The local HS has approved the key re-bushing and case re-what-ever-ing (rattle can) of the old baby grand. Call the babysitter Momma, were going to the steakhouse!

A jesting aside, I think we have passed the "bottom".....but the recession has certainly done it's share of damage. The recovery is going to be so slow, we will hardly notice it.

Yes, jesting aside. I do not believe we have hit bottom. The small amount of growth in the GDP is not keeping up with the natural increase in the available workforce, hence the steady unemployment rate. In reality we may still be headed down. Many are just dropping out of the job market altogether.

Imagine if the population was shrinking by 5% annually for some reason. Would a decline in GDP of 2% annually mean the economy was getting worse?

And the approved repair that I started this Topic with could be more of an indication of a poor economy. They aren't buying a new piano, they are repairing an old one. (Tell you the truth, it is very much worth repairing. I really don't think they make 'em like they used ta'.)

Be happy, our high schools or music schools are not repairing nor buying new pianos. You are ok still, what will the future look like,who knows. Until the Euro crisis is ower, we will wait 5 years minimum. Hard time for piano industry...

I think that your HS may have got it's hands on some of that money that the fed keeps printing.

Maybe so, Gene. What scares me is what will happen when the fed needs the money back...

What really happened was they almost switched pianos around because someone thought the pre-WWII Gulbransen 5'2" with a ribbon mahogany belt-sanded refinish job looked better than the late 70's ebony Baldwin R. Word got around and my opinion was asked for. I told them the Gully was nothing compared to the Baldwin. (You could just say the Gully was nothing -period- ) If they wanted the Baldwin to look better, I could make it all black again. But what it really needed was the keys rebushed. Gave them a price in the spring and they finally went for it!

Think six 13 oz. cans will do it?

That's very fortunate.

We're both in PA. I've been told that one district I tune for will be cutting down to only one tuning per year per piano because the state has cut funding to the schools.

I had a small price increase, so another district has told me that they may no longer be able to afford me because the state has cut funding to the schools.

I'm glad things seem to be going better in your area.

Marcellus shale money?

That could be part of it. The drilling companies have been doing quite a bit for us when you work with them. Like 1/2 the cost of some kettle drums, a chicken BBQ pit for fund raisers, road repairs, stuff like that. It take the pressure off in other areas.

I was worried that the district would cut back on tunings. Since this is my own school district, I told the Chior Director if the funds weren't there, call me anyway. That hasn't been necessary so far.

I think much of it is the personality of the Chior Director. The students flock to him, they added another class to the schedule, there is a full-sized musical every year, all this from a one McDonalds sized town. Nothing succeeds like success.

Until Greece, Spain and France are solvent, I wouldn't be doing much cheering. My business is basically piano teaching, the tech part basically supplying used/rebuilt instruments when required. I have been teaching for around 30 years. I teach largely in a well to do area that prior to the present situation was insulated from economic issues. Every year I had a substantial waiting list. I had a bit of an exodus last year when parents were relocated to other major cities when their businesses downsized and I still have not recovered, nor is there a waiting list. Never mind the effect on piano sales. I read a book entitled Aftershock that wasn't too consoling.

I've got that book, too, John. Pretty eye-opening!

I suppose writting a book on how to survive and economic downturn is as good a way of any to survive an economic downturn.

Monica, I'm not basically a gloom and doomer. I tend towards pragmatic, but at the same time, things SEEM to be playing out maybe a bit slower than their prognostications, but still trending that direction. It's more than disconcerting. From what I see everyone is hunkered down. My wife's in the energy biz and her company is threatening further cuts. There again, this present administration has been openly hostile to the energy biz...unless we talk crony capitalism a la Solyndra. Things were tough here back in the mid 80's when we graduated college and I think we are about to repeat history.

Our high schools are just having the janitors fix the pianos with whatever they have laying around the maintenance closet.

Oh No! Katie bar the door. The custodians are gonna buff the keytops with that big floor buffer thingie.

Not necessarily the worst thing that could happen. One nearby school got tired of the Dampp Chaser system cord and decided to mount an electrical box on the piano for plug-in and attached to a long extension that would reach across the room. This can be OK. I've seen it done so the box was mounted to a backpost of a Baldwin Hamilton. However . . .

This was a grand and they screwed the electrical box directly to the soundboard.

This is just the top of the problem. In many of the schools around our area in upstate New York, the schools are cutting music teachers to save money due to budget cuts. If there is no one to use it, does the piano need to be tuned? Kind of like the old if a limb falls in the woods, does anyone hear it? My daughter, a certified NY music teacher, had to relocate twice due to budget cuts in the past four years.

NY banned fracking gas wells, PA didn't. Guess where the gas boom is centerd?

Despite what the media is constantly pushing there is no "recovery" and TPTB (the Powers That Be) are simply rigging the numbers to make the economic situation seem not as bad as it actually is.
How many of you are aware that they've changed how they calculate inflation and they've changed how they calculate the unemployment rate?
If they actually calculated the unemployment rate the same way that they did for most of the last century (including the previous depression in the 1920's) the actual rate of unemployment would be about 23%.
The rate of inflation is heavily skewed because they are disproportionately including electronic gizmos (eg. iPhones) in their calculations since they know that these high-tech items are drastically decreasing in price, thus inaccurately skewing their resultant numbers. Anyone who has been shopping for food recently know that the inflation numbers are bogus.

Despite the politicians and media trying to convince you that there is a "recovery" the worst is yet to come and it will make 2008 seem like a walk in the park.
The US dollar WILL collapse, it is a mathematical certainty, and it will be like nothing anybody has ever experienced.
Even Alan Greenspan once said that "the US would default on it's debt, we would just print more money".
Hyperinflation will quickly decimate a liftime of savings and any pension that aren't already stolen by the government.

