Economics

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    WSJ: Real time economics

  • Secondary Sources: Consumer Agency, Euro Crisis, Climate Change

    9 Feb 2010 | 6:38 am
    A roundup of economic news from around the Web. Consumer Agency: Writing for the Journal, TARP watchdog Elizabeth Warren argues for creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency. “The consumer agency is a watchdog that would root out gimmicks and traps and slim down paperwork, giving families a fighting chance to hang on to some of their money. So far, Wall Street CEOs seem determined to stop any kind of watchdog. They seem to think that they can run their businesses forever without our trust. This is a bad calculation. It’s a bad calculation because shareholders suffer…

  • Small-Business Owners Remain Pessimistic

    9 Feb 2010 | 4:32 am
    Small-business owners in the first month of the new year remained pessimistic about the economy, according to a report released Tuesday. The Small Business Optimism Index has now posted seven quarterly readings below the 90 mark as small business owners entered 2010 the same way they left 2009: still downbeat on the economy. The index, though, in January did post a small gain, of 1.3 points over December, rising to 89.3, reported the National Federation of Independent Business in a press release Tuesday. Seven of the index’s components posted gains and one remained unchanged. Two…

  • Fed’s Bullard Advocates Selling Mortgage Securities Gradually in 2010

    8 Feb 2010 | 3:31 pm
    The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis said Monday the U.S. central bank should begin gradually selling its mortgage securities holdings later this year despite concerns from some investors the move would raise mortgage rates. James Bullard said in an interview the asset sales should happen before the Fed hikes short-term interest rates, a sequencing that is still being debated within the central bank. He also said the market was putting too high the odds that the Fed’s first rate hike will come in November. To be sure, the Fed has yet to complete the purchase of $1.25…

  • Economists Link Athletics to Success in School, Job Markets

    8 Feb 2010 | 12:30 pm
    For years, researchers have known that there’s a link between children’s participation in high school sports and success later in life. Problem is, they haven’t understood exactly what that link is. Sports participation is linked to economic success. (Getty Images) That’s because children who participate in athletics may have other things going for them before they lace up their cleats. If they’re already aggressive, goal-oriented extroverts with physical attributes, such as height, that improve their chances of doing well later, the effect of sports may be negligible. But Wharton…

  • Fed’s Yellen: U.S. Rates Too Hot for China

    8 Feb 2010 | 11:18 am
    A top Federal Reserve official said Monday U.S. monetary policy is too hot for China and Hong Kong and explained any trouble those nations ultimately face because of this situation arises from their own foreign exchange policies. Yellen “Because both the Chinese and Hong Kong economies are further along in their recovery phases than the U.S. economy, current U.S. monetary policy is likely to be excessively stimulatory for them,” Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President Janet Yellen said. “However, as both Hong Kong and the mainland are currently pegging to the dollar,…
 
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    naked capitalism

  • Links 2/9/10

    Yves Smith
    8 Feb 2010 | 11:51 pm
    ‘Boredom can kill you’ ANI Genes reveal ‘biological ageing’ BBC Re-Engineering the Human Immune System h+ (hat tip reader David C) Sahara Desert Greening Due to Climate Change? National Geographic (hat tip reader Diane R) Spray-on liquid glass is about to revolutionize almost everything PhysOrg (hat tip reader Nick) Sarah Palin caught cheating, proving to the world once again she’s a colossal IDIOT! Zeitgeist Watch (hat tip reader John L) Unaccountable America Archein Traders make $8bn bet against euro Financial Times The Option of Last Resort: A Two-Currency EMU RGE…

  • Head of BIS Calls for Bigger Liquidity Buffers

    Yves Smith
    8 Feb 2010 | 10:43 pm
    Regulators have been making a concerted push for banks to hold more equity as a protection against loss and overly-optimistic valuation of trading assets. But the head of the Bank of International Settlements, Jamie Caruna, argued at a secret (not) central bankers’ conference in Sydney that banks also need to carry more in the way of liquid assets (note that this recommendation apparently came in the form of a paper, but we can find no such document at this hour at the BIS website). Caruna recommended that banks hold enough to allow them to survive a month without access to funding.

  • Guest Post: “More Empires Have Fallen Because Of Reckless Finances Than Invasion”

    George Washington
    8 Feb 2010 | 9:12 pm
    While Eric Margolis’ entire comment in the Toronto Sun is a must-read, the following two quotes really hit the nail on the head: More empires have fallen because of reckless finances than invasion… If Obama really were serious about restoring America’s economic health, he would demand military spending be slashed, quickly end the Iraq and Afghan wars and break up the nation’s giant Frankenbanks. Margolis is right. As I have repeatedly shown, war is bad for the economy. According to a Nobel prize-winning economist, the head of JP Morgan and others, the Iraq war and the war on…

  • Questions about the coming wave of second mortgage writedowns

    Edward Harrison
    8 Feb 2010 | 11:26 am
    By Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns In the lead-up to the credit crisis, I really didn’t write a considerable amount about second mortgages despite my focus on credit writedowns. At that time, I was more focused on writedowns from securitized mortgage paper (and later construction loans and commercial real estate because of the stress these loan types put on regional financials). However, second liens are a very big deal and I believe they will loom that much larger in 2010 because of the rise in strategic defaults in prime and Alt-A categories. When the crisis first developed, in…

  • Links 2/8/10

    Yves Smith
    8 Feb 2010 | 3:14 am
    Galapagos sea lions head for warm Peru waters BBC (hat tip reader Steven L) Pratap Chatterjee, Destabilizing Pakistan TomDispatch Secret summit of top bankers News.com.au Europe needs to show it has a crisis endgame Wolfgang Munchau Financial Times Employers set to keep squeezing pay Independent Irked, Wall St. Hedges Its Bet on Democrats New York Times. Some one needs to break these guys. The SWIFT Battle Heats Up FireDogLake (hat tip reader Michael T) Let’s Atomize Wall Street Martin Hutchinson, Prudent Bear Super-wealthy investors move billions out of Greece Guardian Flatlhead Matt…
 
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    alpha.sources

  • Random Shots

    CV
    3 Feb 2010 | 12:40 am
    Watching, monitoring, and analysing the economy and her markets is as much about tracking discourses (and how they change) as it is about perusing data material on various leading and lagging indicators. And thus, as I am still knee deep into putting the last touch on my thesis [1] I thought that I might as well move in with some random shots at what just might (or might not) be a subtle change of discourse in the context of the areas of the economy I am interested in.   Rallying Risky Assets no More? The first interesting piece that got my attention was the coverage by FT Alphaville's…

  • No News from Japan

    CV
    27 Jan 2010 | 12:00 am
    Sometimes no news is more telling than one might initially think and although it was hardly earth shattering for the market that the BOJ chose yesterday to keep its main benchmark rate sitting at 0.1% it does highlight the extraordinary difficulties Japan currently face in terms of sparking its economy back into some kind of forward momentum. (quote Bloomberg) The Bank of Japan held interest rates near zero and said it remains committed to fighting deflation as gains in the yen risk stunting the recovery from the country’s worst postwar recession. “I hope that price declines will…

  • Paging Martin Wolf - A Detailed Look at Savings in Japan

    CV
    21 Jan 2010 | 12:47 am
    [Update: Martin Wolf moves in with a comment below and I have answered] In short, if the world economy is to get through this crisis in reasonable shape, credit worthy surplus countries must expand domestic demand relative to potential output. How they achieve this outcome is up to them. But only in this way can the deficit countries realistically hope to avoid spending themselves into bankruptcy.  Martin Wolf (2008) It is not the first time that I am using this quote by the FT's chief economics commentator and I don't suspect that it will be the last. Of all the attempts by pundits and…

  • Moodys on Japan and the Eurozone - Stating the Obvious

    CV
    13 Jan 2010 | 10:59 pm
    I shall openly admit that I have always found the exact role of the rating agencies a bit odd in the global financial system. I mean, do we really need them to tell us which bonds are good and which are not? I am not sure and what is more; rating agencies sometimes, if not all the time depending on their ability to stay in front of the curve, seem to wield a tremendously amount of power relative to their role as private actors (after all) in financial markets. For example, they may ultimately decide whether bonds of a given Eurozone economy may be eligible for collateral at the ECB or, even…

  • FX Markets 2010 – The Old Maid, Global Imbalances and Carry Trade

    CV
    10 Jan 2010 | 9:44 pm
    This piece was written before Christmas and will appear in the first 2010 edition of the Forex Journal. The data covers the market up until mid December. Old Maid is a card game where the simple task is to avoid holding a given card (often the queen of spades) at the end. Even in the company of good friends however, holding Old Maid at the end is not fun. Often, you have to buy the drinks, drop a piece of clothes, or endure other travails. And as it turns out, the global FX market is not unlike this good old game of cards where the Old Maid is proxied by having a strong currency on whose…
 
 
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    re: The Auditors

  • Beyond the Yellow Brick Road: A College Student’s Assessment of Public Accounting Job Opportunities

    Jordan Sakowitz is a senior at Lehigh University, majoring in Accounting and Management Information Systems. He also serves as the editor of the Brand-Yourself.com Blog. While he currently resides in Bethlehem, PA, he will be moving to New York City this summer when he will begin his career ...

  • @Going Concern “At Davos, Big 4 CEOs Get Their Close-Ups”

    My new post is up @Going Concern. Davos is a big deal for the media and they’re hungry for content. Any content. The prepped and pre-scripted interviews are full of softball questions and carefully restrained probing. Whether giving air time to KPMG’s Flynn, Quigley from Deloitte, E&Y’s Turley or PwC’s Nally, everyone ...

  • The Great American Financial Sandwich: AIG, PwC, and Goldman Sachs

    It may have been the first time you had ever heard of AIG.  As big as it is, it wasn't really a household name outside of the financial services world.  And certainly, big as it is, the average businessperson probably could not describe everything they did and why. The Wall ...

  • Sarbanes-Oxley Insights: An Interview With Bob Hirth of Protiviti

    Protiviti is currently soliciting feedback for its new Sarbanes-Oxley Insight Survey. The results of this survey promise to provide valuable and important insight into the current state of Sarbanes-Oxley compliance for all types of organizations. We should also learn more about the related costs and how to achieve a desired state ...

  • Update-Bring A Man of Integrity To U.S. Senate: David Hoffman for Illinois

    Update: David Hoffman's chief opponent as the Democratic candidate for US Senate from Illinois , Alexi Giannoulias, now has some serious banking issues. From Politico: Here’s a story that Illinois Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias (D) didn’t want coming out less than a week before next Tuesday’s primary. The Crain’s piece reports that Giannoulias’s ...
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    American Prospect: beat the press

  • Jingoism and the Budget Deficit: Using Any Tactic to Advance the Budget Cutting Agenda

    8 Feb 2010 | 4:12 pm
    The deficit hawks apparently believe that their case is so weak that they must resort to crass jingoism to push their agenda. NBC apparently intends to run a piece on the evening news on Tuesday that talks about the portion of the government debt that is owned foreigners, highlighting the role of China. This is incredibly dishonest. The extent to which foreigners hold U.S. assets is determined by the trade deficit, not the budget deficit. (Actually, the causation largely goes the other way. The decision of foreign governments and/or investors to buy dollar assets raises the value of the…

  • Social Security Benefits Will Be Paid, It is the Law

    8 Feb 2010 | 6:08 am
    Allan Sloan told listeners to Marketplace radio this morning that future retirees should be worried about their Social Security benefits because the program is now paying out more in benefits than it collects in taxes. In fact, the program has accumulated more than $2.5 trillion on government bonds in its trust fund. The Congressional Budget Office projects that this fund will be sufficient to pay all scheduled benefits through the year 2044. Even after that date, if nothing is ever done to change the program, the projections still show that it will be able to pay close to 80 percent of…

  • Post Makes Things Up In Pushing "Free Trade" Deals, Again

    8 Feb 2010 | 2:35 am
    The Washington Post ran another appeal for congressional passage of trade agreements negotiated with South Korea and Colombia. It refers to these deals as "free trade" agreements even though an important part of both deals involves increasing protectionist barriers in the form of patent and copyright protection. This increased protection will raise costs and lead to increased economic distortions. The Post has a long history of making things up to promote trade agreements. For example, a 2007 editorial promoting NAFTA told readers that Mexico's GDP had quadrupled from 1988 to 2007. The actual…

  • Robert Samuelson Doesn't Know About the Social Security Tax

    8 Feb 2010 | 2:14 am
    I suppose that it is hard to get information about the federal budget way out in the outskirts of downtown Washington. This no doubt explains why Robert Samuelson doesn't seem to know about the Social Security tax. In fact, he doesn't seem to know much about the federal budget at all. Samuelson complains that the government: "the budget is mainly a vehicle for transferring income to retirees from workers, who pay most taxes." This complaint is based on the portion of the budget that goes to funding programs that largely support retirees, specifically Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

  • Defense Spending Has Been Growing More Rapidly Than Social Security

    7 Feb 2010 | 9:34 am
    The NYT and every one else keeps saying that Social Security is one of the three most rapidly growing items in the budget. This is not true. Defense spending grew more rapidly over the last decade. We spent $655.8 billion on defense in 2009 more than double the $306.1 billion spent in 2001. $By comparison, Social Security spending rose by just over 50 percent during these years from $429.4 billion in 2001 to $677.7 billion last year. If we're looking forward, interest spending is projected to grow more rapidly. So it is simply inaccurate to list Social Security among the areas of most rapid…
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    Robert Reich

  • Obomanomics One Year Out

    8 Feb 2010 | 9:24 pm
    Obamanomics suffers from a misunderstanding of what the President is trying to achieve and what he’s up against. Into the breach come Republicans, Tea Partiers, nay-sayers, deficit vultures, and Raging-Dog Democrats, all viewing Obamanomics as more taxes and more spending. That’s nonsense. To see the big picture, keep your eye on three big things. 1. Government spending needed to offset the continued reluctance of consumers and businesses to spend. You don’t have to be an orthodox Keynesian to understand that as long as the private sector is deleveraging, the public sector has to borrow…

  • 2010 Rancho Mirage Speakers Series

    5 Feb 2010 | 1:51 pm
    2010 Rancho Mirage Speakers Series

  • Who's Killing Financial Reform?

    4 Feb 2010 | 1:53 pm
    Senator Chris Dodd, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, scolded Wall Street representatives at a hearing Thursday for sending “an army of lobbyists whose only mission is to kill the common-sense financial reforms” needed by the public. “The fact is,” Dodd said, “I am frustrated, and so are the American people.” He charged that Wall Street’s intransigence was the reason for Congress’s failure to pass any bill to regulate the Street. “The refusal of large financial firms to work constructively with Congress on this effort borders on insulting to the American people…

  • Our Incredible Shrinking Democracy

    2 Feb 2010 | 7:39 am
    I wish conservatives would stop complaining about big government and start worrying about the real problem – small democracy. I wish we’d all worry more about our incredible shrinking democracy. It seems as if more and more decisions that should be made democratically are being shunted off somewhere to a few people who make them in back rooms. Which programs should be cut, which entitlements pared back, and what taxes raised in order to reduce the long-term budget deficit? Hmmm. Let’s convene a commission and have them decide. Commissions are a default mechanism when politicians want to…

  • Obama Needs To Teach The Public How to Get Out Of The Mess We're In, But He's Not

    28 Jan 2010 | 5:33 pm
    The President wants businesses that hire new employees this year to get $5,000 per hire, in the form of a tax credit. That will come to about $33 billion. It’s good step. He’s also supporting a cut in the capital gains tax for small businesses. That makes sense; after all, small businesses generate most jobs. But here’s the problem. Both of these measures, and many of the other tax cuts he’s proposing, give ammunition to supply-siders who think the way out of this awful economy is simply to cut taxes on businesses. If a new jobs tax credit is a good idea, why not a cut corporate…
 
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    Grasping Reality With Both Hands

  • links for 2010-02-09

    Brad DeLong
    9 Feb 2010 | 12:03 am
    Menzie Chinn: Letting the EGTRRA and JGTRRA Provisions Expire Matthew Yglesias: No One Expects The Spanish Inquisition Digby on Obama: It's Getting Hot in Here Republicans vs. Republicans? Meghan McCain Rails at the Tea Party Reviving the American Empire Mark Elvin: The High-Level Equilibrium Trap: The Causes of the Decline of Invention in the Traditional Chinese Textile Industries Mark Elvin: The Pattern of the Chinese Past Mark Elvin: The Retreat of the Elephants Mark Elvin: Changing stories in the Chinese world Greg Anderson: To Change China: A Tale of Three Reformers Wang Anshi 王安石…

  • Pretending that Nothing Is Wrong When Your Hair on Fire Does Not Send a Good Signal...

    Brad DeLong
    8 Feb 2010 | 10:13 pm
    That the Greek government claims not to know that it badly needs help is a very strange thing to do if it wants to restore market "confidence"--investors are more likely to trust and have confidence in a government that they think is not made up of clowns: Greece Says Call for Aid Would Send ‘Worst Signal’: Greek Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou said he can’t call for outside aid as his government struggles to cut the European Union’s largest budget deficit. “The worst possible signal which we could send out is one calling for outside help,” he said…

  • About Frank Foer, Editor of the New Republic: Is He a Spineless Cowardly Slug? Or Is He a Human Being?

    Brad DeLong
    8 Feb 2010 | 10:03 pm
    Frank Foer, editor of the New Republic, has a guy who writes for him named Leon Wieselter: Leon Wieselter: Something Much Darker: I will conclude this unpleasantness here, though there are more rants by [Andrew] Sullivan that merit attention. Criticism of Israeli policy, and sympathy for the Palestinians, and support for a two-state solution, do not require, as their condition or their corollary, this intellectual shabbiness, this venomous hostility toward Israel and Jews. I have striven for Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation, and territorial compromise, and two states, for many decades now,…

  • Ten Mostly Economics Pieces Worth Reading: February 9, 2010

    Brad DeLong
    8 Feb 2010 | 8:58 pm
    1) Jim Hamilton: Yes the future deficits are worrisome: [A]t the moment we're observing an amazing willingness of investors and foreign central banks to lend to the U.S. Treasury... 2-year notes paying the lowest yield on record.... So if the government were to borrow another dollar today, invest in anything with a positive rate of return, and repay the sum in two years, it would indeed be a great deal. Those remarkably low yields at the moment in my mind are a result of a flight to safety... people are afraid to hold anything other than treasuries... not so much a market vote in favor of the…

  • With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility to Use That Power...

    Brad DeLong
    8 Feb 2010 | 8:47 pm
    Ryan Avent writes, apropos of: Safety in dollars: Here's a look at the recent relationship between the euro and the dollar... a long run of euro appreciation, then a sudden reversal amid the flight to safety associated with the 2008 financial crisis, then a return to appreciation, and finally another bout of dollar strengthening. The reversal there at the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010 is just what you'd expect to happen amid growing fears of sovereign debt problems in the euro zone. Such issues would increase the desire for safe havens and dampen the demand for euros, both of which…
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    cool global BIZ

  • Will Silicon Valley's Tech Economy Last to Infinity & Beyond? Tech Giants Lead Another Recovery

    Edward Iwata
    6 Feb 2010 | 2:20 pm
    "Four Tubes in a Row "by Mike Cohn, under a Creative Commons license on flickr.com. AS CISCO SYSTEMS, Intel and other U.S. tech titans spearhead another economic recovery, I wonder how long Silicon Valley and the U.S. tech realm will reign as the world's preeminent force for business growth and innovation. Scores of tech watchers have debated the question over the past couple decades, and time-honored "Whither Silicon Valley?" stories by the media surface every 5 or 10 years. (I plead guilty to writing a couple myself, including "Tech Industry Struggles To Cope With Its Losses" in USA Today,…

  • And So It Goes: Davos 2010 and Financial & Banking Reform -- Not!

    Edward Iwata
    2 Feb 2010 | 4:03 am
    From TheDeal.com: "Barney Frank, Davos and Global Financial Reform" by Suzanne Stephens. Former Florida congressman James Bacchus is speaking. AND SO IT GOES, as Kurt Vonnegut used to write. Little progress at Davos 2010 or anywhere else discussing global banking reform, or the policing of financial mandarins in any way. No surprise, of course. Little sweeping regulatory change by anyone on Planet Moolah since the fall of 2008, when the frightening scope of the financial crisis first emerged, and the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department, and the U.S. Congress struggled frantically with…

  • More Creatives, More Neocha.com, Please

    Edward Iwata
    31 Jan 2010 | 4:25 pm
    "Neo Shanghai" by Danwei.org and Adam Schokora/Ginger Xiang of The Shanghai Beat. A SPATE OF recent stories in China on Neocha.com (company website and Twitter), a social-network site in Shanghai for China creatives that was founded by Sean Leow (LinkedIn), a Chinese American from Silicon Valley and an econ graduate from Duke University in the United States . . . Launched in 2007, the site brings together artists, musicians, designers and filmmakers to share and promote their work . . . Last year, Leow and partner Adam Schokora, formerly of Edelman Digital for China, founded the NeochaEdge…

  • Can Bill & Melinda Gates Be Cloned, or What Would You Do With $10 Billion?

    Edward Iwata
    29 Jan 2010 | 12:35 pm
    Watch live streaming video from worldeconomicforum03 at livestream.com Davos 2010 - Press Conference: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation pledges new commitment to vaccines - Fri Jan 29 2010. THE SLOGAN OF the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: "All Lives Have Equal Value" . . . In their latest act of global grace, the Gates said today at the World Economic Forum in Davos that they would donate $10 billion over 10 years to research and deliver vaccines to ailing children in poor countries . . . Nearly 9 million kids won't die of diarrhea, pneumonia, tuberculosis, and malaria if they get…

  • What's Cooler? Apple's iPad, or a Couple Billion Women Fighting the Global Gender Gap?

    Edward Iwata
    28 Jan 2010 | 12:55 pm
    "Colorful Islamic Malay Women" by Vin Crosby, under a Creative Commons license on flickr.com. FOR BUDDHA'S SAKE, enough of the iPad, no matter how cute or cool it may be . . . Unless CEO Steve Jobs and Apple donate 10% of all units to those in need (emerging countries, poor entrepreneurs, struggling non-profits, low-income neighborhoods and schools), why should we care about the latest tech toy? . . . Will Apple's iProducts -- and other pricy consumer gadgets -- really change the world? . . . Or is it sugar water for the middle-class masses and Third World elites? . . . The brilliant Jobs…
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    Calculated Risk

  • BLS: Few Job Openings in December

    CalculatedRisk
    9 Feb 2010 | 7:04 am
    From the BLS: Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary There were 2.5 million job openings on the last business day of December 2009, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The job openings rate was little changed over the month at 1.9 percent. The job openings rate has held relatively steady since March 2009. The hires rate (3.1 percent) and the separations rate (3.2 percent) were essentially unchanged in December. Note: The difference between JOLTS hires and separations is similar to the CES (payroll survey) net jobs headline numbers. Remember the CES (Current Employment…

  • NFIB: Small Business Owners Report "shortage of customers"

    CalculatedRisk
    9 Feb 2010 | 5:52 am
    From Reuters: Dark clouds hang over U.S. small businesses: survey The outlook of small business owners remained bleak at the start of the new year, according to a survey released on Tuesday by the National Federation of Independent Business. ... But the group also said that seven of the index's 10 components rose, indicating conditions could soon improve. Better outlooks on jobs, inventories and capital spending have helped push the index up 1.3 points since December, the group said And a few excerpts from the report: The National Federation of Independent Business Index of Small Business…

  • D.C. Closed Again on Tuesday and Euro Perspective

    CalculatedRisk
    8 Feb 2010 | 8:23 pm
    From the WaPo: Federal government will be closed on Tuesday. More snow ...This could mean that some of the economic releases might be delayed this week.And from Paul Krugman: Euro perspective. Professor Krugman provides a pie chart putting the GDP of the PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain) into perspective.Greece, which is making most of the headlines, is a tiny economy. So are Portugal and Ireland. The only sizable player among the countries in the news right now is Spain. ... the group of stressed economies account for about 20 percent of the eurozone’s GDP. So muddle through might…

  • Greek Finance Minister: Call for help "worst possible signal"

    CalculatedRisk
    8 Feb 2010 | 4:50 pm
    From Bloomberg: Greece Says Aid Call Would Send ‘Worst Signal’ as Bonds Slide “The worst possible signal which we could send out is one calling for outside help,” [Greek Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou] said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Athens yesterday. “We will tackle the deficit,” he said, adding that tax revenues in January exceeded forecasts “by some percentage points.” Maybe El Erian was right and it is a game of chicken: "Europe has become a huge game of chicken, whereby the Greeks are waiting for help from the outside and donors are waiting for…

  • Party Like it's 1999

    CalculatedRisk
    8 Feb 2010 | 1:00 pm
    From March 29, 1999: A CNBC Promo ... Click on graph for larger image in new window.This graph is from Doug Short of dshort.com (financial planner). His comments: This chart ... shifts the point of alignment ... to the bear bottom in the Oil Crisis and Tech Crash, the first major low in the 1929 Dow, and the March 9th closing low for our current Financial Crisis. As the chart illustrates, the S&P 500 lows in 1974 and 2002 marked the beginnings of sustained recoveries. The Dow low in 1929 failed 11 months later. The second graph shows daily closing prices for the Dow since Jan 1999. The dashed…
 
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    Wall St Examiner: Winter (Economic & Market) Watch

  • The Real World

    Winter Watch
    8 Feb 2010 | 10:48 pm
    It now feels that the pretend world is finally catching up to the real world. For those who seek some glimmer of hope, the message this time from Fitch on CRE delinquencies keeps coming in loud and clear as does the delinquencies on jumbo mortgages. Feb. 8 (Bloomberg) — U.S. prime jumbo mortgages at least 60 [...]View the full article

  • The B.A.D. Stink Bombs

    russwinter
    6 Feb 2010 | 12:33 pm
    To process what is transpiring in the world, we should focus on several stink bombs: Europe, the Anglo nations (US/UK) and Asia (primarily China). Today’s focus is the first two. Europe  is front and center at the moment. Speculators are now attacking the Euro, not just covering carry trades.  Now,  I don’t diminish the implications of how [...]

