culprit of this financial crisis?" Here's his simple reply:

First of all the Fed kept interest rates too low for too long and created the housing bubble. Secondly the Fed and the other regulators were asleep at the wheel and allowed all these toxic mortgages to be created without controlling it. Three, there was plenty of greed and excessive risk taking on Wall Street. And four, the rating agencies had major conflicts of interest because they were being paid by those that were supposed to be rating. So the blame is to be shared by many different culprits.

It is quite clear there is plenty of blame to go around but, interestingly, the first two of the four culprits mentioned by the world's most in-demand economist were the Federal Reserve.

The entire transcript is available here.

The New York University economics professor and founder of RGE Monitor (how does he find time to teach these days?) was also on Bloomberg video this morning predicting a very long and painful recession dead ahead.

Click to play in a new window

This simple search on "Roubini" at Bloomberg shows the extent of Nouriel's omnipresence - a total of ten references in just the last few days.

Julie on the economy

Julie Alexandria of Wallstrip talks about the prospects for the U.S. economy after the Federal Reserve cuts short-term rates to one percent today - the news isn't very good.

At about one minute in, have a look at the image that follows this:

So, no jobs, equals no money to pay the mortgage. And a big chunk of those people couldn't pay off those loans when they had jobs.

I'd say we're drowning in S#&t creek.

Funny. And not not nearly as dire sounding when delivered in such a way.

What would be even funnier is if Nouriel Roubini delivered the lines above.

Wednesday morning links

Oil and gold contest - the fun begins

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Entries for the 2008 edition of the "Guess the Year-End Price of Oil and Gold" contest have been tabulated and they now appear in the chart and tables below.
There were a total of 89 entries (down from 111 entries in June) with average guesses of $81 for a barrel of oil and $918 for an ounce of gold (this compares to average guesses of $119 and $997 for the last contest).

For oil, the high/low range was $200/$40 and, for gold, the range was $2,100/$600.

All individual guesses appear in the tables below - if something looks amiss, please let me know (this is a manual process, prone to error). All entries received via email use the sender's initials unless directed otherwise - you should be able locate your guess based on when and how it was made:

From the October 9 post:
From the October 16 post:
From the October 23 post:
From Yahoo! Mail:
From Iacono Research mail:
The graphic at the top of this post will be updated about every two weeks, usually on Fridays, until the last few weeks in December when updates will occur weekly.

Good luck to all!

Wikinvest Wire

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October is over, thankfully

Saturday, November 01, 2008

Zeitgeist - The Movie: Federal Reserve

Trick or Treat!

Friday, October 31, 2008

Oil and gold contest update #1

The savings rate is rising!

Our consumer economy

Underwater loans, O'Neil's housing plan

Friday morning links

Credit Crunch Song

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Trump - a (late-20th century) American icon

Premium for silver coins soars

Richard Russell looks at gold

Economy contracts, spending turns negative

Thursday morning links

I think this is the bottom

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

My house has still got to be worth...

And ... a half point it is!

Nouriel Roubini blames the Fed

Julie on the economy

Wednesday morning links

Oil and gold contest - the fun begins

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

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Tuesday, October 28, 2008