Jdimytai Damour -> Trampled to death by Wal-Mart shoppers, Friday.

Jdimytai Damour ... died 28/11/2008.

He was a temp worker working at Wal-Mart for Black Friday. Was trampled to death by maddened shoppers. Paramedics complain that their efforts to save him were hampered by shoppers who refused to slow down their insane charge for bargains. Apparently, paramedics and the victim were trodden on during the resustication process.

"Mr. Damour, who lived in Queens, went into the store sometime during the night to stock shelves and perform maintenance work.
On Friday night, Mr. Damour’s father, Ogera Charles, 67, said his son had spent Thursday evening having Thanksgiving dinner at a half sister’s house in Queens before going directly to work. Mr. Charles said his son, known as Jimmy, was raised in Queens by his mother and worked at various stores in the area after graduating from high school.
Mr. Charles said he had not seen his son in three months, and heard about his death about 7 a.m. Friday, when a friend of Mr. Damour’s called him at home. He arrived at Franklin Hospital Medical Center an hour later to identify the body. Mr. Charles said he was angry that no one from Wal-Mart had contacted him or had explained how his son had died. Maria Damour, Mr. Damour’s mother, was in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, but was on her way back to the United States."

What did Wal-mart do? Nothing. They were open for business the next day.
(oh, wait, I'm sorry. What they did do is refuse to disclose the victim's name, or even contact his relatives, as they tried to hush the matter up. BASTARDS!)

What did the police do? Why didn't they close up the shop, place yellow tape cordons, that sort of thing?

Corporate America... he might have been just a temp worker, but he was still a living breathing human once. He had friends and family, just like you. Was his life and death really so meaningless to you?

And you BLOODY Wal-Mart shoppers! You guys responsible are no longer human beings. I mean, I just watched some zombie movie lately. You know, where the zombies are pressed up against the glass, there is someone desperately trying standing behing the glass doors as they start to strain under the pressure... then they burst, and the man is killed by the maddened mob of creatures.

That scenario might sound far fetched, but that is EXACTLY what happened to the poor guy.

Not only that. Customers REFUSED to vacate the store and allow it to close due to the man's death. Yeah that's right... they insisted that they had lined up all night to shop, and they would therefore shop.



http://www.startribune.com/nation/35262584.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUF

http://bitchpie.wordpress.com/2008/11/29/black-friday-indeed/

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/walmart-worker-trampled-to-death-by-bargainhunting-shoppers-14086448.html

http://www.jackandjillpolitics.com/2008/11/wal-mart-shoppers-trample-and-kill-jdimytai-damour-keep-shopping/

http://arizona.typepad.com/blog/2008/11/jdimytai-damour.html

http://www.nydailynews.com/money/galleries/walmart_stampede_captured_in_pictures/walmart_stampede_captured_in_pictures.html


Oh, yeah, on a related topic:

And these two men who shot each other to death over a brawl between their wives in Toys "R" Us. Everyone is being very tight lipped about the matter, I can't find much info on the subject, other than the article below.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081129/ap_on_re_us/toy_store_shooting

Malaysia and Singapore's alternative to unemployment: Some Projected Effects.

Due to falling consumption, firms are cutting production capacity... it's an unnecesary cost. In other words, reducing the amount spent on labour. For UK and US, this means layoffs.

But for Singapore and Malaysia, we don't have social welfare programs. So the consequences of losing your job here is VERY bad compared to the USA. Especially if you can't find a new job in this environment.

The current "solution" to this is to reduce salary per person, instead of reducing number of people employed. This is good because unemployed people would default on debts, possibly turn to crime, etc etc... whereas spreading out the pain, ie instead of 10 unemployed people, you have 100 people who take a 10% pay cut... you instead get a much larger group of people who are still solvent and make enough to eat, who merely cut back on spending a little.

OR, possibly cut back on spending A LOT. In fact, it is possible this "solution" will cause consumer spending to drop even more than layoffs would. Why is this? It's because the average consumer is burdened with debt. Far more debt than their grandparents or great-grandparents would ever dream of saddling themselves with. And also fixed payments, like insurance and EPF contribution.

Well, I'd better just draw out how this works with an example. Let's take a company with 1000 workers. Each has RM3000 salary. They have over RM100,000 in loans ie housing, car, credit cards, for which they pay around RM1000 monthly. Their insurance, EPF and other monthly fixed expenses around RM500. They spend around RM1000 on necessities like FOOD, water, electricity, phone bills, petrol... leaving them with RM500 disposable income to be spent on things like clothes, outings, and other non-day to day essentials.
So consumer spending is around RM1500 per person=RM1.5million total.

1st scenario. 100 people are fired. 900 people remain. The effect would be: 90 people more or less maintain similiar spending habits. 10 people declare bankruptcy, or just sell everything and move to some cheaper locale and get a lower paying job... let's say they will on average end up with RM1000 incomes... enough to survive, basically. So, overall consumer spending= RM(1500x900) + (1000x100) = RM1,450,000. A drop of 50k. In other words, the fall in employment salary was borne mainly by the loan, property, insurance and EPF.