  • More News from the Money Tree and Tooth Fairy

    Winter Watch
    4 Feb 2010 | 9:34 pm
    Harrisburg, Penn., is looking at bankruptcy and for obvious reasons, debt service is about equal to its entire budget.  Look for a lot more of this. You heard the concept here: Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) – Greece’s biggest union approved the second mass strike this month and tax collectors began a 48-hour walkout, showing that Prime Minister George [...]View the full article

  • Flight to? or Unfinished Business

    Winter Watch
    4 Feb 2010 | 9:05 am
    US Treasury is out with a report and illustrative charts on the key issue of times, debt traps. The first charts leads off with the interest paid against GDP. Since I believe GDP is in many respects bogus, I prefer to compare against tax revenues, which in 2009 were $2.1 trillion. What is important about this chart is that even [...]View the full article

  • Rolling Over

    Winter Watch
    3 Feb 2010 | 8:01 am
    China continues tightening its property markets. Mostly likely property prices in China have already rolled over and are heading lower. Shanghai’s property stock index topped out in August, and has already dropped 33%. Now looks like nothing has come out of Dubai on their restructuring talks, except shines. The CDS market is again starting to get [...]View the full article
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    Crooked Timber

  • Japanese Paper Theater

    John Holbo
    8 Feb 2010 | 11:55 pm
    Here’s a handsome coffee table book I’ve been wanting for a while: Manga Kamishibai: The Art of Japanese Paper Theater [amazon]. And you know what! I just ordered it, because for some reason Amazon has it for sale for $6.46, instead of $35. Go figure. I advise you to order your own copy before they come to their senses. Let me quote the product description, by way of posing my question for the day: Before giant robots, space ships, and masked super heroes filled the pages of Japanese comic books – known as manga – such characters were regularly seen on the streets of…

  • Six Nations open thread

    Chris Bertram
    7 Feb 2010 | 6:43 am
    We usually have a Six Nations thread at this time of the year, to give our North American commenters the opportunity to make the same old joke about the Iroquois they made the previous year. I didn’t see Ireland-Italy but I did enjoy England’s largely undeserved victory over the Welsh, whose second-row forward Alun Wyn Jones managed to gift England 17 points by getting himself sin-binned. Something tells me that if England can be this crap and still get a victory, they might manage to win the whole thing.

  • Bacevich on the American faith in force

    John Quiggin
    5 Feb 2010 | 4:43 am
    The American Conservative is a mixed bag, to put it mildly, but this piece by Andrew Bacevich is well worth reading. Bacevich points out how rarely the faith of the American policy elite in military force has actually been rewarded with success. The key quote: An alternative reading of our recent military past might suggest the following: first, that the political utility of force—the range of political problems where force possesses real relevance—is actually quite narrow; second, that definitive victory of the sort that yields a formal surrender ceremony at Appomattox or on the…

  • Robowars

    Chris Bertram
    4 Feb 2010 | 1:41 am
    BBC Radio 4 had a fascinating programme the other day about the use of drones in warfare by the US, British and Dutch military. It is still available at iplayer here (though those of you in the “wrong” jurisdictions may need to find fancy workarounds). A guy gets in his car and drives to work in an office in Nevada. From his office he controls drones in Afghanistan. Occasionally he kills people (who can’t shoot back at him, since he’s 8000 miles away). When he’s done, he gets in his car and drives home to his wife and kids. You can tell the difference between…

  • Zombie ideas walk again

    John Quiggin
    4 Feb 2010 | 1:04 am
    A glutton for punishment, I’ve decided the Zombie Economics book manuscript I submitted a month ago (mostly online here) is in urgent need of more zombies. I’ve been struck, even in that short space of time by the extent to which, with undeniable “green shoots” now appearing, the zombie ideas I’ve written about are clawing their way through the softening soil and walking among us again. The most amazing example is that of the Great Moderation – surely you would think no one could believe in this anymore, but they do. So, I’m planning to add a bit to…
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    Dealbreaker

  • Barclays' Varley Not Impressed By Volcker Rule

    9 Feb 2010 | 7:30 am
    The Brits are jumping on the Volcker Rule-hating bandwagon, because a) the rule is stupid, b) it'll make them lose a boatload of money, and c) screw you US, (Obama, Timmy, Paul) if you think you can just go at it alone. Barclays' CEO John "profits are not satanic" Varley said that the proposal was "completely irrelevant" and that the idea of breaking big banks was just dumb as "size is irrelevant." I don't think something simplistic like prohibiting proprietary trading in banking is the answer. Varley, who's getting more irritated by the week, would also like to remind people that he never…

  • Opening Bell: 02.09.10

    9 Feb 2010 | 5:25 am
    UBS Posts First Profit In More Than A Year (Bloomberg) UBS earned 1.21 billion francs in the fourth quarter, its first profit since the third quarter of 2008, helped by lower costs tied to the company's debt and a tax credit. The bank is paying 2.9 billion francs in bonuses for 2009, up 34 percent from the previous year. Chief Executive Officer Oswald Gruebel said in a statement that the return to profitability "will increase clients' confidence in UBS." Time For Bonus Round At Banks (Charlotte Observer) At Foreign Cars Italia of Charlotte, where cars run from about $100,000 to $1 million or…

  • Write-Offs: 02.08.10

    8 Feb 2010 | 2:30 pm
    The history man and fatwa girl: Niall Ferguson has deserted wife Sue Douglas for Somali feminist [Daily Mail via Daily Intel] German pensioners 'kidnapped financial adviser' [BBC] Cash Money Records Founders Start An Oil Company [BI] Should Individuals Be Regulated Like Wall St. Banks? [The Atlantic] Toy Mogul Said To Buy Madoff Penthouse [Dealbook] Niall Ferguson - Sue Douglas - Daily Mail - Atlantic - People

  • Bonus Watch: Greenwich Connecticut Is Feeling Good Again

    8 Feb 2010 | 2:15 pm
    We don't have to tell you bitching about bonuses is getting boring. Thankfully, the good people of Greenwich have nothing bad to say about them, and are actually just happy things are getting back to normal. They are spending like it's 2005 all over again, although they admit that they'll have to go about their business in a more demure manner this time around. Decency, and whatnot. "Last year was a big downer," said Michelle Brunwasser, a partner in the chic Weber art gallery. "Things are definitely better now, and a lot of it has to do with the bonuses." Connecticut - Greenwich Connecticut…

  • Don't Drink The Water: The Great CDS Colonial Reversal

    8 Feb 2010 | 1:58 pm
    The following post is by a hedge fund manager friend of DB who shall remain nameless. He runs the emerging markets desk at his firm. It's the financial version of Montezuma's revenge! The meltdown in Western European sovereign credit has led to a Great Colonial Spread Reversal. Until now, only select Anglosphere colonies had posted tighter spreads than the old metropolis. Sovereign spreads embodied the tradition order when it came to Latin America. When Latam hit turbulence, investors looked at European bank and corporate exposures to the old colonies, or figured on expensive support packages…
 
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    Econbrowser

  • Letting the EGTRRA and JGTRRA Provisions Expire

    Menzie Chinn
    8 Feb 2010 | 8:47 pm
    Or, what would happen if we "Let Bush Be Bush". Recall the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts were written to expire, for the most part, in FY2011. The impact of extending those cuts (along with some others) is strikingly depicted in this Figure from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (h/t Brad Delong). Figure 1 from Ruffing and Horney, CBPP, Dec. 16, 2009. Ruffing and Horney describe the method of calculation of the "Bush-era tax cuts" portion thus: Through 2011, the estimated impacts come from adding up past estimates of all changes in tax laws — chiefly the Economic Growth and Tax Relief…

  • Reactions to last week's economic data

    James Hamilton
    7 Feb 2010 | 7:26 am
    Here I offer some thoughts on last week's numbers for employment, auto sales, and commodity prices. On Friday the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 20,000 fewer Americans were working in January compared with December on a seasonally adjusted basis but that the unemployment rate nevertheless fell from 10.0% in December to 9.7% in January. The discrepancy comes from the fact that the BLS gets employment counts in two different ways. The first is by asking establishments how many people they employed last month, and this establishment survey provides the basis for the reported 20,000…

  • Federal Debt: More Time Series

    Menzie Chinn
    6 Feb 2010 | 9:38 am
    Augmenting my previous post, here are two additional graphs, motivated respectively by comments by Econbrowser readers Eric Swanson (for Figure 1) and Cedric Regula and tim kemper (for Figure 2). Figure 1: Federal debt held by the public as a share of GDP (blue) and as a share of potential GDP. NBER defined recessions shaded gray; assumes last recession ended 09Q2. Vertical dashed line at last Q4 of each Administration, solid vertical line at Q1 of beginning of each Adminisration. Sources: Series FYGFDPUN from St. Louis Fed FREDII, with 09Q4 data from CBO, and BEA, 2009Q4 advance release, CBO…

  • The January Employment Situation: Four Pictures

    Menzie Chinn
    5 Feb 2010 | 10:52 am
    Downward revision in the level of nonfarm payroll (NFP) employment; stabilization in employment measures (establishment, household, research series); aggregate weekly hours trend up. Figure 1: Nonfarm payroll employment, in thousands, seasonally adjusted, from January release (blue), December 2009 release (red) and December 2008 release (green). NBER defined recession dates shaded gray, assumes recession ended 2009M06. Source: BLS January 2010, December 2009 and December 2008 releases via FREDII, and NBER. Figure 2: Nonfarm payroll employment, in thousands, seasonally adjusted, from January…

  • Doubling Exports

    Menzie Chinn
    4 Feb 2010 | 11:18 pm
    The Administration has committed itself to doubling exports in five years, via the National Export Initiative. Much of the journalistic coverage has focused on the regulatory, trade-credit financing, and export promotion measures being considered [0]. I wanted to take a macro oriented approach to the viewing the plausibility of this goal. Let me address this issue from a variety of perspectives. The historical record First, has a doubling of exports ever occurred in the past forty or so years? The answer is yes! Figure 1: Ratio of nominal exports to exports 5 years earlier (blue), and real…
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    Library of Economics & Liberty: Econlog

  • The Standard History of Labor: Lemony Snicket Edition

    Bryan Caplan
    9 Feb 2010 | 12:02 am
    (February 9, 2010 12:02 AM, by Bryan Caplan) When I teach labor economics, I debunk a caricature I call the "Standard History of Labor."  The Standard History goes something like this:1.  In the days before the minimum wage, unions, etc., life was terrible for workers because employers paid...

  • Bipartisan Health Care Reform: My Bottom Line

    Arnold Kling
    8 Feb 2010 | 8:09 pm
    (February 8, 2010 08:09 PM, by Arnold Kling) If I were a Republican, I would use any health care summit to set the following conditions for agreeing to support a bipartisan health plan. 1. All Medicare savings must be used to shore up Medicare. None of those savings...

  • Pricing the Apple iPad

    Arnold Kling
    8 Feb 2010 | 7:54 pm
    (February 8, 2010 07:54 PM, by Arnold Kling) Megan McArdle writes, One estimate is that the cheapest iPad costs $270 to manufacture. Throw in advertising, transportation, distribution, and so forth, and maybe they can cut the price $100 if they're willing to make a slim profit in order...

  • Adverse Selection on Purpose

    David Henderson
    8 Feb 2010 | 3:04 pm
    (February 8, 2010 03:04 PM, by David Henderson) In a post a few weeks ago, I stated that I had coined a term in 1994 to describe the effects of a ban on pre-existing conditions clauses in health insurance: adverse selection by law. This weekend, I was going...

  • Russ Roberts, Meet Paul Krugman

    Arnold Kling
    8 Feb 2010 | 2:20 pm
    (February 8, 2010 02:20 PM, by Arnold Kling) This week's econtalk is a monologue by Russ Roberts on the topic of trade. My one quibble is that he brings up increasing returns as a source of specialization and trade without mentioning Paul Krugman's work on the topic. That...
 
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    Economist's View

  • "Fine Print, Deceptive Pricing, and Buried Tricks"

    Mark Thoma
    9 Feb 2010 | 12:36 am
    How bad is the asymmetric information problem in credit card markets? This is from Wall Street's Race to the Bottom, by Elizabeth Warren, arguing for a Consumer Financial Protection Agency. She describes what happened when Citigroup offered its credit card customers a better deal: Wall Street executives explain privately that they cannot get rid of fine print, deceptive pricing, and buried tricks unilaterally without losing market share. Citigroup ... in 2007 ... decided to clean up its credit card just a little bit by eliminating universal default—the trick that allowed it to raise…

  • "The Inexact Science of Economics"

    Mark Thoma
    9 Feb 2010 | 12:09 am
    Daniel Little: The inexact science of economics, by Daniel Little: Economics is an "inexact" science; or so Daniel Hausman argues in The Inexact and Separate Science of Economics (Google Books link).  As it implies, this description conveys that economic laws have only a loose fit with observed economic behavior.  Here are the loosely related interpretations that Hausman offers for this idea, drawing on the thinking of John Stuart Mill: Inexact laws are approximate.  They are true within some margin of error. Inexact laws are probabilistic or statistical.

  • What Changes are Needed in the US Financial System?

    Mark Thoma
    8 Feb 2010 | 11:27 pm
    Here is a pseudo-interview with William Dudley, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, on the Fed's failures as a regulator prior to the crisis, and its plans to improve regulation going forward.

  • links for 2010-02-08

    Mark Thoma
    8 Feb 2010 | 11:03 pm
    Fed’s Yellen: U.S. Rates Too Hot for China - Real Time Economics The Worst of the Pain - Bob Herbert Letting the EGTRRA and JGTRRA Provisions Expire - Econbrowser Elizabeth Warren Calls Out Wall Street - The Baseline Scenario Democracy put to the test - MIT News A Roadmap of the Shadow Banks, plus targeting the Volcker Rule - Rortybomb How disciplining China could save the WTO - voxeu Janet Yellen: the Fed is a Monetary Superpower - David beckworth Hong Kong and China and the Global Recession - Janet Yellen Fed to Outline Future Tightening Steps - WSJ.com All roads lead to the renminbi -…

  • "Any Hope for Meaningful U.S. Climate Policy?"

    Mark Thoma
    8 Feb 2010 | 11:37 am
    Robert Stavins is more upbeat than I am about the prospects for "meaningful U.S. Climate policy": Any Hope for Meaningful U.S. Climate Policy? A Somewhat Positive View, by Robert Stavins: The current conventional wisdom ­– broadly echoed by the news media and the blogosphere – is that comprehensive, economy-wide CO2 cap-and-trade legislation is dead in the current U.S. Congress, and perhaps for the next several years. Watch out for conventional wisdoms! They inevitably appear to be the collective judgment of numerous well-informed observers and sources, but frequently they are…
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    Library of economics & Liberty: Econtalk

  • Roberts on Smith, Ricardo, and Trade

    Russell Roberts
    8 Feb 2010 | 3:30 am
    Russ Roberts, host of EconTalk, does a monologue this week on the economics of trade and specialization. Economists have focused on David Ricardo's idea of comparative advantage as the source of specialization and wealth creation from trade. Drawing on Adam Smith and the work of James Buchanan, Yong Yoon, and Paul Romer, Roberts argues that we've neglected the role of the size of the market in creating incentives for specialization and wealth creation via trade. Simply put, the more people we trade with, the greater the opportunity to specialize and innovate, even when people are identical.

  • Larry White on Hayek and Money

    Russell Roberts
    1 Feb 2010 | 3:30 am
    Larry White of George Mason University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about Hayek's ideas on the business cycle and money. White lays out Hayek's view of business cycles and the role of monetary policy in creating a boom and bust cycle. The conversation also explores the historical context of Hayek's work on business cycle theory--the onset of the Great Depression and the intellectual battle with Keynes and his work. In the second half of the podcast, White turns to alternative ways to provide money, in particular, the possibility of private currency and free banking explored by Hayek…

  • Spence on Growth

    Russell Roberts
    25 Jan 2010 | 3:30 am
    Nobel Laureate Michael Spence of Stanford University's Hoover Institution and the Commission on Growth and Development talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the determinants of economic growth. Spence discusses the findings of the Commission's recent report and how it compares to earlier attempts to uncover the sources of growth and the lack of growth such as the Washington Consensus. Spence makes the case for government provision of infrastructure including education and the problems of corruption and governance. The conversation closes with a look at Spence's career and the lessons of…

  • Munger on Many Things

    Russell Roberts
    18 Jan 2010 | 3:30 am
    Mike Munger of Duke University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about many things. Listeners sent in questions for Mike and Russ to talk about and they chose ten of the most interesting questions with the idea of talking about each for six minutes. The topics are the scarcity of clean water, asset bubbles, the role of Fannie and Freddie in the financial crisis, can a business pass a tax on to its customers (or maybe even its workers), compassionate food, the study of economics, how to choose a college, the nature of cooperation in a modern economy, the humanity of non-profits, and the…

  • Belongia on the Fed

    Russell Roberts
    11 Jan 2010 | 3:30 am
    Michael Belongia of the University of Mississippi and former economist at the St. Louis Federal Reserve talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the inner workings, politics, and economics of the Federal Reserve. Belongia talks about the role that power and politics play in Federal Reserve decision-making and how various Fed chairs used their power to suppress dissent within the Fed that was critical of Fed policy. He argues that the Fed faces an unresolvable dilemma when asked to achieve the multiple goals of full employment and price stability using only the federal funds rate as a…
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    EconTech

  • Links for 2010.02.04

    computer.economist
    4 Feb 2010 | 3:31 pm
    Handwriting to LaTeX?But Windows only?!

  • Links for 2010.02.03

    computer.economist
    3 Feb 2010 | 3:32 pm
    Why Bruce Bartlett is Not a Republican: Mark Thoma Census MiscountsInteresting. I was trying to update a paper with newer CPS data and was getting some nonsense results. I thought my cleanup procedure was flawed in some non-obvious way and gave up. Maybe this was the problem? Naughty Bits in the Bible: Alex Tabarrok

  • Links for 2010.01.29

    computer.economist
    29 Jan 2010 | 3:31 pm
    Spirit

  • Links for 2010.01.26

    computer.economist
    26 Jan 2010 | 3:32 pm
    Obama Liquidates Himself – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com

  • Links for 2010.01.18

    computer.economist
    18 Jan 2010 | 3:30 pm
    A different kind of drive by in LA: Chris Blattman
 
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    Environmental Economics

  • In case you missed it

    Tim Haab
    9 Feb 2010 | 7:27 am
    Let's see if you can get the song out of your head the rest of the day.

  • Environmental economics?

    John Whitehead
    9 Feb 2010 | 7:00 am
    A reluctant Toyota Motor Corp. announced Tuesday a global recall of its flagship Prius and other gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles, even as executives suggested they weren't required to do so. via online.wsj.com Yes or no? Submit your answers in the comments section.

  • Grumble, grumble

    John Whitehead
    8 Feb 2010 | 7:45 am
    It's now out and my review copy has arrived; the authors are Yoram Bauman and illustrator Grady Klein.  It is the next step in economics education.  You can buy it here. via www.marginalrevolution.com Review copy? I had to pay for mine.

  • Is climate change skepticism good for climate science?

    Tim Haab
    8 Feb 2010 | 7:10 am
    First, a blurb from the Globe and Mail (which I know nothing about and for all I know could be a right-wing nutjob tabloid, or a left-wing wingnut tabloid for that matter, but in this case makes a relevant point):Until now, anyone who questioned the credibility of the IPCC was labelled as a climate skeptic, or worse. But many climate scientists now sense a sinking ship, and they're bailing out. ... None of this is to say that global warming isn't real, or that human activity doesn't play a role, or that the IPCC is entirely wrong, or that measures to curb greenhouse-gas…

  • Picture of the Day

    Tim Haab
    7 Feb 2010 | 8:35 am
      Picture of the record snowfall in Glen Burnie, Md from the front window of my childhood home.  That's my Dad polluting.  The backhoe isn't normal.Photo Credit: Chewbacca's Mom.
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    Footnoted

  • Morningstar acquires footnoted!

    Michelle Leder
    9 Feb 2010 | 5:50 am
    For the past 6 1/2 years, we’ve written frequently about various mergers and acquisitions. Today, we have some M&A news of our own: Morningstar (MORN) has acquired footnoted.org. You can download the official press release here, but I wanted to personally share with you why I’m so excited about this deal and why I think Morningstar, which is already well known for its independent research, is the perfect partner to help me continue growing footnoted. Whether you’re a longtime reader or a recent convert to footnoted, chances are that you appreciate the inherent value in…

  • It’s time for raises and bonuses at KBW…

    Sonya Hubbard
    8 Feb 2010 | 7:50 am
    When a company files a document with the SEC at 5:10 on a Friday evening, it’s a little like waving a red cape at the footnoted staff and yelling, “Look at me!” (although, thankfully, there’s no blood and gore involved). At least, that was the metaphor that came to mind when we saw the 8-K that KBW, Inc., the parent company of full-service investment bank Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc., filed late last Friday. It was a meaty filing in several ways, starting off with the announcement that its top five executives received cash bonuses totaling more than $6.35 million and 110,586…

  • A Fashionable Start at Jones New York…

    Sonya Hubbard
    5 Feb 2010 | 8:24 am
    Yesterday, Jones New York (JNY) filed an 8-K that disclosed the terms of its new employment agreement with fashion wunderkind Richard Dickson. Next Monday, Dickson, who’s only 41, will become the President and CEO – Branded Businesses of the Company for Jones Apparel Group, Inc.  He’ll report to Wesley Card, who is giving up the title of President but will remain the company’s CEO. Dickson’s agreement, which runs through the end of 2012, states that he’ll earn a base salary “of not less than” $1,000,000 and get a sign-on bonus of $455,000.  So long as he stays through the…

  • Shareholders, watch your language…

    Sonya Hubbard
    4 Feb 2010 | 7:38 am
    If you read enough SEC filings, you begin to recognize certain sections like they’re old friends.  You might think, “Oh!  There’s the section on Executive Compensation Discussion & Analysis!” or “Hi, Forward-Looking Statements.  How are the Risk Factors looking today?” But occasionally – perhaps rarely – something pops out that you’ve never noticed before. Such was the case when we read the proxy statement that vitamin and nutritional supplement producer NBTY, Inc. (NTY) filed recently.  At the top of page 10, a passage in the “Communications  to Directors”…

  • Fresh Carrots at The Children’s Place…

    Sonya Hubbard
    3 Feb 2010 | 6:30 am
    It may be winter in much of the United States, but recently one executive at The Children’s Place (PLCE) received a bumper crop of reasons to stay with the company for another 14 months. The “carrots” in question come in the form of impressive “special bonuses” going to Susan J. Riley, the Company’s Vice President, Finance and Administration.  According to the 8-K that contains the details, the money is being paid “in recognition of her past contributions to the Company and in order to secure her future services to the Company.” Riley will receive $1,000,000 if she stays with…
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    NYT: Freakonomics

  • Freakonomics Radio, Super Bowl Edition: What Happens to Your Head, Inside the Helmet, After a Nasty Hit?