People who are unfamiliar with what happens during a collapse of any fiat currency should read up on history.
EVERY fiat (unbacked) currency has always collapsed. Period.
At the moment the US dollar is the longest lived fiat currency (since Nixon finally removed any remaining gold backing in 1971) and it has lasted as long as it has because of heavy manipulation of the price of gold and silver(done by instantaneous trading by computers of millions of "paper" ounces that don't actually exist) and by forcing all countries to have to use US dollars to buy oil.
Countries are now just beginning to use other currency to buy oil and China will no longer be buying all the US treasury notes that has enabled the US to keep printing money at full speed. Now it is almost exclusively the Federal Reserve that is buying Treasury Notes (IOU's essentially).
The fact that this ridiculous and pointless election is between two puppets of the banking establishment who are not mentioning anything of the massive problems facing the country (and the world actually) with the destruction of global economies by out of control banksters.

People should start educating themselves about what is actually going on with the monetary system because they are being told outright lies by the government and the media to cover up the dire situation as the country has been completely looted from within.


"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." - Henry Ford

At the same time the American dollar went off the gold standard another important deal was struck by Kissinger. The deal was any oil traded by OPEC countries would be traded on the spot market in US dollars.

This all changed very quietly on September 6th 2012.

Lindsey Williams:

"The most significant day in the history of the American dollar, since its inception, happened on Thursday, Sept. 6. On that day, something took place that is going to affect your life, your family, your dinner table more than you can possibly imagine."

"On Thursday, Sept. 6... just a few days ago, China made the official announcement. China said on that day, our banking system is ready, all of our communication systems are ready, all of the transfer systems are ready, and as of that day, Thursday, Sept. 6, any nation in the world that wishes from this point on, to buy, sell, or trade crude oil, can do using the Chinese currency, not the American dollar.

Read more here

We've lived so well, so long.. the most amazing time in all of human history.

Forrest

2008. USA was the most responsible country for the crisis, but now Europe is the epicenter of a global disaster that will eventualy come. With unemployment rate that is exeeding 20 % in most mediteranian countrys, euro will colapse, it is a meater of time. You cannot imagine how is the situation in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Irleand, Greece, small countrys like mine Croatia, Slovenia. The life standard is falling every month as the income is falling at 10 to 15 percent rate a year. Calculate inflation on about 2.8 and you can imagine the situation. To us USA seems to be doing better than us. Dolar is still a world currency, so you still can print as much money you want, but for how long. Yes we indeed lived in a most amazing time in human history....

All these things have been said before about every economic crisis. The "Chicken Littles" are always among us. What is really going on is we lived beyond our means and are now paying for it. And when the opportunity arises we will do it again and again. That is the real cause of the "business cycle": Trying to get that free lunch.

Good news up here, though. The local school board had more than the expected revenue!

If you truly want to know the economic situation take a close look around you...its a much better indicator than the media, or heaven forbid..the government. They report the economy much like a sly weatherman does the weather...gives you a time,or a date, or an occurance/event...but never the three at once. Unemployment statistics are a sham also, they don't account for the people who literally give up and drop off the charts.

Good point. I see a lot of overly well-fed people living calm lives. I don't see food lines or demonstrations in the streets. See, I wonder if once you get used to certain luxuries (like a second, or third NEW car) if when you can no longer afford them (because you borrowed money to have them to begin with) if somehow you think you are in poverty. We have been too used to having stuff NOW that we haven't earned yet, let alone saving for what you want in the future! I think the whole developed world needs to get used to a new "normal." You can't burn a candle at both ends.

Have to be careful about the "where" when you look around yourself; you could be looking around in a gated community, or you could be looking around near the rougher side of the tracks. Those people who were already living on the edge (and there are plenty of them who arn't burning both ends of the candle) are the ones who feel economic downswings the worst. These people and their dependants will be the folks who are likely to fall between the cracks. I would not consider somebody who holds off on buying a third new car this year as being a victim of the economy or anything for that matter.

Well, well, well.
Perhaps we should all stop playing piano and take up violin, so that we may all fiddle while Rome burns.

Well if Canada was Rome, and instead of taking up a fiddle we each took up some buckets of water, we get charged $ for filling the bucket (consumption fee), and then an additional charge for tossing it on the fire(waste fee). This was not always like this, and herein lies part of the problem.

We're not seeing food lines (ie. "bread lines") in the street like back in the (other) depression because they now use food stamps, so even though there are just as much unemployed and impoverished now as there was then it is kept hidden.

Ah yes, good ole Lindsey Williams. I've been watching that character for a while and I must admit he is usually right and does seem to have an inside track on information as he claims.

I too am aware that the Chinese currency can now be used to buy oil and simply assumed that the corporate media certainly would not report on it,or if they did, mention it only briefly. (I stopped paying attention to the corporate controlled "news" many years ago).
Up to this point countries any country that attempted to go off the Petro dollar were invaded or bombed by the US whenever (always sold to the public as a "humanitarian invasion of course) but it could only go on for so long.
When the collapse comes it will be very swift and those people that have been spending the recent years ridiculing those of us who have been trying to alert the public as to what is going on (usually by calling us "conspiracy theorists") are due for a very rude awakening.
I only wish that I would have clued into these things years before I did since I would have been that much further ahead in my preparations.
The biggest fear that most of us "awakened ones" have is that they will start a massive all-out war when the collapse comes since this is historically almost always done.

When one is also aware of the fact that many of the world's rich elite and insiders have bought property in South America this is a bit unsettling to say the least.
(George W. Bush bought 100,000 acres in Paraguay).

If you pay attention as well you will notice that many at the top of the pile have been quietly buying up a LOT of gold, while almost always publicly stating that gold is "in a bubble". (George Soros is the perfect example of this).