Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SouthFloridaGuy who wrote (45289)	11/20/2008 4:34:02 PM
From: koan	Respond to of 149317

This is beyond belief. Bush is actually hiding!

To: SouthFloridaGuy who wrote (45289)	11/20/2008 6:30:10 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 149317

Volcker Is Said to Foresee Extended Economic Slump in U.S. By Danielle Sessa Nov. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, an economic adviser to President-elect Barack Obama, told Major League Baseball owners that weakness in the economy is going to last for a while. Volcker said U.S. consumers will have to lead the rest of the world out of the global recession, according to Tampa Bay Rays owner Stuart Sternberg, a former executive at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. He didn't give a time frame, Sternberg said. MLB Commissioner Bud Selig invited Volcker to speak to the sport's 30 owners at their quarterly meetings in New York. He talked for about an hour and took about a dozen questions from team officials on everything from automakers to unemployment. The media was excluded from the event. ``He said the same things we are getting in the papers, but when you hear it from the foremost financial authority in the world, it has a bigger impact,'' Sternberg said. Volcker, chairman of the Fed from August 1979 to August 1987, addressed the owners as the Standard & Poor's 500 Index fell to its lowest level in 11 years on concerns about the economy. First-time claims for unemployment insurance rose last week to the highest level since 1992, the Labor Department earlier today. Major League Baseball isn't increasing spending for the first time in four years because of the deteriorating economy. The sport is talking to its corporate partners about the sponsorships and clubs including the Boston Red Sox and Cincinnati Reds are keeping ticket prices the same next year. Selig said he asked Volcker to address the owners when they spoke at the World Series in Philadelphia. ``Obviously, this is a time to be very cautious as far as central baseball is concerned,'' Selig said at MLB headquarters in New York. ``Every club will have to determine themselves what to do, what's the best thing to do, or if anything is necessary.'' Selig declined to discuss specifics of Volcker's speech. A woman picking up the phone in Volcker's office said he wasn't going to discuss what he said. Baseball's Revenue Selig said baseball's revenue for this year was about $6.5 to $6.6 billion; both numbers would be a record. He declined to provide a projection for 2009. Volcker has been called on by Selig in the past to help baseball. He was on Selig's blue-ribbon panel on baseball economics in 2000 and on committees in 1990 and 1991. Sternberg said Volcker rescued the economy in the late 1970s and early 1980s by curbing inflation. Volcker was on the board of the American Stock Exchange when Sternberg began his Wall Street career there in 1978. ``I told him, you saved the planet,'' Sternberg said he told Volcker when they spoke at the World Series. ``What he did back then was nothing sort of heroic. He tamed the world's inflation.'' Sternberg retired as a partner at Goldman in 2002. He had been at Spear, Leeds & Kellogg LP, a New York Stock Exchange specialist firm that was bought by Goldman in 2000. To contact the reporter on this story: Danielle Sessa in New York at dsessa@bloomberg.net Last Updated: November 20, 2008 17:24 EST