    By STEPHEN J. DUBNER
    9 Feb 2010 | 6:33 am
    As mentioned yesterday, we are launching a podcast, Freakonomics Radio. In the first episode (subscribe at iTunes; or listen now in the player at right), we ask the question "What Do NASCAR Drivers, Glenn Beck, and the Hitmen of the NFL Have in Common?"

  • "Better Biz" at the Whistle Stop Bakery

    By IAN AYRES
    8 Feb 2010 | 12:00 pm
    WSHU, a public radio station in Connecticut, is running a six-part "Better Biz" series, where Barry Nalebuff and I react to the challenges of specific businesses.

  • How About Them (Wrapped) Apples?

    By JAMES MCWILLIAMS
    8 Feb 2010 | 11:23 am
    Food packaging seems like a straightforward problem with a straightforward solution: there's too much of it; it piles up in landfill; we should reduce it. These opinions are standard among environmentalists, many of whom have undertaken impassioned campaigns to shroud consumer goods-including food-in less and less plastic, cardboard, and aluminum.

  • Emmitt Smith and Me

    By STEVEN D. LEVITT
    8 Feb 2010 | 10:30 am
    Football great Emmitt Smith was just inducted into the Hall of Fame. I had the great pleasure of playing golf with Emmitt a few years back. It is a round I will never forget.

  • Freakonomics Radio an iTunes Hit

    By FREAKONOMICS
    8 Feb 2010 | 7:01 am
    Friday marked the debut of a Freakonomics podcast, and as of this writing it is the No. 2 podcast on iTunes.
 
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    Umair Haque

  • The Great to Good Manifesto

    Umair Haque
    3 Feb 2010 | 1:18 pm
    CEO: "So, I hear your forthcoming book's kind of like Good to Great — right? That was my favorite biz book of the noughties!" UH: "Good to Great?! Dude, welcome to the 21st century. My book is the opposite: it's more like 'Great to Good.'" CEO: "Security!!" (Hurls $8000 pen at UH's forehead) I exaggerate, of course, for effect. Recently, Jim Collins' genre-defining Good to Great has surfaced in quite a few discussions about my forthcoming book — and that's a serious compliment. One of my fav biz books (by one of my intellectual heroes), it changed how, well, almost everyone thinks…

  • Obama's Budget Freeze and America's Economic Decline

    Umair Haque
    27 Jan 2010 | 6:42 am
    A budget freeze in the middle of a (curiously depression-like) recession? That's about as smart an idea, economically speaking, as gulping down a bucketful of magma just because you're thirsty. It's even worse than Hoovernomics, because we have, today, the benefit of hindsight. And though it's probably just PR shadowboxing, a "spending freeze" is actually perfect illustration of the big problem with Obama's economic policy. So far, it has accelerated — instead of decelerated — three transfers of wealth: A transfer of wealth from Main Street to Wall Street. As Robert Reich has…

  • Three To-Do's (And To-Don'ts) of 21st Century Strategy

    Umair Haque
    25 Jan 2010 | 10:39 am
    Welcome, finally, to...today. The 20th century ended a decade ago, but the 21st century never began: the noughties were a lost decade, where jobs weren't created, innovation became unnovation, and prosperity itself failed. 2010 is the real first year of the 21st century. And it's going to be a year of conflict between the leaders of the old, fraying institutions of the 20th century, and the builders revolutionizing those institutions in the 21st. Here's a framework for thinking strategically in the 21st century: Six soft "wars" will define 2010 — and beyond. Three are conflicts no…

  • A Modest Proposal: Let Corporations Vote

    Umair Haque
    21 Jan 2010 | 12:24 pm
    "...Sweeping aside a century-old understanding and overruling two important precedents, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections." Dear Supreme Court, I'm highly impressed with your recent decision to vaporize limits on corporate political spending. It's the kind of campaign finance reform our ailing res publica needs. In fact, I found it so inspirational, here's an even better idea. Let's give corporations the right to vote. One share, one vote. The logic? It's simple. Corporations are people;…

  • The Scale Every Business Needs Now

    Umair Haque
    20 Jan 2010 | 7:43 am
    Beancounter 1: "Our new widgets business — we think it's amazing". Beancounter 2: "We've ridden the learning curve, the product mix is optimized, the supply chain's streamlined, the market's tightly segmented." Beancounter 3: "But we've got a burning question for you, Umair — will it scale?" UH: "You know what doesn't scale? The point. Dudes, welcome to the 21st Century. It's so not about pushing more toxic junk at people." Beancounters 1, 2, and 3: (enraged, attack UH with pitchforks). That's what happened to me not so long ago in one of the anonymous boardrooms of the universe.
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    HedgeFundBlogger.com by Richard Wilson

  • Distressed Debt Hedge Funds Close

    9 Feb 2010 | 12:32 am
    Distressed Debt Hedge Funds Close Many Distressed Debt Hedge Funds Closing EarlyIn the peak of the economic crisis, hedge fund firms hurried to launched funds focused in distressed debt.  Now, as the opportunities for investing seem to be fading away, many of these funds are closing less than a year after launching. BlueMountain Capital Management liquidated its $100 million fund last month. Silverback Asset Management and Highland Capital Management began returning money to investors in their funds last year, as did Declaration Management & Research, Bloomberg News reports. Chapel…

  • Hedge Funds Returns January 2010

    8 Feb 2010 | 10:35 am
    Hedge Funds Returns January 2010 Hedge Fund Returns Mixed in January 2010After the best hedge fund returns in a decade, returns were mixed to start this year.  Hedge funds gained 20% in 2009, but in January of 2010 gains from relative value arbitrage and event-driven funds offset gains by funds focused on other strategies. Hedge funds turned in a mixed performance in January after gaining 20% in 2009, according to Hedge Fund Research. The HFRI Funded Weighted Composite slid 0.71% in January, with gains in relative value arbitrage and event-driven funds partially offsetting losses in…

  • Most Powerful Hedge Fund Women

    8 Feb 2010 | 10:26 am
    Most Powerful Hedge Fund Women Most Powerful Women in Hedge Funds Reside in London The most powerful women in hedge funds reside in London, according to a report by the Hedge Fund Journal.  The publication put together a list of the top 50 women in hedge funds and more than one fourth of the women on that list work in London.  It will be interesting to see if this changes as London adopts tougher regulations and taxes, driving many hedge funds to more welcoming cities. The report names London-based Leda Braga of BlueCrest and Mina Gerowin of Paulson Europe — as two of the three…

  • FSA Bans Fund Manager

    5 Feb 2010 | 10:32 am
    FSA Bans Fund ManagerFSA Bans & Fines BlueBay Hedge Fund Manager The UK's Financial Services Authority has shown it is willing to act tough on investment managers who misinform investors.   The former employee of BlueBay Asset Management, Simon Treacher, who was charged with misleading investors and mismarking the value of funds he ran, has been fined $224,000 and banned by the FSA.  Cases like this only strengthen the push by regulators for better transparency and more disclosures from hedge funds and it comes at a time when the industry is attempting to fight off…

  • Hedge Fund Jay-Z

    5 Feb 2010 | 10:19 am
    Hedge Fund Jay-Z Rapper Jay-Z Sues Hedge Fund over Delayed Loan It seems for hedge funds better performance brings more lawsuits.  The latest high-profile lawsuit involving a hedge fund has been filed by rap star Jay-Z.  Shawn Carter (Jay-Z) had hoped to build the J Hotel on West 21st Street in New York City, but a loan from a hedge fund has caused difficulties in the real estate deal.  Carter has accused Highland Capital Management of delaying a loan so that the firm could still collect interest payments. The loan came due in August, and discussions through November failed to…
 
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    the economist: free exchange

  • Why fret about Greece?

    R.A. | WASHINGTON
    9 Feb 2010 | 6:28 am
    PAUL KRUGMAN puts worries about European debt into perspective, posting a chart of European GDP shares:As you can see, Greece is but a small part of the European economy. Portugal, too. Why, then, the concern? It's worth looking at a generally helpful piece on the debt crisis in southern Europe by Charles Wyplosz:There is no reason for the Greek government to default. It is not in its interest and it can service its debt, whose size is half that of the Japanese government and the same order of magnitude as that of many other governments, including soon the UK and the US...Yet, markets can…

  • Link exchange

    R.A. | WASHINGTON
    8 Feb 2010 | 2:21 pm
    TODAY'S recommended economics writing:• The Volcker Rule doesn't really target what it ought to target. (Mike Konczal)• Are high Chinese savings due to an extremely competitive marriage market, a remnant of the one-child policy? (Vox)• In a related story, sex ratios on college campuses are changing the bargaining position in relationships. I disagree with Tyler Cowen that the piece is good, but the dynamic it describes is interesting. (Marginal Revolution)• Via Tyler Cowen, Europe's alcohol belts. (Strange Maps)• Could Europe print its way out of danger? A variation of the…

  • Let's make a deal

    R.A. | WASHINGTON
    8 Feb 2010 | 12:28 pm
    HERE'S Ezra Klein with the quote of the day:I've been racking my brain all morning, but I really can't come up with another example of a president gambling major legislation on a televised, hyped showdown with the leadership of the minority party. Congressional Democrats have been begging Obama to involve himself more directly, but this is the most aggressive presidential intervention into an ongoing legislative debate that I can remember. Can anyone think of anything even slightly comparable, or is this the opening of an entirely new playbook?Here's the context. Intrade is not impressed.

  • Back to 2008

    R.A. | WASHINGTON
    8 Feb 2010 | 12:10 pm
    ONE more thought on the situation in Europe, and then I'll move on to something else. Felix Salmon has a post up disputing that declines in equity markets have anything to do with the issues in the euro zone, but confusingly, he quotes this, from Reuters:Data held by State Street contains no obvious evidence of an institutional exit from euro zone assets; the flows which are occurring appear to be no more defensive than those being seen elsewhere during a period of risk aversion for financial markets around the world… Recent falls by the euro may be unrelated to worries that worsening…

  • Run for cover

    R.A. | WASHINGTON
    8 Feb 2010 | 12:04 pm
    MY COLLEAGUE closes the post below by saying:So why then, as Mr Krugman asks, are investors still willing to purchase American debt at such low interest rates? Does this mean markets are not worried about America’s long-run fiscal outlook? Maybe, but I doubt it. Some investors always crave “risk-free” assets. American debt still, to a large degree, is the best “risk-free” option. What else is there? Eurobonds don’t look so good at the moment. But the current lack of better alternatives can not be the justification to not get your financial house in order.Here's a look at the…
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    Global Economy Matters

  • Greece Gets The Green Light, But Will It All Work?

    Edward Hugh
    6 Feb 2010 | 12:36 am
    by Edward Hugh: BarcelonaWell, as reported over the weekend on this blog, the EU Commission did in fact demand "more sacrifices" from the Greek people, and in the end Prime Minister Papandreou had to make a last minute TV appearance to explain to his incredulous listeners that the time had come "to take brave decisions here in Greece just as other countries in Europe have also taken....We all have a debt and duty towards our homeland to work together at this difficult time to protect our economy." I thought that that time had come last November, but evidently I was precipitate in my…

  • Global Manufacturing Continued Its Expansion In January

    Edward Hugh
    3 Feb 2010 | 4:04 am
    by Edward Hugh: BarcelonaThe global manufacturing expansion continued to gather momentum in January. Coming in at 56.1, up from 54.6 in December, the JPMorgan Global Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index registered its highest reading for five and a half years. The latest improvement in overall operating performance reflected accelerated growth of production and new orders, while there was a slight gain in staffing levels for the first time since March 2008.Production increased for the eighth successive month in January, with the rate of expansion hitting a 69-month high. The improvement…

  • Spain Is A Serious Country

    Edward Hugh
    2 Feb 2010 | 5:08 am
    by Edward Hugh: BarcelonaJosé Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Spain’s prime minister, said in Davos this week: “We are a serious country and we will fulfil our promises.”With these words Spain's Prime Minister sought, during his visit to Davos last week to reassure international investors that Spain, despite the severity of the recession it is currently suffering, and the major challenges facing its banking system, is not about to become another Greece. Just to prove the point he had Labour Minister Celestino Corbacho and Economy Minister Elena Salgado announce in short order that a) Spanish…

  • Greek Bailout News (1)

    Edward Hugh
    31 Jan 2010 | 4:36 am
    by Edward Hugh: Barcelona"British or German taxpayers cannot finance the failures of others," German Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, according to the Associated Press. "Solidarity also means everybody adheres to common rules." France is not working with Germany or other countries on a support package for Greece which is managing to handle its problems on its own, a French government source said on Thursday. "I am not aware of a support plan. There is not a plan. We're not discussing one (with Germany or others)," the source told…

  • After Greece, and Portugal, Does Spain Come Next?

    Edward Hugh
    29 Jan 2010 | 4:21 am
    by Edward Hugh: BarcelonaWell, the Spanish government are due to announce their 2009 fiscal deficit number this morning, together with their adjustment plan for reducing the annual fiscal deficit to below 3% of GDP by 2013. This rather distasteful news will be presented to the Spanish people later in the same day on which they opened their morning newspapers to discover that they were all going to have to work two years longer - no crisis comes free - since the Labour Minister Celestino Corbacho has announced that the retirement age will be raised from 65 to 67 (in two-month-per-year…
 
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    Greg Mankiw's Blog

  • Imperfect Information and Aggregate Supply

    Greg Mankiw
    9 Feb 2010 | 5:24 am
    I have posted a new paper, which Ricardo Reis and I have prepared for the new Handbook of Monetary Economics.  Warning: For econonerds only.

  • Reading the Budget's Footnotes

    Greg Mankiw
    8 Feb 2010 | 2:12 pm
    From the Commitee for a Responsible Federal Budget:The Administration is taking two tax provisions from the 2009 stimulus bill -- expansions of the child tax credit and the EITC -- and claiming them as part of the "current policy" Bush tax cuts. And they are doing something similar for Pell grants: assuming that they will receive sufficient funding to pay out the maximum grant level set in the stimulus bill.The Administration didn't inherit these policies, they created them. And worse, still, they created them as explicitly temporary, under a stimulus bill which they claimed was meant only to…

  • Austan Goolsbee on The Daily Show

    Greg Mankiw
    6 Feb 2010 | 9:36 am
    The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10cAustan Goolsbeewww.thedailyshow.comDaily Show Full EpisodesPolitical HumorHealth Care Crisis

  • Two economists walk into a bar...

    Greg Mankiw
    6 Feb 2010 | 8:32 am

  • Reflections on the Housing Market

    Greg Mankiw
    5 Feb 2010 | 10:40 am
    An analysis, in verse, from Wellesley economist Karl Case:For the last few years, we have shed many tearsLiving through a recession.The economy's broke and it's not a joke,When we talk of another depression.Fifteen million without a job,Foreclosures and banks that fail,401K's became 201K's,And everything's up for sale.How can it be? What didn't we seeThat led to all of this trouble?There is little doubt that the proximal causeWas a bursting housing bubble.But other than that, who can we blame?And what do they lament?Millions of people contributed toThis hundred-year event.For me, it began in…
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    Hedge fund

  • Emerging markets?

    Veryan Allen
    1 Feb 2010 | 3:08 pm
    Emerging market for alpha? Hedge funds had a great decade as usual and many emerging markets also did well. Ten years ago most investors avoided developing countries and loved developed nations because of the Asia crisis, Russia default and 1990s bubble. When will the crowd learn to buy the unpopular and short sell the trendy? Not yet judging by recent money that swarmed into long only emerging market debt and equity. As with developed markets, emerging countries are for alpha capture from long/short security selection, arbitrage and timing NOT buy and hold beta. Lost decade? For the 2000s I…

  • Alpha versus beta?

    Veryan Allen
    15 Dec 2009 | 3:08 pm
    Can you beat beta? Beta-centric asset allocation is allegedly the main driver of performance. Many academic studies claim it is almost all that matters. That assumption has dominated conventional portfolio construction for too long. They reached a very biased sample conclusion because asset allocation is what the selected investors focused on. A stock, bond and alternatives mix determines variation of returns ONLY if you emphasize beta. It is quite easy to debunk this dictum. Eliminate beta and invest in alpha.If corporate pensions invested 100% in their plan sponsor's stock we would conclude…

  • Asset allocation?

    Veryan Allen
    8 Oct 2009 | 4:08 pm
    Asset allocation? Wait for the "long haul"? Short term volatility can't be ignored regardless of time horizon. The "endowment model", as used by Yale and Harvard, was seen as the "solution" to investing for the long term. The idea was flawed and overexposed to economic recession. It was heavily long biased, illiquid, unhedged and high risk. Though asset diversified it was poorly strategy diversified. The alternative assets failed to offer alternative returns. The RETURN ON RISK of Swensen's folly, even in the good times, was low.Some long term investors didn't realise they still need short…

  • Trend following?

    Veryan Allen
    22 Aug 2009 | 4:08 pm
    Some mathematical formulae do work. Good hedge fund + bad quarter = buying opportunity. As I expected in late 2008 most hedge funds have performed very well in 2009. It is no surprise that market dislocations, misvaluations and panic-selling hysteria created fantastic opportunities for skilled managers. Inevitably performance was bound to be strong when so many "experts" even recommended to avoid hedge funds! Redemptions by those that didn't understand true diversification benefited investors who REDUCED risk by having many hedge funds in their portfolios.Even more impressive are the hedge…

  • Bull market?

    Veryan Allen
    26 Mar 2009 | 3:08 am
    Bull market? Financial services should be about achieving client objectives and good hedge funds have delivered superbly. Over 3,000 hedge funds had POSITIVE returns in 2008 but no long only equity managers. It's best to invest in quality so I'll stay in the safe haven of skill-based strategies. Every sophisticated institution I know is increasing investment in alpha. The beta repackagers pretending to be hedge funds have been revealed. Good riddance. The hedge fund industry is stronger than ever despite "experts" predicting its demise...again.2008 was a fantastic year for properly…
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    interfluidity

  • Insure depositors, not banks

    Steve Randy Waldman
    26 Jan 2010 | 8:24 pm
    Raghuram Rajan offers a thoughtful comment on regulating big banks (hat tip Mark Thoma). The upshot is that bigness, interconnectedness, and proprietary trading are difficult to define, and hard caps are likely to be gamed and evaded. Rajan advocates more subtle strategies “such as prohibiting mergers of large banks or encouraging the break-up of large banks that seem to have a propensity for getting into trouble.” That strikes me as weak tea. I’d prefer that regulators explicitly target a diffuse market structure under which any bank can be let to fail, and that they impose…

  • A toy model of money, growth, and inequality

    Steve Randy Waldman
    23 Jan 2010 | 1:06 pm
    I’ve been trying to develop my intuitions about how inequality might affect aggregate growth. It’s not like this is a new question. Theoretical arguments have been made both ways, and an empirical literature found a consensus in the 1990s (inequality looked bad for growth), then squinted harder to find little relationship in the 2000s. For some careful theorizing about how inequality might harm growth, take a look at this paper by Philippe Aghion, Eve Caroli, and Cecelia Garcia-Penalosa (”ACG”). They tell three stories, with very careful models: i) when capital markets…

  • Read Scott Winship and Mike Konczal on inequality

    Steve Randy Waldman
    14 Jan 2010 | 2:44 am
    Check out the very high quality debate on inequality and middle class living standards between Scott Winship and Mike Konczal. Winship (in two posts) suggests that complaints about middle-class living standards over the past three decades are overdone. Konczal rejoins that even if so, during the last decade something changed, with middle-class income stagnating entirely and debt growth accelerating. Plus, he reminds us, many of the gains in middle class household income prior to the millennium were due to women working more rather than increased wages. Finally, he notes that it’s pretty…

  • Links on inequality and the macroeconomy

    Steve Randy Waldman
    13 Jan 2010 | 1:14 am
    I am one of those people who thinks that extreme inequality is inconsistent with a healthy economy. I am not here claiming that extreme inequality is morally wrong or unjust (although it may be). I think that inequality is harmful under conventional macroeconomic criteria of sustainable GDP growth with moderate business cycles. Nick Rowe (whom I generally adore) is dead wrong when he writes, “Sure, there might be distribution effects, but distribution effects are the last refuge of a …. person who can’t think up a better argument.” Distributional questions are central…

  • Norms of credit

    Steve Randy Waldman
    21 Dec 2009 | 4:26 am
    Megan McArdle has responded to my earlier piece on strategic default. Before offering a substantive reply, I’d like to emphasize that my piece was not intended as a “slap down”. If there was anything uncivil either in tone or content, I apologize for it. I often disagree with Ms. McArdle, but she is a talented writer whom I’ve enjoyed for years. I’m pleased to be one of her “little chickadees“. I hope she’ll forgive that I chirp and peck. Moreover, I think I share McArdle’s deep concern, that a collapse in the norms of commerce will leave…
 
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    Jeff Matthews Is Not Making This Up

  • What I Learned Writing a Book, Part III: “He Can’t Not Answer A Question.”

    Jeff Matthews
    8 Feb 2010 | 5:28 am
    Buffett runs the meeting briskly and efficiently—and within minutes of his first appearing on stage we reach the guts of the thing, when he offers a motion to approve the 50-for-1 stock split and elimination of paper certificates for the Berkshire “B” shares.The motion is quickly seconded by several voices in the small crowd.After the spectacle of the annual gathering, it is an odd thing to sit in a Berkshire Hathaway meeting and hear Warren Buffett ask for a second to a motion—and odder still to have shareholders respond “Second!” from the floor. Berkshire’s “Woodstock for…

  • What I Learned Writing a Book, Part II: The Oracle Appears, Alone…Sort Of

    Jeff Matthews
    2 Feb 2010 | 6:10 am
    There is some gamesmanship going on as we enter the cozy, wood-floored Peter Kiewit concert hall here in downtown Omaha. Of course, it’s nothing like what goes on at the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. At that “Woodstock for Capitalists,” as Buffett likes to call it—held not in a 2,000-seat concert hall but in a 17,000-seat arena within the Qwest Center a few blocks away—draws so many shareholders from around the world that lines begin to form, for hundreds of yards around the glass and steel complex, before the sun rises, just waiting for the doors to open. If the annual meeting…

  • What I Learned Writing a Book about Warren Buffett: Part I

    Jeff Matthews
    25 Jan 2010 | 8:03 am
    The Mini-Meeting: January 20, 2010, 8:30 a.m.The most surprising thing about this “mini” Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting is the intimacy.Leaving a raw winter’s morning outside and entering the warm confines of downtown Omaha’s Holland Performing Arts Center, named after Dick Holland, an early Buffett investor (circa 1958) and advertising executive—Buffett would grill him for information before buying shares of advertising agencies in the 1970’s—there are no crowds, no lines, and no spectacle.There are, in fact, only a handful of shareholders in the lobby.Some have come by…

  • Seattle, First City of Disposable Plastic Thermos Containers

    Jeff Matthews
    22 Jan 2010 | 8:57 am
    Well, Starbucks finally has its act together, if Wednesday’s earnings release is any indication.At least, its financial act.Starbucks’ environmental act still leaves a lot to be desired—particularly here in the U.S., where getting a Starbucks coffee in a ceramic mug is harder to accomplish than getting a three-pump, no-foam, half-decaf, non-fat, no-whip, extra-hot moca.In the U.K., we should note, the situation is quite the opposite. There, instead of automatically serving coffee in a paper cup, Starbucks baristas prepare it in a mug. If you want the paper cup, you have to ask for…

  • Goldman 8, Public Zero…The Teachable Moment of Bare Escentuals

    Jeff Matthews
    15 Jan 2010 | 11:17 am
    We’ve been radio silent here at NotMakingThisUp the last week or so, for what we hope will prove good reasons. The first reason is that for the past week your editor has been in conference meetings at Ground Zero of Healthcare Reform. Now, Ground Zero of Healthcare Reform is, in our view, not Washington DC, where the legislation itself is being worked out. (And by “worked out” we mean “bribed, weaseled and compromised by ignorant Congresspersons”). Ground Zero of Healthcare Reform, at least for the last few days, has actually been San Francisco, California. More specifically, it has…
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    Marginal Revolution

  • "Economists have no clothes"

    Tyler Cowen
    9 Feb 2010 | 7:29 am
    That's the title of a new, short essay by James M. Buchanan.  Excerpt: Economists do not really understand what they are doing as they seem forced to make efforts to control aggregate variables that are not controllable in any direct sense. For example, the rate of employment (or unemployment) cannot readily be shifted by governmental mandate. At best, small and peripheral changes may be made while the emergent aggregate generated by the working of the large and complex economy remains stubbornly immune, or worse, to wrongly conceived reform efforts. Hat tip goes to BookForum.