2nd scenario. 1000 people take a 10% paycut. The likely effect would be: 1000 people take a RM300 cut in disposable income. Overall consumer spending drops 300x1000 = 300k. In other words, this fall will be 100% borne by those who sell non-essentials.

...

In other words, for Malaysia and Singapore, under this "solution"... this is going to be a really terrible time to be selling luxury goods, or basically any non-essential items.
These sort of figures mean we're looking at a possible fall in sales of over 50% for all those clothes boutiques, shoe shops, computer shops, entertainment outlets...

These groups of businesses are always the hardest hit during a recession, so poor sales from them would hardly be a surprise.

However, my point is that these businesses will be utterly smashed by this technique of "spreading out the pain". Instead of losing 10% of their customers outright, they will face 100% of their customers reducing business by 50%. Pain.

Oh, BTW. This is going to be a huge blow for the auto-industry. When people take a pay cut, they definitely postphone buying a new car. You just become unable to make the monthly installments.

I think that Supermarkets like Tesco and Giant will do well in this environment, as people will be shopping for the cheapest deals. Also, more people will be choosing to cook their own meals. It's cheaper, and hey, after all, they so much more free time, due to all the shorter working hours, right?

US Bond Market is FAILING. BADLY. $2 trillion fails to deliver???

Excerpts from:
http://www.euromoney.com/Article/2054070/The-US-treasury-market-reaches-breaking-point.html?LS=EMS224393


"There is an even more pressing concern for many participants in this increasingly swollen market: the settlement system has broken down. Following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September, fails to deliver among the 17 primary dealers in the US treasury market have rocketed to more than $2 trillion over a period of weeks and still lie above $1.3 trillion. Broker/dealers have stopped delivering bonds. Holders of US treasuries are now scared to lend into the repo market in case their bonds are not returned, and potential buyers sit on the sidelines fearful of handing over their money to a counterparty that at best might not deliver a bond on time, and at worst might go under. "

"Fails to deliver in the treasury markets are not a new phenomenon. There is data for fails for treasuries, agencies and mortgage-backed securities as far back as 1990, says Susanne Trimbath, an economist, and former employee of the Depository Trust Co, a subsidiary of Depository Trust and Clearing Corp. "

"Back then, though, there would be $50 billion of fails in a whole year, she says. That figure has grown enormously. Failures in US treasuries were 8.6% of all treasuries outstanding in the first five months of this year, compared with 1.2% in the first five months of 2007. That has ballooned further over the past three months, hitting more than $2 trillion for almost the entire month of October – more than 20% of the daily treasuries trading volume"


...

Failure of the Bonds market?

I know that most Malaysian have never touched a bond in their life. So let me just sum it up: The bond market is more integral to the world financial system than the stock market. It ranks right up there with the much talked about credit market. (not surprising since they basically deal with the same thing: financing debt. And they are both rather ridiculously huge)

Fails among 17 primary dealers in US treasury market shot to 2 trillion... That brings up a very important question: how about the OTHER dealers? How many failures among the smaller dealers? ... possibly higher? I mean, considering that these 17 primary dealers are the big guys, the ones who presumably would be in better shape than the little guys... what sort of fails to deliver are occuring amongst the smaller dealers?

What sort of fails are occuring in the non-US Treasury bonds?

The worst case scenario here is that the entire bond market seizes up. No rollovers??? Heaven forbid! ... seriously, I cannot even imagine what damage would be caused by this sort of chaos.

Why do some people think that there is any possibility that the crisis has been solved?

Credit market is still not working properly whatsoever... interbank credit might be looser, but it's still even TIGHTER at the consumer level!

Bond market is at it's worst level ever, as seen above.

Global Trade is frozen. Look at the BDI, or visit the docks one day. Goods are not moving. Part of this is due to tight credit. Part of this is due to lower demand for goods.
Those Pirates are not helping either. Who wants to ship stuff if there's a higher chance that you'll make huge losses from paying ransoms?

Property is dropping. In fact it is only beginning to drop in the less developed nations, who think they might be spared... understand guys. Events unfold slower for underdeveloped nations, but they eventually do hit you too. I'm looking at you Malaysia!

Employment and consumer spending are going into a vicious circle spiralling downwards. For Malaysia, our local consumption is nowhere near enough to sustain our production, so our factories are going to get killed by UK and US unemployment figures.

To make matters worse, terrorists have proven themselves to be smart and are acting at the worst(for us) /best(for them) possible moment. I am unsure what their real objectives are, but what they have managed to accomplish is they've caused political tension between a number of nations.

The only good news? Well, fuel prices are dropping. Housing prices are falling too. That means: this is a good time to look at relocating. Tired of your current neighbourhood? This might not be a bad time for a total change in lifestyle.