  • Derivatives are often disguised debt transactions

    Tyler Cowen
    9 Feb 2010 | 5:50 am
    Felix Salmon points us to this new Der Spiegel article: Now, though, it looks like the Greek figure jugglers have been even more brazen than was previously thought. "Around 2002 in particular, various investment banks offered complex financial products with which governments could push part of their liabilities into the future," one insider recalled, adding that Mediterranean countries had snapped up such products. Greece's debt managers agreed a huge deal with the savvy bankers of US investment bank Goldman Sachs at the start of 2002. The deal involved so-called cross-currency…

  • The last words of Socrates (according to Plato)

    Tyler Cowen
    9 Feb 2010 | 4:59 am
    Shortly before dying, Socrates spoke his last words to Crito saying, "Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius. Please, don't forget to pay the debt." Here is one relevant link.

  • Sentence of the Day

    Alex Tabarrok
    9 Feb 2010 | 4:17 am
    Why raise the cigarette tax when you can just tax breathing? So asks Andrew Samwick in an effort to explain the illogic behind replacing a tax on gas with a tax on miles driven.

  • Assorted links

    Tyler Cowen
    9 Feb 2010 | 4:07 am
    1. The Michelangelo Marriage? 2. Russ Roberts is eloquent on trade. 3. More funny stuff from Yoram Bauman. 4. GMU, Feb.16, I am speaking on Haiti. 5. Scott Sumner on the Great Depression, in a nutshell. 6. Immunity-on-demand? 7. Articles which communicate awe are most likely to be emailed.
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    Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

  • $550 Million Will Create 400 Jobs ... In Mexico

    8 Feb 2010 | 11:43 pm
    It takes ever increasing amounts of money to create just a few manufacturing jobs. Here is a case in point. Please consider Chrysler pledges $550M to build Fiat 500 in Mexico.Chrysler Group LLC says it will invest $550 million to build the Fiat 500 minicar at its assembly plant near Mexico City.Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne says the new work at its Toluca plant will create 400 jobs. He said Monday the company will begin making the model in December for U.S. and Latin American markets.Mexican President Felipe Calderon says Chrysler will produce between 100,000 and 130,000 vehicles at the…

  • Seniors Need Yield But Nowhere Good To Go; FDIC Moral Hazard Yet Again

    8 Feb 2010 | 9:07 pm
    One of the many massive distortions caused by the Fed's miserable policies is hitting hard on senior citizens who cannot afford stock market losses but need fixed income to live on."California Banker" writesHey MishDuring the past several weeks we've had a lot of seniors coming to the bank as their certificate of deposits of mature. They are very disgruntled about the rate environment in general as bank rates are much lower than a year ago.Many of these seniors are 70 and up and are using the interest to live on in retirement, so their interest income has taken a hit. I imagine most of those…

  • Famous Last Words: U.S. Will ‘Never’ Lose Aaa Debt Rating

    8 Feb 2010 | 3:34 pm
    Treasury secretary Tim Geithner, who arguably belongs in prison for his role in the AIG bailout coverup, is back in the news again.Please consider Geithner Says U.S. Will ‘Never’ Lose Aaa Debt Rating.Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said the U.S. is in no danger of losing its Aaa debt rating even though the Obama administration has predicted a $1.6 trillion budget deficit in 2010.“Absolutely not,” Geithner said, when asked in an ABC News interview broadcast yesterday whether a downgrade is a concern. “That will never happen to this country.”Geithner said investors around the…

  • Email From A Volunteer Firefighter

    8 Feb 2010 | 10:09 am
    Just to show you how the deck is stacked against true patriots in favor of union members who have their hands in your pocket, please consider this email from "Stacked Deck" in response to Colton California Considers Disbanding Fire Department."Stacked Deck" writes ...Hi MishI’m a big follower of your blog. I love what you are doing, please keep up the good work.It's interesting that you say Volunteer Fire Departments are the optimal arrangement. I am a 14 year veteran of a “Volley” department in New Jersey, and I have to say the deck is severely stacked against us.Here’s why.My…

  • BLS Seasonal Adjustments Gone Haywire; 11% Unemployment Coming by May?

    8 Feb 2010 | 1:15 am
    Over the weekend I received an email from Irishscot2, a poster on MarketWatch, regarding seasonal adjustments to the unemployment rate. Hi MishI believe the seasonal adjustment is no longer valid given that anticipated job creation down the road has not and will not be happening. I expect late spring to reverse the January effect heading into the elections. If so, a perfect political storm brewing because of their models!Irishscot2Irishscot2 compared the unadjusted numbers to the seasonally adjusted numbers on a percentage basis. I could not tell much from the raw data he sent, so I asked for…
 
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    A Dash of Insight

  • ETF Update: Searching for Oil

    Jeff Miller
    7 Feb 2010 | 5:49 pm
    Are there any bright spots in this market?In normal times investors can use sector investing to find opportunities despite overall market weakness.  The last two years have provided fewer such opportunities.  The correlation among sectors has been very high in both directions.  Most recently, sector strength has been linked to dollar weakness.An energy play seems counter-intuitive, but our model rates it as the top choice this week.BackgroundEach week we provide a list of sectors emphasizing those that we expect to have the best performance over the next three weeks. …

  • Weighing the Week Ahead: One Person's Risk is Another's Opportunity

    Jeff Miller
    6 Feb 2010 | 7:29 pm
    A recurring theme at "A Dash" is the question of time frames.  Let me posit three different investors: The Trader has a three-week time horizon.  He wants action and actively tries to time the market. The Investor has a multi-year horizon.  Since he is not poised to sell a stock each day, he embraces the downturns in Warren Buffett fashion: This is the one thing I can never understand. To refer to a personal taste of mine, I'm going to buy hamburgers the rest of my life. When hamburgers go down in price, we sing the "Hallelujah Chorus" in the Buffett household. When hamburgers go up, we…

  • January Employment Report Preview

    Jeff Miller
    4 Feb 2010 | 9:39 pm
    As usual, I have a monthly comment on the employment situation.  This month's report is especially tricky, since the BLS will incorporate "benchmark revisions" to prior data.Anything about revisions causes most observers to cringe.  The average person just wonders why they couldn't get it right the first time.  The conspiracy buffs see revisions as evidence of data manipulation.  Since many people are ready to believe that the US government is in an Orwellian mode, this is a message that resonates.  Those who know nothing about the actual operation of government seem to think that the…

  • Seeing Value in Apple: Would a Stock Split Help?

    Jeff Miller
    2 Feb 2010 | 8:49 pm
    Why is it so hard for individual investors to make winning decisions?Part of the answer is psychology.  It starts with a simple question.  When is a stock "expensive?"It often helps to have an example, so let us consider Apple (AAPL).  The average investor thinks in one of the following ways: Recent move.  Apple has more than doubled in the last year. Absolute price.  Apple trades for $200/share.  It is an expensive stock. The iPad.  Apple's new product is a gamble.  It depends on your opinion of the iPad. I realize that many astute readers do not fall victim to these traps, but I beg…

  • ETF Update: A Contrarian Call on Chip Stocks

    Jeff Miller
    1 Feb 2010 | 7:40 pm
    Over the last two weeks of trading, those focused on the daily lesson have come to expect that stocks will move lower.  We all know about behavioral finance.  We know how easily humans see a "pattern" from a few data points.Here is the interesting thing about patterns:There is no "flu shot" for behavioral finance.If you give traders a few days of trading experience --- higher open, selling, lower close --- they will all learn the drill.  The long-awaited "correction" is upon us.  The model is more cautious, but does not agree with the…
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    PSD Blog - The World Bank Group

  • The Evolution of Private Enterprise: Russian McDonald's Edition

    Brian Hoyt
    2 Feb 2010 | 12:56 pm
    McDonald's is celebrating its 20th anniversary in Russia this week. One of the most interesting aspects of McDonald's' Russian adventure is the evolution of its supply chain, which has developed remarkably in the past 20 years. Today, McDonald's sources all of its ingredients from outside purveyors, an 180 degree shift from when the company opened its first outlet in 1990: The company celebrated a different milestone earlier this year by outsourcing the last product — hamburger buns — it had made at a proprietary factory outside Moscow called McComplex. It was built…

  • Utilizing Volunteer Technical Communities in Haiti

    Brian Hoyt
    1 Feb 2010 | 12:36 pm
    Editor's Note: This post was written by Cristina Gonzalez, a Communications Consultant within the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) who is presently supporting the World Bank Haiti Situation Room. The success of World Bank’s engagement with Volunteer Technical Communities (VTCs) is nothing short of remarkable. In a very short period of time VTCs achieved extraordinary results in building an information base about Haiti and useful applications that were applied in the response effort. In the aftermath of the massive Haitian Earthquake, this information and…

  • The dubious link between privatization and mortality

    Brian Hoyt
    1 Feb 2010 | 12:10 pm
    Last March, Ryan questioned the veracity of an article in the British medical journal the Lancet, which claimed that privatization in post-communist countries was responsible for massive numbers of deaths. He included rebuttals from both The Economist (subscription required) and John Earle: Earle points out that a very basic link in the chain of reasoning of the Lancet authors is missing - namely, mass privatization did not lead to substantial job loss. In fact, the effects on employment were typically neutral or positive Still skeptical? A new paper by Scott…

  • What to do about Haiti's debt?

    Brian Hoyt
    1 Feb 2010 | 7:32 am
    PSD alum Tim Harford links to an article by David Roodman at the Center for Global Development, arguing against the cancellation of Haiti's debt: The practical question for citizens, officials, politicians, campaigners, and other players is whether to push for that. On a few days’ reflection, I say no. I would go so far as to describe such pressure as harmful. Why? For starters, the benefits of debt relief over the next few years, however done, will be tiny…That’s why cancellation does little good in the short run. It is not a coherent response to crisis. Meanwhile, there are…

  • Weekend Reading

    Brian Hoyt
    29 Jan 2010 | 1:53 pm
    What is the meaning of the word "friendly"? Greece: It's a bailout! Unemployment today vs The Great Depression. Leonardo da Vinci's CV. Is Botswana in trouble? Holden Caulfield's State of the Union Address. (See previous post for his Davos speech) Our CGAP blog has an excellent account of how cash transfers from the United States literally make it people in Haiti. Nouriel Roubini and friends discuss the "new normal for growth" at Davos. Readers can learn more about the "new normal" for job creation at this year's World Bank Finance and…
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    Seeking Alpha

  • Vanguard ETFs: In the Driver's Seat

    9 Feb 2010 | 7:32 am
    IndexUniverse submits: By Dave Nadig The headline numbers for fund flows look great, but not for the older players.Complete Story »

  • Tuesday FX Interest Rate Monitor

    9 Feb 2010 | 7:29 am
    Andrew Wilkinson submits: You can almost hear an audible sigh of relief echoing around risk managers’ desks and that tone is reflected by a positive market sentiment on hopes for a solution to the fiscal problems facing the government of Greece. Given the far more favorable tone to both equity and commodity prices on Tuesday, it seems that something is out of whack since bond prices have failed to decline. Yields have remained relatively unmoved, adding just a couple of basis points. That begs the question as to whether investors are expecting little more than a relief rally. Why sell…

  • Earnings Preview: The New York Times Co.

    9 Feb 2010 | 7:28 am
    theflyonthewall.com submits: The New York Times Co. (NYT) is expected to report Q4 earnings before the market open on Wednesday, February 10 with a conference call scheduled for 11 am ET. GuidanceAnalysts are looking for a profit of 38c on revenue of $653.17M. The consensus range is 32c-43c for EPS, and revenue of $629.3M-$668.1M, according to First Call. In October, the company said visibility was limited for advertising in Q4, but that it had seen encouraging signs of improvement in the economy and in discussions with its advertisers. The company recently announced plans for a metered model…

  • Molson Coors Earnings: Great Taste but Less Filling

    9 Feb 2010 | 7:19 am
    Michael Terry submits:Molson Coors (TAP) (BBB-/BBB(H)) came out with earnings today. Headlines look decent, but a deeper look shows results were driven by a -2% effective tax rate (versus a 22% normal tax rate). Net income attributable to Molson Coors increased 137.0 percent to $222.1 million for the fourth quarter, up from $93.7 million a year ago. Underlying after-tax income increased 85.5 percent in the fourth quarter to $190.3 million, or $1.02 per diluted share. Analysts were expecting $1.09. Swing and a MISS! Some other details:Complete Story »

  • Debt and Economic Recovery

    9 Feb 2010 | 7:14 am
    John M. Mason submits: The Internet, print journalism and the broadcast media have been running story after story about the debt problems in the world. A wider audience just this week learned a new acronym: PIGS, or PIIGS if you will. This, as we all know now, stands for Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain, though some also include Italy.The problem is debt.Complete Story »
 
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    Statistical Modeling

  • When the log scale meets the linear scale

    Andrew Gelman
    8 Feb 2010 | 11:54 am
    After writing this, I scrolled down Ben Casnocha's blog and read a few more entries and came to this discussion of Nassim Taleb. Casnocha writes: At the bottom of Taleb's homepage he posts his email address and invites readers to contact him. With some qualifications: Concise messages are much preferable (say a maximum < 40 words) as I will not be able to read long letters. Please do not 1) send me your papers or other "interesting material" to read, 2) ask finance questions (not my specialty, 3) make me to rewrite sections of my books (I write books, not emails), 4) ask for a list of "other…

  • Krzysztof Burdzy replies to the reviews of Christian Robert and myself

    Andrew Gelman
    8 Feb 2010 | 10:22 am
    Last week, Christian Robert and I separately reviewed Krzysztof Burdzy's book, The Search for Certainty, which I characterized as a harmless if misleading discussion of the philosophy of probability. Burdzy sent us his reply, which I will post below, followed by my comments. I am omitting some parts of Burdzy's comments that are specifc to Christian's review and not of general interest. Dear Professors Gelman and Robert, First of all, thank you for reading my book. I will refer to [your] reviews as [CR] and [AG]. I will refer to my book as [KB]. Since I referred to the foundations of…

  • Blog style

    Andrew Gelman
    7 Feb 2010 | 11:21 am
    I followed this link from Tyler Cowen to "Ben Casnocha on Chile" and found . . . a long blog entry that was exactly in the style of Tyler Cowen! I wonder if Cowen realized this when he linked to it. Probably not: just as we don't notice our own strong smells (or so I've been told), it's probably also hard for anyone to notice an imitation of one's own style. I do wonder whether Casnocha was imitating Cowen on purpose--not such a bad idea when blogging to imitate a master, just as short-story writers continue to imitate John Updike. Personally, I'm sick and tired of book and movie reviewers…

  • What if senators represented people by income or race, not by state?

    Andrew Gelman
    6 Feb 2010 | 11:10 pm
    Annie Lowrey speculates: Based on Census Bureau data, five senators would represent Americans earning between $100,000 and $1 million individually per year, with [2/10 of a senator] working on behalf of the millionaires. Eight senators would represent Americans with no income. Sixteen would represent Americans who make less than $10,000 a year, an amount well below the federal poverty line for families. The bulk of the senators would work on behalf of the middle class, with 34 representing Americans making $30,000 to $80,000 per year. . . . Or how about if senators represented particular…

  • Ma conférence à Ensae

    Andrew Gelman
    6 Feb 2010 | 6:57 am
    Ici.
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    Streetsblog New York City

  • Today’s Headlines

    Brad Aaron
    9 Feb 2010 | 6:14 am
    Paterson Wants to Shift Transit Tax Burden From 'Burbs at City's Expense (SAS, Crain's, WNYC, NY1) Haberman: What Are Dems to Do With "Slasher Senator" Monserrate? Sampson Won't Say (Post) John Liu Says Disabled Placards Are Ripe for the Picking (News) Astoria Drivers Victimized by Cheap Parking (News) MTA: Stiffed by Ad Agency; Slammed for F and G Interruptions (News, Post) What's It Like to Depend on Access-A-Ride? (NYT) Anchors Aweigh on the Glasgow Amfibus (Guardian) Bail Revoked for Accused Miami DWI Killer Carlos Bertonatti (New Times) 12-Year-Old in Brooklyn Critical After…

  • What Should Happen at Myrtle Avenue’s New Plaza? The Public Weighs In

    Noah Kazis
    8 Feb 2010 | 1:37 pm
    A two-block pedestrian plaza is coming to Myrtle Avenue in Clinton Hill, replacing an underused service road between Grand Avenue and Emerson Place. Last Friday, the local business improvement district unveiled eight potential ideas for the site (check out the BID's Flickr stream to see them all) and asked viewers for their feedback. Myrtle Avenue today. The service road on the left is slated to become a pedestrian plaza. Image: Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership, via Flickr NYCDOT selected the Myrtle Avenue site last year to receive funding in the first round of the agency's plaza program.

  • A Vow to ‘Bring Republicans to the Table’ for a New Transport Bill

    Elana Schor
    8 Feb 2010 | 11:22 am
    Despite Senate Democratic efforts to move quickly on a new jobs bill that includes infrastructure investment and takes steps towards solving the nation's transportation financing dilemma, Congress has just two more weeks of work until time runs out on the latest short-term extension of the five-year-old law governing federal transport policy. "We will bring Republicans to the table," Rep. Steven LaTourette (R-OH) said last week. (Photo: Cleveland.com) Republicans in the House mounted a surprisingly vocal opposition to the first short-term extension in September, suggesting more…

  • Mionske: Vulnerable User Laws a First Step Toward True Traffic Justice

    Brad Aaron
    8 Feb 2010 | 10:05 am
    In the second installment of his two-part "traffic injustice" series (here's part one), cycling attorney Bob Mionske covers a lot of ground. While much of it will lead Streetsblog readers to nod in knowing agreement, what struck us is the way Mionske exposes how a transportation system so dominated by multi-ton vehicles has basically absolved drivers of responsibility when it comes to interactions with actual people. It usually takes a more serious degree of negligence (for example, drunk driving or excessive speed) for a driver to injure or kill another driver. And when that…

  • Sponsors Sold on Health, Economic Benefits of Minneapolis Bike-Share

    Ben Fried
    8 Feb 2010 | 9:13 am
    Don't count out Boston just yet, but it looks like Minneapolis may be the first American city out of the gate with a public bicycle system of 1,000 bikes or more. Last week, the non-profit Nice Ride Minnesota selected the Public Bike System Company (the same firm behind Montreal's Bixi) to install its system, which is slated to feature 1,000 bicycles at about 75 stations when the first phase wraps up later this year. The first phase of Minneapolis's bike-share system will consist of about 1,000 bikes at 75 kiosks. Image: Nice Ride Minnesota.Boston's bike-share will also launch this year with…
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    The Big Picture

  • 5 Most Expensive Pieces of Art

    Barry Ritholtz
    9 Feb 2010 | 7:30 am
    Alberto Giacometti: L’Homme qui marche I $104.3 million  (sculpture) Pablo Picasso’s Parisian boy smoking a pipe (painting) 1994 for $104.1 million PicassoDora Maar au chat $95.2 million in 2006 auction Gustav Klimt Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II $87.9 million Francis Bacon’s Triptych $86.3 million in 2008. Hat tip CNN/Money.com

  • Food Stamps – The Great Recession’s Soup Lines

    James Bianco
    9 Feb 2010 | 7:00 am
    US food stamps set ever-higher record-32.8 million A record 38.2 million Americans were enrolled in the food stamp program at latest count, up 246,000 from the previous month and the latest in record-high monthly tallies that began in December 2008. Food stamps are the primary federal anti-hunger program, helping poor people buy groceries. The Agriculture Department updated enrollment data on Friday with a preliminary figure for November. USDA estimates up to $58 billion will be spent on food stamps this fiscal year, which ends Sept 30, with average enrollment of 40.5 million people. Food…

  • Greece & an Ode to Simonides

    David Kotok
    9 Feb 2010 | 6:30 am
    David R. Kotok co-founded Cumberland Advisors in 1973 and has been its Chief Investment Officer since inception. He holds a B.S. in Economics from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, an M.S. in Organizational Dynamics from The School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, and a Masters in Philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Kotok’s articles and financial market commentary have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, and other publications. He is a frequent contributor to CNBC programs. Mr. Kotok is also a member…

  • We don’t want your help because maybe we don’t need it

    Peter Boockvar
    9 Feb 2010 | 5:01 am
    While yesterday’s US stock market close was poor, Asia and Europe didn’t follow today as debt in Greece, Spain, Portugal, etc… rallied, their CDS narrowed and stocks bounced. The Greek finance minister said January tax revenues came in above expectations and that spending was below target for the month and said “that means the deficit reduction for January is well within what we have promised.” The euro is rising in turn. Also helping is the story that Trichet is headed to the European Union leaders summit a day early in order to address Greece’s problems…

  • Why No Canadian Housing Bubble?

    Barry Ritholtz
    9 Feb 2010 | 4:15 am
    Yesterday’s WSJ had an article about Canada’s Housing market. (Housing Rebound in Canada Spurs Talk of a New Bubble). The article noted that “Average home prices in Canada have risen 23% from their trough in January 2009. Home-sales volumes are up 70% over the same period . . . Canada’s housing recovery has been so rapid that some here are worrying about a bubble.” But to call it a rebound misses the point. As the Cleveland Fed pointed out, Canada’s housing market never went bust — there was a sales dip, but nothing like the US. And prices have continued…
 
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    The Epicurean Dealmaker

  • On Bullshit

    21 Jan 2010 | 2:00 pm
    I try to stay positive, Dear Readers, I really do.I try to believe that any glimmer of illumination I can occasionally shed on the structure, function, and operation of global financial markets has a positive effect on the net stock of knowledge about my business out there in the world. Not only with you, my direct and regular audience, but also hopefully with unconnected and more distant intelligences like regulators, executives, and legislators who might collectively have the will and ability to change conditions for the better. Or at least not fuck them up so regularly.But then I stumble…

  • Conventional Wisdom

    20 Jan 2010 | 7:00 am
    The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.— A.A. MilneA quotation is a handy thing to have about, saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself.— A.A. MilneSerendipity, O Dearly Beloved, can be a marvelous thing.I was reminded of this this morning when I checked my super-secret email drop box and discovered a link to a recent post by Justin Fox over at The Curious Capitalist. In it, he poses the query: "Financial…

  • I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can

    13 Jan 2010 | 3:36 pm
    "Aesthetics is for artists what ornithology is for birds."— Barnett NewmanGood morning, class.Our quote for the day comes from Barnett Newman, painter, artist, and member of the loosely affiliated post-war group of US artists known as the Abstract Expressionists. Mr. Newman was widely regarded by many—none more so than himself—to be one of the smartest and most intellectual of this group, which contained other, less articulate1 but arguably more talented artists such as Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko. Mr. Newman is credited with unleashing this bon mot…

  • Holiday Tonic III

    23 Dec 2009 | 9:24 am
    December 23, 2009:The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.— Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book IICourage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.— Ambrose RedmoonYou become a champion by fighting one more round. When things are tough, you fight one more round.— "Gentleman Jim" CorbettWoody Allen is often credited with saying something like eighty percent of life is just showing up.

  • A Few Things Worth Considering

    14 Dec 2009 | 7:10 am
    From one of the more underrated political philosophers and students of human nature of our time:Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class — whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.Good government never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always…
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    The price of everything

  • Indecent haste

    timprice
    9 Feb 2010 | 12:53 am
      “..approval is not the goal of investing. In fact, approval is often counter-productive because it sedates the brain and makes it less receptive to new facts or re-examination of conclusions formed earlier. Beware of investment activity that produces applause: the great moves (when made) are usually greeted by yawns.”   -       Warren Buffett, p.16 of 2008 Berkshire Hathaway annual report.   “Individuals who cannot master their emotions are ill-suited to profit from the investment process.”  …

  • Mixed reviews for new release

    timprice
    29 Jan 2010 | 2:18 am
      “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.   -       Albert Einstein.   (Davos, Canton of Graubünden, Switzerland – February 1.) With their customary flourish, western governments unveiled their widely anticipated new vapour-ware product yesterday, dubbed the mi-God. Arriving with actually no new content or special features whatsoever despite months of hype, the twelve-foot thick tablet looks like a giant lead balloon and met with hesitant reviews from the twitterati.  But the mi-God’s…

  • Sympathy for the devil ?

    timprice
    25 Jan 2010 | 5:24 am
      “The whole world is drinking poison to quench its thirst. It may feel like relief now, but the sickness will strike in 2012.”   -       Economist Andy Xie, referring to capital injections to stabilize the financial system.   Karl Marx held that capitalism would end through the revolutionary actions of communists. If capitalism does end as a result of a financial crisis that many presume to be over but which we believe is merely in abeyance, it will have come about simply by collapsing in upon its own self-interest. That may actually…

  • The tyranny of conventional thinking

    timprice
    15 Jan 2010 | 6:08 am
      “What you as the City of London have done for financial services, we as a government intend to do for the economy as a whole.”   -       Gordon Brown, Mansion House speech, June 2002.     Bloomberg reported rather excitedly last week that Goldman Sachs has retained its appeal to MBA students despite the bad press the brokerage company bank has received over the past year. In a recent survey of 6,207 MBA candidates by Universum Group, the great vampiric squid and financial services firm kept its fourth place in a poll rating…

  • Nothing as it seems

    timprice
    12 Jan 2010 | 9:46 am
      “1.40. The Mouse That Roared. Wry comedy. A tiny country faces bankruptcy.”   -       Film listing in The Radio Times, Sunday 10 January 2009.   Whatever the dynamics of markets or current events, we tend to view the world through a prism of discrete annual cycles. So, simplistically, if 2008 was the year of crisis; and 2009 was the year of policy-driven recovery, what will 2010 bring for investors ? Political uncertainty, for one, in the UK and elsewhere. The Labour administration shambles wearily on, unloved by much of the…
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    Financial Times: Undercover Economist

  • Paying kids for performance works after all

    Tim Harford
    9 Feb 2010 | 6:59 am
    Some psychologists argue that it is damaging to pay children for academic performance: Barry Schwartz once attacked a New York schools pilot scheme designed by Roland Fryer with that aim in mind. (If you read to the end of Schwartz’s piece, in which he cites a couple of experiments and hammers economists for their “assumptions”, [...]

  • A marginal victory for the well-meaning environmentalist

    Tim Harford
    5 Feb 2010 | 5:06 pm
    At the risk of turning this column into “The Undercover Environmentalist”, I need to return to that vexed question of carbon dioxide emissions. In my first column of the year, I vowed to reduce my carbon footprint from air travel – easy enough, given that it was 50 tonnes of CO2 last year. A kind [...]

  • Dear Economist: How can we stop our child buying sweets?

    Tim Harford
    5 Feb 2010 | 5:05 pm
    When my daughter reached the age of six, my wife and I decided to give her a small amount of pocket money. However, access to money of her own would allow her to buy herself large quantities of sweeties. So instead of giving her cash in hand we keep track of the money she’s accumulated, [...]

  • No yolking matter

    Tim Harford
    2 Feb 2010 | 4:37 am
    It’s always the little problems that create the biggest fuss, but in this case the Today programme’s debate on the chances of a carton of eggs all containing double yolks was unexpectedly illuminating. Here’s the story. At about half past six, Sarah Montague and John Humphrys were debating the merits of a Daily Mail story which [...]

  • Opportunity costs, a continuing series

    Tim Harford
    1 Feb 2010 | 11:35 pm
    I have been reading The Fourth Star by David Cloud and Greg Jaffe, two Pentagon correspondents. It’s a biography of four four-star generals, which then morphs into a history of the war in Iraq. An excellent read and a good companion to Tom Ricks’s books about Iraq, with less recent detail but a longer and [...]
 
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    Vox (EU)

  • Effects of unemployment insurance savings accounts: New insights from Chile

    8 Feb 2010 | 4:00 pm
    Gonzalo Reyes, Jan van Ours, Milan Vodopivec, 9 February 2010How can policymakers provide unemployment insurance while minimising adverse incentives? This column presents new evidence from Chile suggesting unemployment insurance savings accounts can increase job-finding rates. This provides a strong endorsement of the savings account component to reform traditional unemployment insurance programmes.Full Article: Effects of unemployment insurance savings accounts: New insights from Chile

  • The Eurozone debt crisis: Facts and myths

    8 Feb 2010 | 4:00 pm
    Charles Wyplosz, 9 February 2010The latest turn in the global financial crisis has ensnared the debt of some European nations. The fact that these nations are members of a monetary union has generated much confused comment. Here one the world’s leading experts on Eurozone monetary and financial matters sets the record straight, debunking 10 myths and setting forth 10 frequently overlooked facts. Full Article: The Eurozone debt crisis: Facts and myths

  • How disciplining China could save the WTO

    8 Feb 2010 | 4:00 pm
    Susan Ariel Aaronson, 9 February 2010Is the WTO doomed? This column argues that the WTO’s credibility is waning and that to get it back it needs to reign in China’s erratic governance. China’s failure to enforce trade laws threatens the concept of mutual benefit that underpins the WTO. China is broken, and a broken China could break the WTO.Full Article: How disciplining China could save the WTO

  • Anatomy of distress: New insight on the probability of bank turmoil

    7 Feb 2010 | 4:00 pm
    Martin Cihák, Tigran Poghosyan, 8 February 2010How safe are the banks? This column provides new evidence on what determines the likelihood of an EU bank experiencing distress, suggesting that bank risks have converged across EU members, and that a more tightly integrated financial regulation should reflect this. The results also call for a greater role for market discipline. Full Article: Anatomy of distress: New insight on the probability of bank turmoil

  • Tax banks to discourage systemic-risk creation, not to fund bailouts

    6 Feb 2010 | 4:00 pm
    Enrico Perotti, 7 February 2010Obama’s plans for bank taxation took markets, policymakers, and academics by surprise, leaving all parties now debating its merits. This column suggests an alternative. By raising a Pigouvian tax based on banks’ individual contribution to systemic-risk creation, the policy would target the externality caused by funding fragility while raising the cost of opportunistic risk creation in good times.Full Article: Tax banks to discourage systemic-risk creation, not to fund bailouts
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    Oxford University Press USA

  • Will the iPad Change Your Life?

    Rebecca
    28 Jan 2010 | 8:31 am
    Dennis Baron is Professor of English and Linguistics at the University of Illinois. His book, A Better Pencil: Readers, Writers, and the Digital Revolution, looks at the evolution of communication technology, from pencils to pixels. In this post, also posted on Baron’s personal blog The Web of Language, he looks at the release of the iPad. Launching Apple’s long-awaited iPad, Steve Jobs promised that his “magical” device will not just let us surf the web, play games, videos, and tunes, and check our email, it will also do for reading what the iPod did for listening to…

  • Risk Management and Corporate Governance

    Kirsty
    19 Jan 2010 | 11:40 pm
    By Kirsty McHugh, OUP UK One of the main areas in corporate governance that has caught the headlines recently is risk management. There is a widely held perception that in recent years many boards have not managed the risks associated with their businesses well – whether that was because they did not identify the risks fully or whether because having identified the risks, they did not take appropriate action to manage them. In the below post, Professor Chris Mallin explains more about this. She is Professor of Corporate Governance and Finance & Director of the Centre for Corporate…

  • Institutional Investors and Corporate Governance Reform

    Kirsty
    5 Jan 2010 | 11:23 pm
    By Kirsty McHugh, OUP UK Chris Mallin is Professor of Corporate Governance and Finance & Director of the Centre for Corporate Governance Research at the University of Birmingham. She is the author of Corporate Governance and she blogs with fellow OUP author Bob Tricker at Corporate Governance. The below post, on institutional investors and corporate governance reform, is an adapted version of one found on that blog. Her previous OUPblog posts can be found here, here, here and here. Corporate governance codes and guidelines have long recognised the important role that institutional…

  • Wealth As Fulfillment?

    Rebecca
    5 Jan 2010 | 8:38 am
    Sir Keith Thomas is a Fellow of All Souls College and former President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.  A former trustee of the National Gallery and the British Museum, he is an Honorary Vice-President of the Royal Historical Society and was President of the British Academy between 1993 and 1997.  His most recent book, The Ends of Life: Roads to Fulfillment in Early Modern England, asks a very important question, “how should we live?”. Thomas explores the history of early modern England to reveal the ways in which people sought to lead fulfilling lives, illuminating the…

  • The Lesson of the 2009 Holiday Shopping Season: Tax Internet Sales

    Rebecca
    4 Jan 2010 | 8:37 am
    By Edward Zelinsky As a critical element of the holiday shopping season of 2009, internet sales have matured into a pivotal part of the American economy. The modest, but important, increase in 2009 holiday sales over the 2008 shopping season is largely attributable to increased online purchases. This emergence of internet sales highlights an important problem of public finance which, so far, Congress has been unwilling to address: Most internet purchases are effectively sales tax-free even as equivalent purchases at traditional brick-and-mortar stores are taxable. The resulting discrepancy is…
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    Cafe Hayek

  • Who Speaks for ‘The People’?

    Don Boudreaux
    8 Feb 2010 | 6:57 pm
    EconLog’s Arnold Kling asks a question that would fuel befuddled, and perhaps even angry, stares at the typical Manhattan or Beverly Hills cocktail party — but it’s a great question that, in fact, is not rhetorical: Is it really the case that people want the government to create jobs? I have seen many progressives and pundits claim that people are angry about jobs, but I have not seen any people clamoring for the government to create jobs. (Emphais added – DBx)

  • An Empirical Study of the Effects of Proposition 13

    Don Boudreaux
    8 Feb 2010 | 6:51 pm
    Below is the abstract of a paper that looks very interesting.  Its title is “Proposition 13 and The California Fiscal Shell Game“; its authors are Colin McCubbins and Mathew McCubbins: We study the effects of California’s Tax and Expenditure Limitations, especially Proposition 13. We find that Proposition 13 was indeed effective at reducing both ad valorem property taxes per capita and total state and local taxes per capita, at least in the short run. We further argue that there have been unintended secondary effects that have resulted in an increased tax burden,…

  • Fear the Boom and Bust with Italian subtitles

    Russ Roberts
    8 Feb 2010 | 12:05 pm

  • Wisdom from Jay Cost

    Russ Roberts
    8 Feb 2010 | 10:10 am
    Here. An excerpt: He has been narrow, not broad. He has been partial, not post-partisan. He has been ideological, not pragmatic. No number of “eloquent” speeches can alter these facts. This is why his major initiatives have failed, why his net job approval has dropped 50 points in 12 months, and why he is substantially weaker now than he was a year ago. But that’s just the punch line. The intro is just as good.

  • Fear the Boom and Bust with French Subtitles

    Russ Roberts
    8 Feb 2010 | 7:13 am
    Here: Hayek contre Keynes – VOSTfr Uploaded by Liberte_Cherie. – Click for more funny videos.
 
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    Dollars & Sense blog

  • Why Aren't There More Radicals at Work?

    Dollars and Sense
    9 Feb 2010 | 6:32 am
    From the (new?) website, radicalsatwork.org:Works sucks and it's been getting worse in the U.S. for decades.So why aren't there more radicals at work?For the first part in a series about radicals and labor today, we asked a dozen radical workplace organizers—teachers, Teamsters, telephone technicians, union organizers, and more—that question. Read what they had to say.The activists we talked to blamed the American Dream, persistent racism, and a feeling that struggle and collective won't do any good. They also laid some of the blame on radicals themselves, for failing to connect…

  • Deficit Hawk, Progressive Style, Part II

    Polly Cleveland
    7 Feb 2010 | 2:52 pm
    As I wrote in Part I (Feb 3), the deficit hawks legitimately claim that huge deficits will hinder investment and kill jobs. But their solutions would make matters worse. What are those solutions? What are alternatives? A leading hawk, C. Fred Bergsten of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, proposes three control measures: containing Medicare and Medicaid costs, "comprehensive Social Security reform, including gradual increases in the retirement age and an alteration of the benefits formula" and a national consumption tax.The hawks are right that we need to control all--not…

  • Mixed Jobs Report for January (BLS)

    Dollars and Sense
    5 Feb 2010 | 10:00 am
    The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released its employment numbers for January. It is a mixed report: the official unemployment rate fell from 10.0% to 9.7%, yet the economy lost 20,000 non-farm jobs. This means that the decline in the rate of unemployment has to do with people who aren't (fully) employed but aren't counted as unemployed (i.e. they have become discouraged or marginally attached). The BLS also revised upward its estimate of the number of jobs that were lost in Dec. 2009, from 80,000 up to 150,000. Here are the basics from the BLS: THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION -- JANUARY 2010The…

  • Deficit Hawk, Progressive Style, Part I

    Polly Cleveland
    3 Feb 2010 | 7:37 pm
    As the national debt balloons, the deficit hawks have swooped in again, crying for "fiscal responsibility." According to C. Fred Bergsten of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, that means restricting or cutting spending on "entitlements"-- Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security--and imposing a national consumption tax. And now President Obama has heard their cries--and proposes to freeze discretionary spending--except for the military! The hawks' concern is justified. But their policy conclusions don't follow. When a government runs a "deficit"--spends more than it collects in…

  • The Obama Budget and the Deficit Chorus

    Dollars and Sense
    2 Feb 2010 | 4:41 pm
    Get ready for "the deficit chorus," as James K. Galbraith put it to us today. I was happy to see that David E. Sanger quoted Galbraith in his news analysis of Obama's budget in today's New York Times.But I was puzzled by the way he was quoted, in an article that makes this claim: "For Mr. Obama and his successors, the effect of those projections is clear: Unless miraculous growth, or miraculous political compromises, creates some unforeseen change over the next decade, there is virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors." There is some wiggle room…
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    Japan Economy Watch

  • No News from Japan

    CV
    26 Jan 2010 | 12:51 pm
    By Claus Vistesen: CopenhagenSometimes no news is more telling than one might initially think and although it was hardly earth shattering for the market that the BOJ chose yesterday to keep its main benchmark rate sitting at 0.1% it does highlight the extraordinary difficulties Japan currently face in terms of sparking its economy back into some kind of forward momentum. (quote Bloomberg) The

  • A Detailed Look at Savings in Japan

    CV
    22 Jan 2010 | 10:57 am
    By Claus Vistesen: CopenhagenIn short, if the world economy is to get through this crisis in reasonable shape, credit worthy surplus countries must expand domestic demand relative to potential output. How they achieve this outcome is up to them. But only in this way can the deficit countries realistically hope to avoid spending themselves into bankruptcy. Martin Wolf (2008) It is not the first

  • Double-Dip Worries In Japan and Germany

    Edward Hugh
    14 Jan 2010 | 12:28 am
    Whoever said economists are people who don't ever get anything right?"Economic growth in Germany probably stagnated in the fourth quarter from the previous three months, the Federal Statistics office said. Still, the figure is “surrounded by uncertainty,” Norbert Raeth, an economist at the office, said in a press conference in Wiesbaden today."So German GDP was probably more or less flat quarter

  • Moodys on Japan and the Eurozone - Stating the Obvious

    CV
    13 Jan 2010 | 7:12 am
    By Claus Vistesen: CopenhagenI shall openly admit that I have always found the exact role of the rating agencies a bit odd in the global financial system. I mean, do we really need them to tell us which bonds are good and which are not? I am not sure and what is more; rating agencies sometimes, if not all the time depending on their ability to stay in

  • Plus Ca Change in Japan?

    CV
    12 Jan 2010 | 7:13 am
    By Claus Vistesen: CopenhagenLast week was a good lesson in terms of what might, or what might not, happen when policy makers attempt to steer currency markets. Notwithstanding the obvious question of much how clout policy makers de-facto holds with respect to moving currency markets (not a lot I think), the outgoing finance minister in Japan Hirohisa
 
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    Manarin On Money

  • A Look Ahead at 2010: The Stock Market, Real Estate, Gold and More

    We’ve just wrapped up the worst performing decade in U.S. stock market perforance history, so what is ahead of us?  Don Davidson and I discuss this plus my thoughts on the real estate market, gold, inflation and your financial safety during retirement. Related posts:Gold – The Real Money Gold, Derivatives, & the Stock Market (Plus: Why I [...] Related posts:Gold – The Real Money Gold, Derivatives, & the Stock Market (Plus: Why I Don’t Move More Of My Nest Egg To Cash) Got Real World Financial Safety?

  • Manarin Link Roundup #2

    In this edition of the link roundup members of the the Manarin Investment Counsel team touch on the areas of health, media, the stock market, IRAs and the environment.  If Economists Could Write the News on Trade Protection  Mark Perry takes a Washington Post article on trade protection and crosses out words and replaces them with sentences to show how [...] Related posts:Manarin Link Roundup Some Favorite Links From Around The Web The Politics of Global Warming

  • How More Government Has Led to the Downfall of Detroit

    Related posts:Government Should Get Out of the Mortgage Market Hooked On The Heroin Of Government Dependency The Link Between Government and the Stock Market Related posts:Government Should Get Out of the Mortgage Market Hooked On The Heroin Of Government Dependency The Link Between Government and the Stock Market

  • Manarin Link Roundup

    What you are about to read is an assortment of links to articles that the Manarin team found over the past few weeks – some are economical, some are political, some are random, but all of the links are interesting … or so we think! Dive In: Housing is Cheap  A sound analysis of the current [...] Related posts:Manarin Link Roundup #2 Recession is Ending? Sure Looks Like It Omaha named #1 “bang-for-the-buck” city by Forbes.com

  • Mobile Device Users: This Free App Could Save You a Ton of Money

    For budget-conscious shoppers, the free ShopSavvymobile device application is worth your attention.  Your phone’s camera is transformed into a barcode scanner that allows you to find the best prices both online and in your local area. For example, let’s say you are at a store and find that perfect gift for someone.  You can pay full [...] Related posts:Your Money … Who Can You Trust? Gold – The Real Money Economic Ignorance and Your Money
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    Block's Indicator of Sustainable Growth

  • First climategate, then glaciergate, and now treegate

    by Ray Block Climategate in November 2009 is the name global warming sceptics gave to the theft of 61 megabytes of material from the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. The cache contained hundreds of files, code and documents from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Centre, which Russian or ...

  • Energy savings offer biggest scope for carbon abatement

    by Ray Block It’s becoming readily accepted in the community that energy efficiency is important. But it isn’t really understood that the No1 priority on the road to a low carbon economy is achieving energy savings. Investment in energy savings in buildings, industry and transportation ranks above investment in new energy sources ...

  • Concentrating solar more cost competitivePart 2

    by Ray Block When Arthur J Goldman, the founder of Luz abandoned the parabolic trough for his new start up BrightSource Energy, the dominant feature is a 143-metre central power tower. On top of the tower, 1600 double tracking heliostats (small mirrors) reflect sunlight on to a boiler to produce high temperature ...

  • Concentrating solar more cost competitive Part 1

     by Ray Block The accepted view is that wind energy electricity per kWh is almost competitive with natural gas and coal, but solar energy is much more expensive. In turn, concentrating solar (CSP) in utility scale plants, is cheaper than solar PV However, there is a concerted effort among CSP producers to bring ...

  • Is Schwarzenegger’s renewable energy targets at risk?

    by Ray Block Being a movie actor must have something about it to qualify as a politician. Ronald Reagan, the one time movie actor changed overnight from liberal to conservative, and having become the darling of the Right, became the successful 40th President of the US. Arnold Schwarzenegger, another movie actor and ...
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    Economy Watch

  • Stocks rebound at opening

    9 Feb 2010 | 7:03 am
    Wall Street rebounded at opening today on speculation that debt-troubled Greece will get some help from its neighbors and some strong reports from U.S. economic stalwarts McDonald's and Coke. In the first 20 minutes of trading, the Dow is up 1.2 percent. The broader S&P 500 is up 1.1 percent and the tech-heavy Nasdaq is up 1 percent. In other news this morning, Toyota finally pulled the trigger on its global Prius recall, saying it wold call back some 400,000 of the high-profile hybrids to fix driver concerns about squishy-feeling brakes. Follow me on Twitter at @theticker

  • Toyota will recall hybrids in Japan for braking problems

    8 Feb 2010 | 9:05 pm
    UPDATED at 12:05 a.m. Struggling Japanese auto giant Toyota is recalling the 2010 Priuses in Japan because of braking problems, following a government-ordered investigation of the brakes. No word yet on a recall for Priuses sold in the United States, where owners have filed more than than 100 complaints that the high-profile hybrid's brakes can feel squishy when braking is applied on bumpy roads, the company said moments ago. Toyotal also is recalling the Lexus HS 250h sedan, the upscale version of the Prius, and the Sai, which is sold only in Japan. Toyota president Akio Toyoda will hold a…

  • Dodge attempts turnaround -- by selling pink muscle cars

    8 Feb 2010 | 1:26 pm
    I hate to kick a guy when he's down, but sometimes people just bring it on themselves: Today, Dodge released pictures of the new color scheme for its top-end muscle car, the Challenger. The color is called "furious fuchsia." Click here to see it, then come right back. I'm going to pause here for a moment to let that sink in. Okay, moving on. Dodge, as you know, is a division of Chrysler, which went through bankruptcy last year and is still trying to find itself, unlike General Motors, which also went through bankruptcy (and is 61 percent owned by the U.S. taxpayer) last year. For years,…

  • Report: Toyota hires D.C.'s Glover Park Group lobbyists

    8 Feb 2010 | 10:34 am
    Politico's Mike Allen is reporting that embattled Japanese auto giant Toyota has hired Democratic D.C. lobbyists/PR firm the Glover Park Group to plead its case in Washington. The Glover Park Group includes former Democratic heavyweights Joe Lockhart (former Clinton spokesman) and former Gore chief of staff Michael Feldman. Citing Senate records, Politico reports that Toyota spent $4.1 million lobbying Congress last year, twice as much as any Japanese automaker. Which was still half as much as GM spent lobbying Congress last year. Read the entire report by clicking here. Follow me on Twitter…

  • Another day, another Prius recall report

    8 Feb 2010 | 8:50 am
    Today brings another unsourced report from another Japanese media outlet that Toyota is preparing a recall of its high-profile hybrid, the 2010 Prius, to take care of complaints from drivers that the vehicle's brakes are squishy. Today's report comes from Japan's Kyodo news agency. It reports, though does not identify its source, that the Japanese auto giant will recall 270,000 Priuses on Tuesday. The company has not confirmed the report. Last week's report came from Japanese news outlet Nikkei, and its number was 160,000 Priuses. The company last week denied that report. Over the weekend,…
 
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    Credit Slips

  • Bankruptcies Maintain Similar Month-to-Month Rate in January

    Bob Lawless
    8 Feb 2010 | 1:54 pm
    The January bankruptcy filing basically held steady to December, according to the new bankruptcy statistics now available from Automated Access to Court Electronic Records (AACER). There were just over 102,000 total bankruptcies spread over the nineteen business days in January. That is a daily filing rate of 5,386, a rise of only 1.3% from December's daily filing rate of 5,319. For monthly bankruptcy filing rates, a 1.3% increase probably does not rise above the threshold of statistical noise.The January 2010 rate is a 20.6% year-over-year increase from January 2009. That may sound like…

  • Monetary Policy and the Housing Bubble

    Adam Levitin
    5 Feb 2010 | 8:20 pm
    A popular explanation of the financial crisis lays the blame at the feet of the Federal Reserve for lax monetary policy.  In this story, the Fed dropped interest rates starting in 2001 and kept rates too low for too long.  Low rates induced an orgy of mortgage borrowing for leveraged home speculation.  It's a nice story.  Only problem is it doesn't really hold up under inspection.  Low rates in 2001-2003 did fuel an amazing mortgage refinancing boom, but not a purchase boom, and the boom was mainly in conventional fixed-rate mortgages, not the exotic products later years. …

  • Sovereign CDS -- Random Thoughts

    Stephen Lubben
    3 Feb 2010 | 6:24 pm
    Lots of attention on Greece these days, but has anyone noticed that France's CDS has declined more on a percentage basis this year (from 32.05 to 53.40)? Even Germany has seen a bigger percentage decline (from 26.33 to 37.84). And Iceland has completely fallen off a cliff, closing today at 639.42. That's the fourth highest price for sovereign CDS, after only Argentina, Venezuela, and the Ukraine.Just saying, maybe we're a bit too focused on Greece . . .Meanwhile, it's been a bit since I've talked about California, but today its CDS was selling for 327, which means…

  • FJC Posting for Bankruptcy Position

    Bob Lawless
    29 Jan 2010 | 1:02 pm
    The Research Division of the Federal Judicial Center has an opening for a senior research associate who has expertise in bankruptcy. The job posting is online, and it looked like something that might be of interest to some of our readers.

  • Lehman, Synthetic CDOs, Sapphires, etc.

    Stephen Lubben
    28 Jan 2010 | 7:32 pm
    The Lehman bankruptcy court is out with a new decision that has the financial community somewhat miffed, since it removes one more piece of their mistaken belief that they don't have to understand or deal with the Bankruptcy Code. The decision will also lead to some interesting discussions with members of the English bench, who reached a contrary decision with regard to the same issue and parties. I'm extending an open invitation to all the judges to join me for coffee and bagels at my apartment on the UES to sort things out.I've represented the transaction in question, which…
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    Megan McArdle

  • Shoe, Meet the Other Foot

    8 Feb 2010 | 3:09 pm
    When a reader offered up this New York Times editorial, I confess I suspected he might have written it himself--it was so pitch perfectly hilarious.  But no, it's real:June 23, 2005 Social Security Follies Congressional Republicans have begun talking with top White House aides about an exit strategy -- not from Iraq, but from the winless quagmire of President Bush's campaign to privatize Social Security. Mr. Bush has responded to this new political reality by, first, insisting that the American people do not yet understand the virtues of privatization, and second, blaming the failure of…

  • Is Apple Paving the Way for Oligopoly?

    8 Feb 2010 | 2:48 pm
    Commenter Bosco Higgins offers an astute possibility as to why Apple might be signalling that they're willing to cut prices, even though this will just encourage consumers to wait:If I had to guess I would say it is a pricing signal to its competitors (Kindle, Nook, Sony) saying that if they try to compete on price, Apple is prepared to willing to drop iPad prices. It is the old prisoner's delimma on pricing - Apple is trying to establish a cartel price and scare the other participants from defecting.It's not a bad guess. Oligopolies can be maintained for quite some time with the right…

  • Apple Says it Will Lower Prices if iPad Doesn't Sell

    8 Feb 2010 | 12:20 pm
    Remember the kerfuffle over the original iPhone?  Apple charged luxe prices for the first few months, and then after it had wrung every possible dollar out of the early adopters, dropped the cost to capture more price-sensitive users.  Many of those who had bought early reacted with the righteous fury of a wronged spouse.This time around, they can't say they weren't warned:  Apple has apparently already said that if sales of the iPad aren't brisk enough, it will drop the price.  I expect it will have to, if the company is to have any hope of hitting the 1-5 million sales…

  • Obama's Hail Mary on Health Care

    8 Feb 2010 | 11:01 am
    Asking Republicans to be part of a televised forum on health care reform is a clever move:  put up or shut up.  Nonetheless, I'd guess it probably fails.  Republicans are saying what you'd expect them to:  we won't engage in sham negotiations.  If you want us to come to the table, shelve this monstrous and unpopular plan and let's start over.Democrats should recognize the tactic:  they invented it.  And used it successfully against Social Security reform in 2005.  Sure, they wanted to do Social Security reform, they said.  All Republicans had to do…

  • Quote of the Day

    8 Feb 2010 | 10:57 am
    Kenneth Anderson:And  finally Joshua Kurlantzick, in the Boston Globe, "Dazzled by Asia," arguing that if you're assuming an emerging Chinese hegemony, you might be disappointed.   (To which I'd my own oft-repeated observation that if the corollary is longing for American decline and the rise of a new, post-American-hegemony, world of cooperative great powers in peace and harmony, think again -- the human right universalism of the last fifteen years has been an epiphenomenon of American hegemony, and if it fades, the human rights universalists fade with it.  A multipolar…
 
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    FedEx Citizenship Blog - Economics & Access

  • Grow U.S. Exports, Grow Jobs for Americans

    Mike Ducker
    8 Feb 2010 | 9:25 am
    Like many of you, I watched President Obama's recent State of the Union address.  And I was very pleased to hear about his goal of doubling U.S. exports of goods and services by 2014 to support two million jobs for Americans.read more

  • FedEx Makes Sponsorship of AMEX OPEN Forum Official

    Karen Rogers
    6 Jan 2010 | 7:28 pm
    Watch each week as content from FedEx and other authors is provided to the community focused on topics like  Women in Leadership, U.S. Export, Change Management, Global Philanthropy, Technology and E-Tailing.

  • FedEx Huddles Up for A New Ad Campaign

    Steve Pacheco
    5 Jan 2010 | 7:20 pm
    As many of you watch the FedEx Orange Bowl tonight, I wanted to share my thoughts regarding the new round of ad work FedEx launched this January with the College Football Bowl Championship Series. This year’s FedEx brand campaign features five new television spots promoting the reliability of domestic overnight delivery, international shipping, FedEx Ground, FedEx Office Print Online and the multi-faceted capabilities of FedEx Office. read more

  • Fred Smith Confident of Global Economy

    Matt Ceniceros
    17 Dec 2009 | 12:52 pm
    FedEx Chairman Fred Smith appeared on CNNMoney.com after the company announced its Q2FY10 earnings report. The following video is being presented with permission from CNNMoney.com read more

  • Become the 'CEO of You' to build your personal brand

    Bill Margaritis
    3 Dec 2009 | 12:03 pm
    In a career spent managing corporate reputation, I've learned that a CEO who takes personal responsibility for the organization's reputation is hugely important. Many of you have seen this too, but have you thought about applying the principle to your own career by becoming the "CEO of You"?read more
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    InvestorCentric

  • Ben Bernanke's Exit Strategy Dilemma

    The Capital Spectator
    9 Feb 2010 | 5:56 am
    The newly reappointed Fed Chairman Bernanke faces a dilemma of whether to keep interest rates low and risk inflation following the massive influx of money into the financial system or to increase interest rates and risk ending the economic recovery. Strong political pressure to create jobs and the currently tame inflation projections will favor the former as the likely choice. See the following post from The Capital SpectatorFed Chairman Ben Bernanke will be chatting up the central bank’s exit strategy later this week when he testifies before the House Financial Services Committee on…

  • Job Market May Be Near Turning Point

    NuWire Investor
    9 Feb 2010 | 5:51 am
    John Lounsbury from The Street lays out the status of the jobs market which has moved closer to a crossover from job losses to job growth. However the extent of jobs lost since the peak in 2007 may be closer to 11 to 12 million when you take into account the average of 1.5 million jobs that would have been created under "average" economic conditions. See the following post from The StreetThe employment situation is clearly bad, but also improving.The widely ballyhooed adjustment to past non-farms payroll numbers of 930,000 additional non-farm payroll jobs lost is much ado about nothing. This…

  • Many Baby Boomers Finding Stocks Too Risky

    The Mess That Greenspan Made
    8 Feb 2010 | 5:53 am
    With many baby boomers having lost significant wealth in the stock market during recent crashes, many are losing faith in stocks and switching to other investment vehicles. However, with lifespans increasing, there is concern that low yield investments like certificates of deposits or bonds may not provide enough growth for an ideal retirement. See the following post from The Mess That Greenspan MadeThe newspapers are full of stories about how baby boomers who have squirreled money away are rethinking their investment approach, evidence coming from last year's net outflows from stock funds…

  • Gold's Next Bull Run May Be Just Around The Corner

    NuWire Investor
    8 Feb 2010 | 5:49 am
    With gold falling recently, there may have been a fall in enthusiasm for gold but the fundamentals are still in place. With the Fed's policies unchanged and the threat of some nations defaulting on their debt, the possibility of a strong bull market may be just around the corner. See the following post from Expected ReturnsAfter a 15% correction in gold and a 40% correction in many miners, most latecomers to the gold bull market now know that investing in gold is not easy! These are the kind of corrections that really test the conviction of gold bugs; I wonder how many will still be around…

  • China's Trade Practices: A Barrier To Job Growth

    NuWire Investor
    6 Feb 2010 | 5:56 am
    Peter Morici discusses one of the barriers to job growth, which is the enormous trade deficit with China due to huge tariffs, administrative barriers, and undervalued currency. Without taking action against China's trade practices, unemployment will remain high. See the following post from The StreetPresident Obama is seeking to double U.S. exports and create 2 million jobs over the next five years. The new Commerce Department program to accomplish this goal is simply inadequate.The Commerce Department initiative merely consists of redoubling existing efforts and not addressing the…
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    The Aleph Blog

  • The Rope Limit, Redux

    David Merkel
    8 Feb 2010 | 11:09 pm
    Sorry I haven’t written much recently.  The recent snowstorms have tossed me around, as I care for my family, and those around me.  It is amusing in a backwards way, to see Washington, DC frozen at a time when there is so much volatility in global finance.  Yo, Treasury, make sure the skeleton crew on international finance gets in, regardless. The incentives are perverse in every way in Europe.  If Germany, France, and the Netherlands don’t bail out Greece, then what will become of Portugal and Spain?  And later, Italy and Ireland?  In aggregate, this is big. But, if…

  • Balking in a Winter Blunderland

    David Merkel
    8 Feb 2010 | 1:35 pm
    The place that got the most snow during the recent storm was Howard County, Maryland.  Elkridge had 38″, Columbia 34″, and at Aleph Blog Global HQ we got a measly 30″.  Here are some photos: looking out the front of the house back deck from the inside… and the back deck from the outside… looking up the street… icicles hanging from our house — eight feet long some of my kids starting to shovel before the storm is over… and… 360 degrees after two feet That should be an AVI file.  There were six inches to go after that. Well, we have been…

  • Default, Inflation, Higher Taxes — Choose One

    David Merkel
    6 Feb 2010 | 10:40 pm
    When I look at the present economic environment, I am not encouraged.  But if you really want me to be discouraged, talk to me about politics. For the last 40-80 years we have been borrowing, whether implicitly (pensions, retiree healthcare) or explicitly, deferring problems into the future, where they will be compounded with interest and survivorship (lifespans have lengthened, Kaiser, and sadly for those who pay, they want a high quality of life in their dotage). So, at present, legislators are more partisan, whether in the states or at the federal level.  Why?  There is less slack. …

  • What is Liquidity? (IV)

    David Merkel
    6 Feb 2010 | 8:14 pm
    When I was a corporate bond manager, I often dealt in less liquid bonds.  Why?  They had more yield, I only bought those that my credit analysts liked, and I had a balance sheet that could hold them.  I had the option of holding those bonds, but not the obligation of holding those bonds.  As credit conditions improved in early 2003, to leave my successor with a simpler portfolio, I decided to lighten my holdings of bonds issued by a private bank.  I held 35% of the issue, and bought most of it near the height of the panic. I told my secretary, “The phone will start ringing off the…

  • The Deadly Dozen

    David Merkel
    3 Feb 2010 | 10:00 pm
    I have been thinking about the the forces distorting the global economy.  In the long run, the distortions don’t matter, because economies are bigger than governments, and eventually economies prevail over governments.  Here are my dozen problems in the global economy. 1) China’s mercantilism — loans and currency.  The biggest distortionary force in the world now is China.  They encourage banks to loan to enterprises in order to force growth.  They keep their currency undervalued to favor exports over imports.  What was phrased to me as a grad student in development…
 
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    Energy & Society

  • A World of Uncertainties

    A.V. Elias Suni
    7 Feb 2010 | 1:27 pm
    I just ran into some comments that Daniel Yergin made in 2004 at a conference on U.S.-Saudi relations and global energy security at CSIS:the U.S. really is on the threshold of a new era in natural gas, and this has major implications. In a sense the U.S. is today in natural gas where it was 30 years ago in oil, about to go from being a minor importer to being a major importer, and a decade from now the United States could literally overtake Japan as the world's number one importer of LNG.I could have imagined myself in the audience taking notes, and accepting anything he had said about the…

  • To Be or Not to Be

    A.V. Elias Suni
    10 Jan 2010 | 3:13 am
    COP-15 ended over 3 weeks ago. The immediate outcome disappointed many optimistic observers, but the longer term outcome is still unclear (yes, I know what Keynes said). Personally, I expected nothing more. In essence, I think the outcome shows that none of the major emitters, as Shakespeare's Hamlet, consider suicide as a plausible way out. In other words, the real issue is cost-effectiveness and justice, not whether climate change is a real threat. The most important lesson from the conference is that the UNFCCC may not be the right venue for an initial agreement among major GHG…

  • Princes of Denmark

    A.V. Elias Suni
    9 Dec 2009 | 6:25 am
    I was on the plane this morning. My favorite moment is always the point when the plane shoots through the clouds. Beyond the clouds, you get the divine view of this planet; and it's a beautiful planet.It amazes me how few people still understand that all climate change models are built on vast uncertainties, but that it doesn't change any of the logic for the mitigation of climate change. If there was a 50-50 chance that a flight you put your children on crashed; would you put them on the plane anyway? Would you be willing to pay perhaps 1 % of your income to ensure that it didn't happen?

  • On Discount Rates

    A.V. Elias Suni
    4 Nov 2009 | 1:20 pm
    RFF has published an article by Cameron Hepburn who confuses pure rate of time preference with consumption discount rate. It's troubling that this confusion still keeps popping up among academics. Hepburn says:In contrast to Stern’s prescriptive approach, previous research tended to be “descriptive” in assumptions about discounting, focusing on what we actually do, rather than what we ought to do from an ethical point of view. The focus was on market interest rates, which reflect the sum of many individual choices. Historic market interest rates (ignoring past and present financial…

  • Self-fulfilling Prophecies

    A.V. Elias Suni
    2 Nov 2009 | 4:08 am
    Angela Merkel on Friday:It is realistic to say that in Copenhagen we will not be able to conclude a treatyGuardian, yesterday:"Nobody thinks we will get a full treaty," said a spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change (UK)...Lars Løkke Rasmussen, prime minister of Denmark, said: "We do not think it will be possible to decide all the finer details for a legally binding regime." Hanne Bjurstroem, Norwegian cabinet minister and chief climate negotiator, told Reuters: "I don't believe we will get a full, ratifiable, legally binding agreement from Copenhagen."Our climate…
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    Quoting the Crisis

  • "I think it’s time to take Wall Street literally: they’ve made it abundantly clear they have an..."

    9 Feb 2010 | 5:59 am
    “I think it’s time to take Wall Street literally: they’ve made it abundantly clear they have an insatiable appetite for killing things: the housing market, the financial system, the economy, reform legislation, the next generation’s future. Wall Street is so steeped in destruction that the symbols of death are everywhere.” - Pam Martens (via azspot)

  • "I think that a mature approach by both the movie industry and the internet industry sitting down,..."

    8 Feb 2010 | 7:56 am
    “I think that a mature approach by both the movie industry and the internet industry sitting down, having a conversation, and coming up with a code of practice is the absolute preferable outcome. The problem is at the moment in Australia there is no agreement, there is no discussion, there is no dialogue and people resorted to court. […] In Australia, unfortunately, because of a refusal to hold a dialogue — and I’ve been trying for two years to encourage the sectors to have a dialogue — they’ve got themselves into a court battle of which there was a decisive outcome in favour of…

  • "What do you mean “failure”? Your perspective is from the bottom looking up. But the financial model..."

    7 Feb 2010 | 11:52 pm
    “What do you mean “failure”? Your perspective is from the bottom looking up. But the financial model has been a great success from the vantage point of the top of the economic pyramid looking down? The economy has polarized to the point where the wealthiest 10 percent now own 85 percent of the nation’s wealth. Never before have the bottom 90 percent been so highly indebted, so dependent on the wealthy. From their point of view, their power has exceeded that of any time in which economic statistics have been kept. You have to realize that what they’re trying to do is to roll back the…

  • ilovecharts: via coerciveutopian

    7 Feb 2010 | 2:50 pm
    ilovecharts: via coerciveutopian

  • "One in five men in the U.S. between the ages of 25 and 54 is not working right now…"

    5 Feb 2010 | 2:01 am
    “One in five men in the U.S. between the ages of 25 and 54 is not working right now…” - Lawrence Summers (via azspot)
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    IMF Survey Magazine

  • India Rebounds, Needs to Return to Reform Agenda

    8 Feb 2010 | 4:21 am
    India’s economy is rebounding strongly, ahead of most countries in the world, with growth approaching pre-crisis levels, but policy trade-offs are also coming to a head and the IMF sees conditions as ripe for a return to fiscal consolidation.

  • IMF Approves $1.27 Billion Loan for Jamaica

    4 Feb 2010 | 2:34 pm
    The IMF approves a $1.27 billion loan to support Jamaica's plan to recover from the effects of mounting government debt, weak economic growth, and the global economic crisis. The Caribbean country’s plan includes a focus on social spending to help the most needy.

  • New Rules For Access to Low-cost Loans

    2 Feb 2010 | 12:31 pm
    In a bid to target concessional financing to the countries in greatest need, the IMF has reviewed the rules it uses to decide whether member states are eligible for concessional loans.

  • Crisis Alters Pattern of U.S. Consumption

    1 Feb 2010 | 12:40 pm
    U.S. households are saving more and spending less of their total income, in reaction to the global crisis, according to a new IMF study.

  • IMF Proposes "Green Fund" for Climate Change Financing

    30 Jan 2010 | 9:13 am
    The world must adopt a low-carbon model for growth as it rebuilds from the global economic crisis, IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn says at the World Economic Forum in Davos. To help finance this shift in the global economy, the IMF is working on a set of proposals to create a multi-billion dollar “Green Fund.”
 
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    SPG Trend Blog

  • January Unemployment: Are we there yet?

    Morris Segall
    5 Feb 2010 | 2:28 pm
    Today’s unemployment report for the month of January was revealing for what it did not tell us. That is, are we about to turn the corner on unemployment ?  The report showed a modest 20,000 loss in jobs in the month of January,  a virtual flat performance with the month of December, 2009. Of more note was a .3% drop in the stated unemployment rate from 10% to 9.7%, the lowest rate since last summer. However, as we commented in our blog article, “November Unemployment: Is this the Peak?“, December 4, 2009, the Labor Department made annual revisions to its monthly…

  • Ben Bernanke, the Stock Market and the Economy

    Morris Segall
    26 Jan 2010 | 4:36 am
    After playing politics with Ben Bernanke’s nomination in the wake of last Tuesday’s election loss in Massachusetts, the Democrats with help from the stock market on Friday, thought better of their populist pandering on Monday and began to rally around the beleaguered Fed Chairman. Criticism began late Friday with the stock market selloff and built up over the weekend. In our blog article of December 8, 2009, “Ben Bernanke: Hero or Goat“, we warned of the market ramifications of politicizing the Fed and its Chairman’s reappointment process. Congress got the…

  • Republicans win in Massachusetts: The vote heard “round the world”

    Morris Segall
    21 Jan 2010 | 4:41 am
    Tuesday’s  stunning victory in Massachusetts by Republican Scott Brown to fill the Senate seat of the late Ted Kennedy is undeniable evidence of the failure of the Democratic Party and President Obama to capitalize on their voter mandate in 2008. In what should have been a year of great accomplishment with passage of landmark legislation in healthcare, the environment and economic reform the President marks his inaugural anniversary with no great success in his domestic agenda and his party losing its super majority in the Senate. Coupled with recent Republican victories in…

  • Today’s Economic Landscape and What’s on the Other Side

    Morris Segall
    10 Dec 2009 | 5:26 am
    We recently updated our presentation on today’s economic landscape and what’s on the other side with some fresh data.  We hope you continue to find value in our slides: Today’s Economic Landscape and What’s on the Other Side View more presentations from SPG Trend Advisors.

  • Ben Bernanke: Hero or Goat

    Morris Segall
    8 Dec 2009 | 10:59 am
    Ben Bernanke appears to be fighting for his life before Congress where several members from both major parties and one of the independents in the Senate are rejecting his reappointment as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board for a second four year term.  The opponents of his reappointment blame Mr. Bernanke for aiding and abetting the excesses in the financial system that resulted in its meltdown and taxpayer bailouts of many of its institutions. In their zeal to lash out at the stewards of fiscal and monetary policy during the financial crisis of the past two years, the critics of Ben…
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    247 Wall Street

  • Gloating At John Thain’s Step Down

    247wallst
    9 Feb 2010 | 7:14 am
    From The Atlantic Wire Business writers are happy John Thain’s second act is a step down. The CEO who engineered a fire sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America and earned fame as the financial Nero who bought a $35,000 toilet while Wall Street burned has returned to life as the executive of CIT–a smaller, [...] [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

  • Today’s Best Market Rumors (4/9/2010)

    247wallst
    9 Feb 2010 | 5:54 am
    Updated throughout the day. The EU is getting closer to a bailout of Greece (Reuters) Beer may be good for strengthening bones (Reuters) Google (GOOG) will reveal product innovations on a YouTube webcast today  (Barron’s) Apple’s (AAPL) online store is down as it prepares to announce new MacBooks (SAI) Howard Stern may leave Sirius XM (SIRI) for “American Idol” Douglas A. [...] [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

  • Top 10 Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades (ERTS, GME, LAMR, MON, NBG, SWIR, SNWL, TWX, VZ, WBSN)

    247wallst
    9 Feb 2010 | 5:27 am
    These are some of this Tuesday’s top analyst upgrades, downgrades, and initiations seen from Wall Street research calls this morning: Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: ERTS) Cut to Hold at Needham. GameStop Corp. (NYSE: GME) Cut to Neutral at Credit Suisse. Lamar Advertising (NASDAQ: LAMR) Raised to Outperform at Wells Fargo. Monsanto Co. (NYSE: MON) Raised to Buy at BofA/Merrill Lynch. National [...] [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

  • Three SPAC Deals on Deck This Week and More (TLB, BPW, AXG, CFQCF, AUTC)

    247wallst
    9 Feb 2010 | 5:18 am
    We have been given some exclusive coverage on the recent developments in special purpose acquisition companies and blank check companies from SPACupdate.com this morning.  Talbots Inc. (NYSE: TLB) is up for review this Friday, and we have developments in Warrants in Atlas Acquisition Co. (AMEX: AXG), China Fundamental Acquisition Co. (OTC: CFQCF), and AutoChina International [...] [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

  • Searching For a Better Understanding of Depressions

    247wallst
    9 Feb 2010 | 5:09 am
    By John Tamny of Forbes “But is it not conceivable that wants may some day be so completely satisfied as to become frozen forever after? Some implications of this case will presently be developed, but so long as we deal with what may happen during the next forty years we evidently need not trouble ourselves about [...] [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]
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    Wallet Pop: Recession

  • Consumers opting to drink at home

    Madhusmita Bora
    8 Feb 2010 | 7:00 am
    Filed under: Shopping, RecessionThe sobering economy is making consumers enjoy a drink at home rather than get happy at the neighborhood bar. Drinkers are also finding pleasure in cheaper brands. New data released by the Distilled Council Spirits of the U.S. show a 2.2 % volume growth in retail liquor sales in 2009, but alcohol business in restaurants, bars, hotels and nightclubs slipped 3%. Overall, the amount of liquor sold by suppliers was up 1.4%,but that's hardly comforting considering it's the tiniest bump since 2001. So don't feel badly if your wallet is allowing you to buy spirits…

  • Retail sales climb -- Is that a light at the end of the tunnel?

    Laura Heller
    5 Feb 2010 | 2:30 pm
    Filed under: Shopping, RecessionIn the great game of trying to gauge the direction of the economy (it's up! No, it's down!), retail sales are considered a key indicator. And sales numbers released this week indicate a recovery is, indeed, on the way. If only it were that simple. Retailers across product categories reported higher than expected sales in January, beating Wall Street expectations and in some cases, the retailer's own projections. Wholesale clubs BJ's and Costco had particularly strong showings in January, with sales of stores open at least a year rising 8.4% and 8% respectively.

  • Free cellphone service for poor lowers rates

    Aaron Crowe
    3 Feb 2010 | 12:15 pm
    Filed under: Saving Money, Recession, EconomizerAssurance Wireless announced today that it is cutting its per-minute calling option in half in a program aimed at giving poor people cellphones. Call it a coincidence, but the move comes less than a week after WalletPop pointed out that after the 200 free monthly minutes are used, customers can buy more airtime at 20 cents a minute -- double what the company's sister program, Boost Mobile, was offering at 10 cents a minute. Its text messages, however, remain extraordinarily high at 15 cents, making messaging more costly than a domestic phone…

  • Inside Disney's exclusive Club 33, where the recession doesn't seem to matter

    Ann Brenoff
    3 Feb 2010 | 7:00 am
    Filed under: Extracurriculars, Food, Travel, RecessionDisneyland may indeed be the happiest place on Earth. At least, that would help explain why the park's extremely expensive and exclusive Club 33 has managed to accrue a 14-year long waiting list -- in the middle of a recession. Located behind a nondescript green door marked "33" in Disneyland's New Orleans Square, the members-only five-star restaurant was built by Walt Disney in 1967 as a place where he could privately entertain guests and dignitaries that visited the theme park. However, Walt passed away beforehe could enjoy the…

  • More execs starting own businesses, including scooping poop

    Aaron Crowe
    3 Feb 2010 | 5:00 am
    Filed under: Career, RecessionJoseph Gliottone has a quick comeback to his former advertising colleagues when they ask him about his new job picking up dog poop. "It's the same product category, but a different clientele," said Gliottone, 53, who was a senior vice president of print production at an ad agency in Boston, and earned $158,000 a year before being laid off in December 2008. He's now a professional pooper scooper and franchise owner of DoodyCalls, which charges about $16 a week to clean up after a dog. Since starting his business in Essex County, Mass., in September 2009, Gliottone…
 
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    The Baseline Scenario

  • Elizabeth Warren Calls Out Wall Street

    James Kwak
    8 Feb 2010 | 7:39 pm
    Although the Consumer Financial Protection Agency made it through the House more or less intact, the banking lobby is taking another, better shot at killing it in the Senate, and is planning to use the magic words: “big government” and “bureaucracy.” Elizabeth Warren wrote an op-ed for Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal that lays out the confrontation. For most of the past two decades, many Americans trusted the banking industry–not necessarily to be moral exemplars, but they trusted that the banks were basically doing what was right for customers and for the…

  • Whose Fault?

    James Kwak
    8 Feb 2010 | 7:14 am
    To believe politicians in Washington and pundits in the media, the national debt has become the most important political issue of the day. (Whether it should be–as opposed to, say, jobs–is another question.) The Republican argument is, basically: “Big deficits! Democratic president! His fault!” The Obama administration argument, by contrast, is “No way! George W. Bush’s fault!” I generally side with Obama on this one, mainly because of the two Bush tax cuts and the unfunded Medicare prescription drug benefit. Keith Hennessey, Bush’s last…

  • Fed Chair as Confidence Man

    James Kwak
    8 Feb 2010 | 4:00 am
    I’m not the one saying it–that would be Robert Samuelson, columnist for Newsweek and the Washington Post. The sole point of Samuelson’s recent opinion piece is that Ben Bernanke’s job is to increase confidence. Like much but not all error, there is a grain of truth to this point. Thanks to John Maynard Keynes (whom Samuelson cites), George Akerlof, Robert Shiller, and any number of economics experiments, we know that confidence has an effect on behavior and hence on the economy. Too much overconfidence can fuel a bubble and too much pessimism can exacerbate a slowdown.

  • Euro Falling, US Recovery Under Threat

    Simon Johnson
    7 Feb 2010 | 5:46 pm
    Intensified fears over government debt in the eurozone are pushing the euro weaker against the dollar.  The G7 achieved nothing over the weekend, the IMF is stuck on the sidelines, and the Europeans are sitting on their hands at least until a summit on Thursday.  There is a lot of trading time between now and then – and most of it is likely to be spent weakening the euro further. The UK also faces serious pressure, and there is no telling where this goes next around the world – or how it gets there. There may be direct effects on the US, as our banking system remains…

  • Europe Risks Another Global Depression

    Simon Johnson
    7 Feb 2010 | 4:46 am
    The entirely pointless G7 meeting this weekend only served to underline the fact that Europe is again entering a serious economic crisis. At the end of the meeting yesterday, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told reporters, “I just want to underscore they made it clear to us, they the European authorities, that they will manage this [the Greek debt crisis] with great care.” But the Europeans are not being careful – and it’s not just about Greece any more.  Worries about government debt and associated public sector liabilities (e.g., because banking systems are in deep trouble) have…
 
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    Minyanville

  • Electronic Arts Not Scoring on the Bottom Line

    9 Feb 2010 | 7:00 am
    The word on the street is that more of the white stuff is on its way tonight. Just what we need! My arms and back are still sore from all the snow shoveling I did this past weekend.Asian stocks ended mixed. The Hang Seng closed up 1.22% but the Nikkei finished down 0.19%. However European stocks were in positive territory early this morning. And here in the US we’re currently trading higher.Here's what I'm focused on this morning:Electronic Arts (ERTS): The well-known game publisher was out with its third-quarter numbers after the bell last night. The good news is ...

  • Why a Company's Credit Quality Can Be Lower Than a Country's

    9 Feb 2010 | 6:45 am
    Here's something we're going to have to get used to as sovereign credit risks rise: A company’s credit default swap (CDS) costs can be lower than those of its headquarter nation. For example at the time of this writing a five-year CDS on Spain’s bonds is priced at €160.1 basis points while a CDS on Telefonica is priced at €108.7 basis points. Jokes about Telefonica having a better year per Babe Ruth’s remark on his salary relative to Herbert Hoover’s notwithstanding this is completely rational. Here’s a list of 10 reasons why this can be so:1. A…

  • Random Thoughts: The Greek System!

    9 Feb 2010 | 6:35 am
    Something about headlines always gives me a nose-scrunch. Perhaps in the wise words of our fallen friend Bennet Sedacca "What the market knows ain't worth knowing." There's a fine line between being early and being wrong of course; it's called profitability. Was I wrong to own size Fannie Mae (FNM) $70-line puts in my personal account for years rolling them month after month as I waited for the mortgage giant to implode? Yes I finally tossed it on my restricted list just weeks before it cascaded lower (lesson learned: always sync your time horizon with your risk profile).Were we ...

  • Dow's Downside Has a Ways to Go

    9 Feb 2010 | 6:15 am
    Summary of Yesterday’s Notable Technical DevelopmentsAn attempted follow-through to Friday’s late rally in stocks stalled and equity indexes closed lower by roughly 1% but trading was slow with volume much lighter than Friday’s. The S&P went out at its low -- never a good sign. Commodities fared slightly better due in part to gains in natural gas and gold. The DB Commodity Index Tracking Fund (DBC) was flat on the day -- a moral victory. The dollar index was down slightly and is still below the 80.73 level we’re monitoring closely (see DXY in Critical Market…

  • Ten Million Solar Roofs Act Huge Waste of Tax Dollars

    9 Feb 2010 | 6:05 am
    Yesterday two of the low-lights of Congress announced their 10 Million Solar Roofs and 10 Million Gallons of Solar Water Heating Act of 2010. Being a tech guy I’m all for new tech and realistically I have no desire to ruin the planet anymore than the next person. However this is one of the biggest damned wastes of tax dollars since that bridge up in Alaska.I can’t speak to the water heater side of the equation but the electricity generation I’m very familiar with. Pictures always tell a better story so look at the one below. What you see ...
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    Howard Lindzon

  • StockTwits TV – Interview with John Borthwick of betaworks

    Howard Lindzon
    9 Feb 2010 | 3:54 am
    Recently, I sat down with John Borthwick , co founder of Betaworks (wicked cool real-time companies). John and his partner Andy Weissman build things, buy things and they invest in things….bitly and chartbeat , Summize (Twitter twit search). We chat about all of the above, managing a fast growing business, chaos, disruption, the early web and of course porn.

  • Israel Loves Forex

    Howard Lindzon
    7 Feb 2010 | 2:23 am
    It has been a long, fun week here is Israel. I am looking forward to getting home, but will also miss Israel. It has been almost 25 years since I last visited, but I think Israel will be a yearly visit now. The web and telco has helped shrink our world infinitely, but this week I was reminded of the importance of expanding my comfort zone. Ben Weiss of the Greylock Israel team invited me to meet a ton of companies involved in Israeli Fintech. The themes I see are Forex and Binary Options. I am bullish on both industries but not sure how I will directly participate. I will though. I would not…

  • StockTwits TV: Interview with James D Robinson @jdrive

    Howard Lindzon
    2 Feb 2010 | 5:47 pm
    I sat down with James D. Robinson of RRE Ventures (@jdrive on Twitter).  Through RRE, he has made investments in companies such as Adaptive Blue (Glue), betaworks, and drop.io, to name a few.  It was great to chat with him about investing strategy and process as well as some of the areas where he sees disruption occurring in the future.

  • Overheard on StockTwits: Collective Befuddlement

    Howard Lindzon
    2 Feb 2010 | 9:10 am
    After the last few week’s selloff, we’ve started this week with a rally.  This has left traders stuck between two opposing questions: Was the selloff for real or is the rally going to continue?  Here’s what the StockTwits stream is talking about today: It’s Groundhog Day today and the StockTwits traders are having some fun.  How do you play 6 more weeks of winter? The combination of good Pending Homes Sales data and great earnings from DRH is helping lead the market and the homebuilders higher: GS is hovering right around brick wall resistance as I type: Traders are…

  • StockTwits TV: Interview with Chris Dixon of Hunch

    Howard Lindzon
    2 Feb 2010 | 5:14 am
    Yesterday, I sat down with entrepreneur and early-stage investor, Chris Dixon.  We chatted about his background, the current VC landscape, and his latest venture, Hunch.
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    Information Arbitrage

  • IA Venture Strategies - Working to Build a Better Venture Mouse-trap

    Roger Ehrenberg
    30 Jan 2010 | 4:08 pm
    As was ably covered by Dan Primack in PEHub, I am starting a new venture fund. However, as my friends and venture colleagues know, I am extremely down on what the venture industry has become. To be clear, it is less an issue of structure (management + incentive fees in a GP/LP structure) and more an issue of size. It is clear to understand how motivations get skewed when venture firms effectively become asset managers, where the management fees alone are sufficient to make the partners rich and investments must become increasingly large and non-venture like. Growth capital is not venture…

  • FRC's Exchange Fund: VCs are from Mars, Traders are from Venus

    Roger Ehrenberg
    30 Jan 2010 | 5:45 am
    Both the blogosphere and the Twittersphere have been abuzz with First Round Capital's new exchange fund idea. Here are a few extract's from Josh Kopelman's post on the new program:  This exchange fund was created to allow First Round Capital entrepreneurs to contribute a small piece of the stock they own in their company  -- and share in the upside of all the other companies.When I was an entrepreneur, I remember the feeling of having all my eggs in one basket -- and it is our hope that this fund will remove some of that stress.  Now our entrepreneurs can get the same diversified portfolio…

  • How I Invest

    Roger Ehrenberg
    27 Dec 2009 | 8:27 pm
    As part of my year-end reflection and 2010 road map, I have been thinking deeply about how exactly I invest. How do I pick the companies and sectors on which to focus? I quickly realized that the principles I applied in the math of derivatives are the same ones I use as a venture investor. In short, I look at everything as a limit: "What does this (company/sector) look like at infinity?" I see most progress as being asymptotic, e.g., there is a period of accelerated development and rapid growth, beyond which gains are much harder and more costly to achieve. The goal is to find businesses at…

  • 2009: A Year of Opportunity

    Roger Ehrenberg
    25 Dec 2009 | 12:28 pm
    2009 entered like a lamb. A tired, wounded lamb. The financial markets were in shambles. Consumer confidence had plummeted. Fear permeated almost every walk of life. Holiday parties a year ago were filled with gallows humor: "Boy, this has been a crappy year. How can things get much worse?" From a public markets standpoint, they did get worse until an abrupt V-turn in April caused both equity and credit markets to soar. Confidence began to creep back into the picture, though the average consumer - as well as the largest venture capitalists - were still feeling a chill from the economic…

  • Thoughts on Taking Venture Money

    Roger Ehrenberg
    6 Dec 2009 | 5:05 am
    My (highly intelligent and experienced) friend Chris Dixon just posted on the importance of VC brands. He makes many good points and you should read his perspective. But the issue Chris raises begs a more fundamental question: whether or not to take venture money, and if so, from whom? There are many variables that come into play. Are you a seasoned and successful entrepreneur? Do you have a functioning product with demonstrable traction? Does your team include a strong founder-technologist with a strong reputation? Taking venture money early is simply not an option for many, if not most,…
 
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    The investment blog on Post

  • The first market of India - Retail Financial Services and Banking

    6 Feb 2010 | 8:37 am
      The first market of India- Retail Financial Services and Banking   Random Tweets from a Saturday Saving Media http://ow.ly/14wL1 , Also IPL and Indian Financial Services Advertising..stretching the rupee into hinterland access Lady Kidwai taking TV Opp with Bloomberg as opportunity to push women's agenda.. duh! women in I banking. HSBC rdy for ABN ..will RBI oblige Even in India HSBC does need a leg up in tech when compared to Citi but its brand equity is much better than any other. http://ow.ly/14wIq HSBC Invest India looking like a distress sale…

  • India's growth meme fires 2010 | Advantage Research

    3 Feb 2010 | 5:01 am
    ENERGY Kirit Parikh report released today, recommends freer market pricing and a longer term solution for the Indian Oil Energy majors. The implementation and adoption by Pranab’s government of course is dependent on political and economic convenience. The Oil Industry cannot support the burden of subsidies with the internal prices of Oil fluctuating in a wide band. Mr Parikh pegs losses at Rs 40000 Crs annually for the Oil companies. A Rs 6 increase in the price of Kerosene ( lower end derivative) is recommended. As losses on petrol are Rs 3 per liter, a price rise of Rs 4.70 per liter…

  • NTPC Divestment - II | Advantage Infrastructure

    30 Jan 2010 | 2:36 am
    Roadshow update NTPC gets on the road for bidding (price INR 200- 220) ( WSJ>com, NTPC Secures Debt ) [ INR 100 billion = INR 10000 Crores ] [India's Current Total Power Capacity = 75 GW (Peak)] NTPC Ltd. has arranged 450 billion rupees ($9.74 billion) in loans to help raise its power generation capacity to 45 gigawatts by March 2017 from the current 30.6 gigawatts. The funds will be used to build new plants and to modernize existing ones, Chairman R.S. Sharma told Dow Jones Newswires late Friday. He didn’t specify exactly how much the expansion will cost in total, but he said that…

  • The rich Mr Mallya

    24 Jan 2010 | 10:58 pm
    ..and india's aviation story When Kingfisher introduced TV entertainment in its never before Kingfisher Class in 2005, it created a buzz and some great innovation in the industry. The first pioneer to go for a full service airline after Jet had nearly monopolised the Private Sector Airlines esp after the Sahara deal, Kingfisher even found an ally in its now next door neighbour's Deccan, which has now become the staple LCC fare at the airline. The more than 30 awards, incl 6 Freddies as recently as 2008 mean that the Airline has been a pathbreaker and an iconic brand for India's global…

  • Going Private, Going Public

    21 Jan 2010 | 12:38 pm
     Max grows healthcare, insurance  Goldman Sachs owns information rights only for 9.4% stakeMax India, the Delhi-based company with interests in healthcare, insurance and telecom, have secured another round of major funding from a private equity arm of Goldman Sachs. The company&apos;s board has approved a proposal to raise $115 million (about Rs 540 crore) by the global investment bank, according to a report in Business Standard, which quoted a stock exchange filing.The company will dilute 9.4% stake post money, valuing Max India at $1.2 billion (about…
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    Economic Principals

  • What Can Be Done for Haiti?

    admin
    7 Feb 2010 | 1:31 pm
    How best to aid Haiti in the aftermath of its devastating earthquake? That question can’t begin to be answered without thinking hard about how Haiti came to be one of the poorest nations in the world, having been among its richest colonies. In an essay in his just-published Natural Experiments of History, Jared Diamond puts the question the way you want it to be asked – comparatively.He examines the histories of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the two halves of the island of Hispaniola, the first place Columbus stopped in the New World. Natural Experiments is an exemplary book, short…

  • No January Thaw

    admin
    31 Jan 2010 | 4:31 pm
    In New England, there is ordinarily a break in the weather known as the January thaw. Most years, usually around January 25, temperatures climb about six degrees from their chilly norm and remain there for a few days, before the next cold spell arrives. It is then that, if you look up, you see buds have begun to form on the trees. No thaw this year!Boston’s Charles River is frozen solid.As if to mock a century or two of folklore, a single uncharacteristically warm day last week brought a considerable rain, enough to wash away the snow, followed by a week of bitter cold. EP is more…

  • A Road Not Taken

    admin
    24 Jan 2010 | 9:00 am
    So a Republican won Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat last week in Massachusetts.  Scott Brown defeated Martha Coakley by a solid margin. Before you file away the result as the inevitable consequence of widespread revulsion at health care reform, let me suggest an alternative and, to my mind, much more plausible interpretation. The Democrats would have won if they had nominated the candidate who came in second to Coakley in the December 8 primary, Congressman Michael Capuano. Capuano, 58, represents the Eighth Congressional District, the constituency which sent John F. Kennedy and Tip O’Neill to…

  • Things Fall Apart?

    admin
    17 Jan 2010 | 5:36 pm
    I was reading Marlowe’s Soldiers the other day, by Alan Shepard, evading the mysteries of the business cycle in favor of Elizabethan war stories, when this passage, from Geoffrey Cates’ The Defense of Militarie Profession, of 1579, caught my eye. (Elizabethan spelling retained) There must bee therefore an other state and profession of men, whose power and prudence must comprehend, the maintainence and defence, not only of the Seate of Justice, but also of the Cowe and Plowe, of the Bed and Cradle, yea of the Alter and the sovereigne state: which resteth in the profession neither of the…

  • Obama and FDR

    admin
    10 Jan 2010 | 3:30 pm
    ATLANTA – Now that health-care restructuring has begun, the big item on the legislative agenda in 2010 has to do with how to regulate and organize the banks. We’ve been through the most alarming economic crisis since the October Crash of 1929 ushered in the Great Depression. What assurance is there that the same damn thing won’t happen again, next time even worse? At the meetings of the Allied Social Science Associations here last week, there was the glimmer of an answer. The similarities between Barack Obama’s first term in office and that of Franklin Roosevelt have often been noted:…
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    Marginal Revolution

  • "Economists have no clothes"

    Tyler Cowen
    9 Feb 2010 | 7:29 am
    That's the title of a new, short essay by James M. Buchanan.  Excerpt: Economists do not really understand what they are doing as they seem forced to make efforts to control aggregate variables that are not controllable in any direct sense. For example, the rate of employment (or unemployment) cannot readily be shifted by governmental mandate. At best, small and peripheral changes may be made while the emergent aggregate generated by the working of the large and complex economy remains stubbornly immune, or worse, to wrongly conceived reform efforts. Hat tip goes to BookForum.

  • Derivatives are often disguised debt transactions

    Tyler Cowen
    9 Feb 2010 | 5:50 am
    Felix Salmon points us to this new Der Spiegel article: Now, though, it looks like the Greek figure jugglers have been even more brazen than was previously thought. "Around 2002 in particular, various investment banks offered complex financial products with which governments could push part of their liabilities into the future," one insider recalled, adding that Mediterranean countries had snapped up such products. Greece's debt managers agreed a huge deal with the savvy bankers of US investment bank Goldman Sachs at the start of 2002. The deal involved so-called cross-currency…

  • The last words of Socrates (according to Plato)

    Tyler Cowen
    9 Feb 2010 | 4:59 am
    Shortly before dying, Socrates spoke his last words to Crito saying, "Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius. Please, don't forget to pay the debt." Here is one relevant link.

  • Sentence of the Day

    Alex Tabarrok
    9 Feb 2010 | 4:17 am
    Why raise the cigarette tax when you can just tax breathing? So asks Andrew Samwick in an effort to explain the illogic behind replacing a tax on gas with a tax on miles driven.

  • Assorted links

    Tyler Cowen
    9 Feb 2010 | 4:07 am
    1. The Michelangelo Marriage? 2. Russ Roberts is eloquent on trade. 3. More funny stuff from Yoram Bauman. 4. GMU, Feb.16, I am speaking on Haiti. 5. Scott Sumner on the Great Depression, in a nutshell. 6. Immunity-on-demand? 7. Articles which communicate awe are most likely to be emailed.
 
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    Grasping Reality with Both Hands

  • links for 2010-02-09

    Brad DeLong
    9 Feb 2010 | 12:03 am
    Menzie Chinn: Letting the EGTRRA and JGTRRA Provisions Expire Matthew Yglesias: No One Expects The Spanish Inquisition Digby on Obama: It's Getting Hot in Here Republicans vs. Republicans? Meghan McCain Rails at the Tea Party Reviving the American Empire Mark Elvin: The High-Level Equilibrium Trap: The Causes of the Decline of Invention in the Traditional Chinese Textile Industries Mark Elvin: The Pattern of the Chinese Past Mark Elvin: The Retreat of the Elephants Mark Elvin: Changing stories in the Chinese world Greg Anderson: To Change China: A Tale of Three Reformers Wang Anshi 王安石…

  • Pretending that Nothing Is Wrong When Your Hair on Fire Does Not Send a Good Signal...

    Brad DeLong
    8 Feb 2010 | 10:13 pm
    That the Greek government claims not to know that it badly needs help is a very strange thing to do if it wants to restore market "confidence"--investors are more likely to trust and have confidence in a government that they think is not made up of clowns: Greece Says Call for Aid Would Send ‘Worst Signal’: Greek Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou said he can’t call for outside aid as his government struggles to cut the European Union’s largest budget deficit. “The worst possible signal which we could send out is one calling for outside help,” he said…

  • About Frank Foer, Editor of the New Republic: Is He a Spineless Cowardly Slug? Or Is He a Human Being?

    Brad DeLong
    8 Feb 2010 | 10:03 pm
    Frank Foer, editor of the New Republic, has a guy who writes for him named Leon Wieselter: Leon Wieselter: Something Much Darker: I will conclude this unpleasantness here, though there are more rants by [Andrew] Sullivan that merit attention. Criticism of Israeli policy, and sympathy for the Palestinians, and support for a two-state solution, do not require, as their condition or their corollary, this intellectual shabbiness, this venomous hostility toward Israel and Jews. I have striven for Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation, and territorial compromise, and two states, for many decades now,…

  • Ten Mostly Economics Pieces Worth Reading: February 9, 2010

    Brad DeLong
    8 Feb 2010 | 8:58 pm
    1) Jim Hamilton: Yes the future deficits are worrisome: [A]t the moment we're observing an amazing willingness of investors and foreign central banks to lend to the U.S. Treasury... 2-year notes paying the lowest yield on record.... So if the government were to borrow another dollar today, invest in anything with a positive rate of return, and repay the sum in two years, it would indeed be a great deal. Those remarkably low yields at the moment in my mind are a result of a flight to safety... people are afraid to hold anything other than treasuries... not so much a market vote in favor of the…

  • With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility to Use That Power...

    Brad DeLong
    8 Feb 2010 | 8:47 pm
    Ryan Avent writes, apropos of: Safety in dollars: Here's a look at the recent relationship between the euro and the dollar... a long run of euro appreciation, then a sudden reversal amid the flight to safety associated with the 2008 financial crisis, then a return to appreciation, and finally another bout of dollar strengthening. The reversal there at the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010 is just what you'd expect to happen amid growing fears of sovereign debt problems in the euro zone. Such issues would increase the desire for safe havens and dampen the demand for euros, both of which…
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    EconomyStory

  • Monday quarterbacking

    Laura Hertzfeld
    8 Feb 2010 | 3:06 pm
    Last night’s Super Bowl may do wonders for the New Orleans economy after the Saints win, and it was also a big night for some unusual businesses and advertisers. WWNO commentator Andre Perry talks about what he calls the “most pivotal weekend in New Orleans since Katrina.” One baseball card shop in Chicago was pretty happy with the Super Bowl outcome – and it had nothing to do with the Saints. It’s an ad for Miller Lite that’s made the store a hit, as WBEZ’s Adrienne Hill reported: Owner Tim Herron says the response has been more than a little overwhelming—people are calling,…

  • Tavis Smiley and Wyclef Jean on Haiti recovery

    Laura Hertzfeld
    4 Feb 2010 | 11:48 am
    Earlier this week, Tavis Smiley interviewed musician Wyclef Jean, whose organization Yele has raised over $1 million for Haitian earthquake relief. Smiley compares coverage of Hurricane Katrina to the Haiti earthquake and reflects on his conversation with Jean:

  • The pricey (and icy) road to Vancouver

    Laura Hertzfeld
    3 Feb 2010 | 1:08 pm
    Olympic Torch relay/ Credit: Flickr user jp1958 It’ll cost a lot to host the Winter Olympics — over $6 billion CDN, to be exact. Will the Olympics pay off for Vancouver? The World’s Jason Margolis looks at the numbers behind the games in the first of a series of pieces. While the Vancouver Olympics are costing a pretty Canadian penny, the Globe and Mail reported this week that the games will actually help lead the economic recovery in Canada. The city is expected to tally economic growth of 4.5 per cent this year, the biggest expansion among all 27 cities in the report’s…

  • Musical notes

    Laura Hertzfeld
    1 Feb 2010 | 10:29 am
    You wouldn’t know there was a recession by watching last night’s Grammy Awards – the chorus of Beyonce’s winning song, “Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)” has echoes of “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” and the glitz and glamour exhibited in the nominees outfits – like Lady Gaga’s silver ensemble — were far from recession-chic. But it hasn’t been a great year for the music recording industry overall. With record stores shuttering, ticket brokers consolidating, and album saless tanking, big music has taken a big hit. Could Lady Gaga-esque antics be an antidote to…

  • Hoping to get to the Super Bowl? Have your connections ready

    Laura Hertzfeld
    29 Jan 2010 | 3:22 pm
    Abita beer isn’t the only thing brewing for the Super Bowl. Every year, the NFL allows public officials and corporations to buy set-aside tickets for the biggest sporting event of year – but who gets to tag along is a question of connections, donations, and the nature of the perk. WNYC and ProPublica are asking for your help in figuring out who gets what: Comments are already flowing in on the site, both for and against the perk system. AQ from Manhattan writes: “A lot of times the perks are actually given to important members of the staff who in turn team up with the congressman in…
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    Bank-O-meter

  • Friday Night Frights

    5 Feb 2010 | 6:46 pm
    The over/under is 5. The unders win. The economic backdrop is a picture of smoke and mirrors. Today, the first Friday of the month, brought the jobs report from the Labor Department. The economy lost 20,000 nonfarm jobs and the unemployment rate dropped from 10% to 9.7%. Job losses from April 2008 through March 2009 were revised up a whopping 930,000, or 23% from their earlier revisions.  In addition, the BLS revised their job loss estimates for 2009 up 617,000, or 14.8%. How does the economy lose jobs and the unemployment rate drops? In January, 1.1 million people fell off the list. They…

  • Invisible Jobs

    4 Feb 2010 | 11:19 am
    The Labor Department releases data on the previous month’s job picture the first Friday of each month. Tomorrow we will get the job picture for January. The picture will be fuzzy. Calculating jobs is no easy task. The Labor Department uses certain assumptions; birth-death models and models for business creation. Based upon the past five years data, the department adds in jobs to adjust for population growth; they add in jobs for anticipated new businesses and subtract jobs for anticipated business failures. The last year saw many businesses fail and few start-ups, but the Labor Department…

  • Housing Double Dip

    3 Feb 2010 | 11:59 am
    The US economy is showing signs of life. Confidence is up, ISM services and manufacturing both in positive territory. How about the housing market? Not so much. Here are the major impediments to housing market recovery. Shadow inventory is bigger than ever and growing. There are 2 million homes that are seriously delinquent (90 days plus); plus, 2.3 million homes in foreclosure or bank owned. There are nearly 4 million homes in traditional inventory. The total is more than 8 million homes. I believe the figure may be low, not fully accounting for loan mods and unreported inventory. The real…

  • Cheap Assets

    2 Feb 2010 | 10:52 am
    You’ve probably heard that more millionaires were created in the Great Depression than at any other time; the time to build a great fortune is when you can buy assets cheap. Here is an interesting excerpt from 1891, courtesy of the American Bankers Association, as printed in the Congressional Record of April 29, 1913.

  • Tight Credit

    2 Feb 2010 | 10:04 am
    Bank lending standards have been getting tighter for nine consecutive quarters, according to a report from the Federal Reserve. Banks tighten standards in several ways: raising thresholds for credit scores, reducing credit limits, shortening maturities, charging higher interest payments and fees, requiring higher minimum payments, or requiring greater collateral. Banks are claiming they expect asset quality to stabilize this year, but they expect a worsening in the quality of commercial real estate loans, prime residential loans, and home-equity lines of credit. Credit for businesses remained…
 
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    About.com: US Economy

  • Shoppers Cut Cards for Record 11th Straight Month

    8 Feb 2010 | 2:33 am
    Credit card use in America continues to drop at an unprecedented rate. In December, credit card debt, dropped a 11.7%, after falling around 18.7% in November. The eleven-month decline is the most since the Federal Reserve began keeping records. The falloff is a result of 12 months of job losses and tightened bank lending standards. In addition, credit card delinquency rates are rising, according toLowcards.com. Even with the drop-off, consumers still owe $866 billion, or $7,339 per household. (Source: Federal Reserve, G.19 Release, February 8, 2010) Read more...Shoppers Cut Cards for Record…

  • Employment Picture a Lighter Shade of Gray

    5 Feb 2010 | 3:19 am
    The January employment report shows there are 4 million fewer jobs than December of last year. Color this fact a dark gray. But, it is a lighter shade of gray than in July, when there were 6.8 million fewer jobs year-over-year. To see the trend, review my calculations on Jobs Google Spreadsheet. There were 52,000 temporary jobs added in January, 9,000 of which were for the Census. In the expansionary phase of a business cycle, employers add temporary workers before hiring full-time works. I'm not sure we are in the expansionary phase yet, but we are coming out of the trough. Unfortunately,…

  • Obama Budget Throws a Few Peanuts to Small Businesses

    4 Feb 2010 | 4:33 am
    If the $1.3 trillion budget deficit is needed to create jobs, and small businesses create 65% of new jobs, why is only $64 billion of the Obama budget going to help small businesses? This is peanuts when compared to the elephants in the room: Defense and Security ($895 billion), Social Security ($730 billion) and Medicare ($491 billion). Read more...Obama Budget Throws a Few Peanuts to Small Businesses originally appeared on About.com US Economy on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 12:33:28.Permalink | Comment | Email this

  • Obama Budget - Where Is the Money Going?

    1 Feb 2010 | 4:04 pm
    President Obama's $3.8 trillion budget for FY 2011 will create an unnecessary $1.3 trillion deficit that will ultimately harm the economy. Deficit spending of $1.4 trillion in FY 2009 and $1.6 trillion in FY 2010 was needed to boost the economy out of recession. But Fiscal Year 2011 doesn't start until October 2010. Most economists agree that the economy will be out of serious danger by then, and some even think the Fed might raise interest rates. Read more...Obama Budget - Where Is the Money Going? originally appeared on About.com US Economy on Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 at…

  • Economy Continues to Strengthen

    29 Jan 2010 | 5:36 am
    The economy ended 2009 with a whopping 5.7% growth rate for the fourth quarter. Before you pop the bubbly, you must realize a few things: This is an advance estimate. It could drop a point or two by next month, when the second estimate comes out. The growth is based on businesses stocking up low inventory, which added 3.39 points. Real estate and consumer spending actually slowed in Q4. These are needed to sustain any lasting recovery. Read more...Economy Continues to Strengthen originally appeared on About.com US Economy on Friday, January 29th, 2010 at 13:36:09.Permalink | Comment | Email…
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    Economix

  • Keeping China (Relatively) Green

    By EDWARD L. GLAESER
    9 Feb 2010 | 4:16 am
    Chinese cities are still a lot greener than American ones, but that may change as it modernizes.

  • What We're Reading...

    By CATHERINE RAMPELL
    8 Feb 2010 | 8:44 am
    What to do with your Super Bowl winnings, and other links from around the Web.

  • An Economist Walks Into a Bar

    By CATHERINE RAMPELL
    8 Feb 2010 | 8:05 am
    PBS Newshour had a segment last week on economic humor.

  • The Economics of the America's Cup

    By CASEY B. MULLIGAN
    8 Feb 2010 | 3:39 am
    An economist explains how entrepreneurship and competition helped settle a dispute on the water.

  • Where Do You Volunteer?

    By CATHERINE RAMPELL
    5 Feb 2010 | 3:57 pm
    More than a third of Americans who volunteer say they mainly do so for religious organizations.
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    iMFdirect - The IMF Blog

  • Getting Ready to Join the Eurozone Club

    iMFdirect
    1 Feb 2010 | 11:56 am
    By Marek Belka The conventional wisdom is that, when the seas get rough, it’s better to be in a big boat. But being in the European Monetary Union (EMU) hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing for all its members. On the contrary, as I argued in my blog posted January 21, the crisis has highlighted that sound policy frameworks are more important than ever. Let’s look at this experience from the perspective of the European Union’s new member states in the East, who are still outside the EMU but are set to join sooner or later. Should they accelerate or delay their applications? And what…

  • More to Do on Financial Sector Tax, Says IMF’s Lipsky

    iMFdirect
    28 Jan 2010 | 2:55 pm
    In an interview from Davos, Switzerland, the IMF’s First Deputy Managing Director John Lipsky said that although the mood among delegates is more upbeat than it was one year ago during the crisis, people still have concerns about the resilience of the economic recovery. In its latest world economic outlook, released just ahead of the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, the IMF is forecasting that world growth will bounce back from negative territory in 2009 to 3.9 percent this year and 4.3 percent in 2011. Lipsky also said it was clear that decision makers feel under intense political…

  • IMF Revises Up Its Global Economic Forecast

    iMFdirect
    26 Jan 2010 | 6:29 am
    The IMF has revised upwards its forecast for growth in the global economy saying it is recovering faster than previously expected. It  sees world growth bouncing back from negative territory in 2009 to a forecast 3.9 percent this year and 4.3 percent in 2011. But the recovery is proceeding at different speeds around the world, with emerging markets, led by Asia relatively vigorous, but advanced economies remaining sluggish and still dependent on government stimulus measures, the IMF said in an update to its World Economic Outlook, published on January 26. IMF Chief Economist Olivier…

  • Why We Need a “Marshall Plan” for Haiti

    iMFdirect
    22 Jan 2010 | 9:16 am
    By Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund The saddening and horrific pictures from Haiti after its devastating earthquake brought back vivid memories for me. I lived through an earthquake when I was a young boy in Morocco, and I know how harrowing it is. At that time, there were forty thousand casualties—nothing close to what has happened in Haiti—but I still recall the traumatic scenes of collapsed buildings and mourning families. Haiti has now been devastated on a far larger scale. The earthquake—the worst in the region in more than 200 years—is…

  • After the Crisis, Much Still at Stake for Eurozone

    iMFdirect
    21 Jan 2010 | 2:45 pm
    By Marek Belka What a difference a year makes. January 2009 marked 10 years since the introduction of the euro. That anniversary fell in the midst of the worst global financial crisis in the past half century. The euro—and the European Central Bank—proved important safeguards against the spread of the crisis. Countries whose currencies would likely have been subject to severe market gyrations had they not been part of the eurozone held their ground. And the ECB used innovative approaches, along with central banks around the world, to help provide liquidity and calm markets. But as the…
 
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    EconomicPolicyJournal.com

  • Chiesi: I'm Going to Walk

    Robert Wenzel
    9 Feb 2010 | 6:57 am
    With a confidence not seen since John Gotti fixed juries, Danielle Chiesi, the former hedge fund analyst who is accused of insider trading by the SEC, told Reuters that "There is not even a chance we will do one day in jail. We didn't do anything wrong." The "we" she was referring to was herself and Raj Rajaratnam, the leader, according to the SEC, of an insider trading ring. It's "an honor and a

  • More Iranian Warnings About 2-11

    Robert Wenzel
    9 Feb 2010 | 4:24 am
    Something is up.Last week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Iran will deliver a harsh blow to "global arrogance" on February 11.Iranian Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is now out with pretty much the same message."The Iranian nation, with its unity and God's grace, will punch the arrogance (Western powers) on the 22nd of Bahman (February 11) in a way that will leave them

  • More Panic Talk Out of Greece

    Robert Wenzel
    8 Feb 2010 | 7:49 pm
    These guys have no clue as to what to do.As financial sophisticates continue to pound on Greek debt, Greek Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou said he can’t call for outside aid. “The worst possible signal which we could send out is one calling for outside help,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Athens yesterday. “We will tackle the deficit,” he said, adding that tax

  • Geithner to Meet with Global Warming Crazies and Opportunists, in Snow Buried D.C.

    Robert Wenzel
    8 Feb 2010 | 7:32 pm
    On Tuesday morning, Treasury Secretary Geithner will host a breakfast meeting for members of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, an alliance of leading businesses and environmental organizations that have advocated for federal climate legislation. Secretary Geithner will then join the President and the Vice President to meet with bipartisan leaders of the House and Senate to discuss working

  • The Breakdwon of the BLS Models

    Robert Wenzel
    8 Feb 2010 | 6:31 pm
    Last week, when the BLS numbers came out, I highlighted the huge upside swing in the birth/death index:Most bizarre about the January number is that the notorious and mysterious fudge factor, the birth/death index had a huge downward adjustmnet.. The January Birth/Death adjustment was -427,000 from +25,000 in December. Got that? Without the Birth/Death downward index adjustment (which is
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    CapitalistMarks

  • Palin keeps plowin’ along.

    scott
    7 Feb 2010 | 2:39 pm
    Sarah Palin’s publicity train just keeps on smoking along. Saturday night was her biggest moment yet.  She was the ‘keynote’ speaker for a potential third-party gathering in Nashville (The Tea Party movement).  The message was all any of the paying customers there (a couple of hundred bucks each I understand) could have hoped for. Cheers and jeers.  Cheers for her digs at the Obama administration and jeers for the lack of meaningful response she gave to the question of whether she intended to run in 2012.  That is just a sampling. Sure enough she is a big star with the…

  • China, year of the tiger.

    scott
    1 Feb 2010 | 11:10 am
    As if America didn’t have  enough problems. Recession, a still messed up financial sector, overbearing majorities in the House and Senate, two wars, unprecedented unemployment, ongoing political bickering, nutty ideologues on TV & radio, a celebrity President, fearful climate change (?), porous borders, huge deficits, ballooning national debt, rapidly increasing cable rates, Big Macs, french fries and the disappearance, and fall,  of  Tiger. And thus, speaking of Tigers, on to China . . . a problem that is a growing economic and political threat and one that we are not doing…

  • Obama’s mistake

    scott
    28 Jan 2010 | 1:25 pm
    I was spell-bound as President Obama addressed the nation last night.  With a wonderful opportunity to unify the nation he struck out.  He disappointed me.  The guy is  real personable and he is on of the best at political rhetoric.  Yet, I believed he failed. How do I count the ways? Jeeze Louise, couldn’t he have dropped back just a little bit before making the ‘hail Mary’ pass? Sure he talked about unemployment and even mentioned a few generalized notions about how to deal with the problem . . . but, nothing specific and nothing immediate.  Strike one. As I…

  • Obama gets a 2nd chance.

    scott
    26 Jan 2010 | 2:08 pm
    Except for a few die-hard dems there are few American fans  (I exclude Norwegians and Swedes)  of  President Obama’s first year. A Noble Peace Prize?  Oh come on, who thinks the world is safer or more peaceful than it was a year ago at this time? Really. But, with few real accomplishments in his first year, tomorrow presents our  ’celebrity’ leader a 2nd chance to move America forward.  The State of  The Union message is traditionally a time for the President to speak of past achievements and lay out plans for the coming year(s).  This time around there is only cause…

  • Obama goes on the offensive.

    scott
    21 Jan 2010 | 2:07 pm
    With the loss of his super-majority in the senate, President Obama has decided to act quickly and decisively — setting the stage for a moderate stance that could work in the months to come. He announced today a number of initiatives to limit the ‘free-market’ activities of big banks. The implications to future profitability for those institutions (think here of JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and such) is going to be significant. Apparently investors think things are going to get a bit darker for the ‘biggies’ as a result.  Stocks of most of them took a…
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    Beyond the Cave

  • Sink or Swim

    31 Jan 2010 | 8:47 pm
    When I was a child I had a fear of swimming. I felt that it was physically impossible for me to stay afloat in any large body of water - that struggling, sinking, and drowning were inevitable.This fear might have stemmed from having two close encounters with such a fate - once due to the undercurrents of Long Island beaches, the second time due to an oddly shaped pool. Sinking seemed to want me.After many years of trying and failing, at the age of thirteen, I finally learned how to swim. But it wasn't in the ocean or in a pool - I learned how to overcome my fear in a river. It just took a…

  • I Let Down Conan O'Brien

    25 Jan 2010 | 8:44 pm
    I like Conan O'Brien. I really do. But I just couldn't watch him every night. Maybe once or twice a week...but not every night. I fall smack-dab in the middle of this group - I find the man funny and entertaining, but he's just a small part of my much larger media-drenched existence.What I will miss about his Tonight Show is the comforting consistency of a light and fluffy, nightly broadcast. That's why Jay Leno was successful, he gave this comfort to those who weren't as media-drenched as my generation is - to those who would tune in 3 or 4 times a week.I believe Conan will be much more…

  • The Human Bottleneck

    24 Jan 2010 | 8:09 pm
    In the world of alcoholic beverages, the bottleneck is the narrowest point of a bottle. It slows the flow of liquid. In the world of business and management, the bottleneck represents the narrowest point of a particular process. It slows the progress of development and thus constrains the whole process to its own limited capacities.In manufacturing, the bottleneck can be a machine. In traffic, the bottleneck is a stalled car, an accident, or a construction zone. In the world of creativity and intellectual creation, the bottleneck is usually a person or a group of people.Although potentially…

  • The Mobile Upgrade

    17 Jan 2010 | 8:24 pm
    I've had my old BlackBerry mobile phone for nearly three years. Due to a lack of time and patience, I've been putting off an upgrade for quite a few months. But as the keyboard loses its responsiveness and the screen dies a slowly dimming death, I will be forced to make the upgrade decision within weeks.Three years ago, this decision was pretty simple. If I wanted to send and receive emails, surf the mobile web (kinda), and make phone calls, the BlackBerry had nearly no competition - it was essentially the only real "smartphone." Today, hundreds of phones fit this description. Some have…

  • 0 for 1

    10 Jan 2010 | 8:14 pm
    Sports comparisons, analogies, and metaphors are often used to symbolize the ins-and-outs of business - e.g. the home run, the slam dunk, the batting average, home-field advantage, winning percentage etc. For many, sports is the ultimate representation of the real world, in particular for the world of commerce.Although themes from sports do often work for representing reality, one fundamental concept is treated very differently in business - the concept of failure. An basketball player that misses 60% of his three-pointers is considered a resounding success. A baseball player who doesn't hit…
 
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    American Madness

  • Courage Under Fire

    Joel Friedlander
    4 Feb 2010 | 9:03 am
    Today in America we are faced with a major issue of equal rights regarding Gay people serving in the military.  It may be beneficial to look at how Harry Truman handled a very similar situation in 1948; the integration of the military. In early 1948, Truman “… proposed a ten-point program, which included provisions for an [...]

  • Predictions before Tuesday morning

    Jason Ihle
    31 Jan 2010 | 7:17 am
    Here are my full predictions for the Academy Award nominations, scheduled to be announced Tuesday morning. I never make predictions in the Documentary, Foreign Film and Short film categories, but all others are here. Let’s see how I do and then follow up with commentary later in the week. Best Picture - With 10 nominees this year [...]

  • Creating New Jobs to Get out of the Recession: How will we do it?

    Joel Friedlander
    27 Jan 2010 | 2:01 pm
    Well, I just lost this one by mistake but lets try again.  We need a massive amount of job creation to get out of this Recession, which in some areas of the Economy is a Depression. During the recent Bush administration there were 3 million jobs created with a population growth of 22 million.  That was [...]

  • The Best of the Aughts, ctd

    Jason Ihle
    26 Jan 2010 | 6:05 pm
    A few days ago I posted a list of 6 films that are on my list of the decade’s favorites. Here I continue with another 5, all of which were released in the year 2000, which seems to have produced many of my favorite films. Could that be because it was the first year since [...]

  • Fool me once…

    Jason Ihle
    26 Jan 2010 | 5:04 pm
    …shame on…shame on you. Fool me…can’t get fooled again. It seems Democrats have not learned President George W. Bush’s lesson. In a maddeningly frustrating article about how Democrats have decided to throw in the towel, Senator Evan Bayh had this to say with regard to using reconciliation to get the Health Care Bill passed: “It would destroy [...]
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    Charter Cities - Blog

  • Deborah Brautigam on Sino-African Development Partnerships

    Brandon Fuller
    5 Feb 2010 | 12:09 pm
    In Africa’s Eastern Promise, a recent article in Foreign Affairs, Deborah Brautigam writes of the two-part development strategy that China pursues with a select number of partner countries in Africa. The strategy consists of loans backed by natural resources and special economic zones—ideas that come directly from China’s development experience at home. China Eximbank issues market-rate loans that finance infrastructure projects such as roads, railways, hydropower, schools, water systems, and hospitals in Africa. Borrowers repay the loans with natural resources—oil in countries…

  • Charter Cities in Prospect Magazine

    Brandon Fuller
    4 Feb 2010 | 9:44 am
    “We know from history that the competitive pressures created by migration can boost economic growth. But strong opposition to immigration in the world’s richest economies prevents many people from moving to better systems of rules. Charter cities bring the good systems of rules to places that would welcome migrants. Indeed, charter cities offer the only viable path for substantial increases in global migration, while lessening the contentious political frictions that arise from traditional migration flows.” —Paul Romer (Prospect) Paul writes about charter cities in the…

  • Charter Cities in The Sunday Times

    Brandon Fuller
    31 Jan 2010 | 1:17 am
    “Roughly 3 billion people from the world’s working poor will move from villages to cities over the next few decades. The choice is not whether the world will urbanise — it’s doing so, fast — but where and under which rules. Cities are so valuable that people will choose slums over rural poverty if that is their only choice. But charter cities would give them another option.” —Paul Romer (The Sunday Times) The Sunday Times published a commentary by Paul Romer today. The piece was adapted from a longer article written for the February edition of Prospect magazine.

  • Enfranchising the Jamaican Diaspora

    Paul Romer
    24 Jan 2010 | 10:29 pm
    Jamaica could let its diaspora vote in its next election. Doing so may be its best hope for a healthier form of political competition then, and therefore for better policy now. It may be its only hope for moving away from the unstable trajectory created by bad policy and out-migration of its well educated citizens.

  • Greg Lindsay on Creating Cities from Scratch

    Brandon Fuller
    22 Jan 2010 | 11:47 pm
    In the latest edition of Fast Company, Greg Lindsay writes about the global potential for new cities and some of the firms positioning themselves for this opportunity. He focuses on New Songdo, a small city-scale—host to about 300,000 people during a typical weekday—development 40 miles west of Seoul, South Korea. New Songdo will serve as a testing ground for firms operating at the frontier of urban technology. Gale International, the firm the South Korean government hired to build the city, designed New Songdo to emit one-third of the greenhouse gases of a typical city its size. Cisco…
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    The New Lending System

  • New Lending System (CCAF) in Line with OCC Thinking on Strengthening Loan Underwriting -- Bottom Line: CCAF Would Have Prevented The Crisis

    6 Feb 2010 | 10:30 am
    In his remarks before the American Securitization Forum on February 2, 2010, Comptroller of the Currency John C. Dugan made the case that minimum underwriting standards could play a major role in reforming securitization markets, and, in fact, he went much further and made far greater assertions -- assertions that are strikingly similar to those expoused in the CCAF white paper, my Congressional Testimony on July 28, 2008, and the book on the new lending system that was published last April. Comptoller Dugan said: "I think there is a better and more direct way to improve underwriting…

  • Consumer Privacy Debate -- Pushback on New Lending System

    3 Feb 2010 | 2:06 pm
    The new lending system (CCAF) delivers the power to know. Who would argue against this capability? Well, I had an interesting conversation that I want to share about a pushback on the new lending framework. A privacy advocate was horrified that the CCAF handle (credit qualification classification) would tell someone everything about a consumer's loan qualifications with a single number. My response is simple and direct, "Yes, that is the whole idea!" "Very bad, from a privacy standpoint" is the reply. However CCAF is more accurate, simple, safe and transparent from a credit risk management…

  • Chairman Bernanke, Tear Down That Wall!

    24 Jan 2010 | 7:24 am
    I read David Lightman's piece yesterday in the Raleigh News & Observer about the long shadow on the Fed Chairman's confirmation that is cast by The Wall . That's right, I said "The Wall," and by that I am talking about the unnessary obstruction that is effectively separating borrowers and lenders; The Wall that is preventing the flow of money to consumers and small businesses that is so vital to our nation's economic recovery. Lightman reported that, in reference to a meeting Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had last Thursday with the Fed Chairman, Reid said: "I made it clear that to…

  • It's All About People

    22 Jan 2010 | 7:33 am

  • Myth-Busting: Poor People are Risky / Cash Payers Are Risky

    19 Jan 2010 | 5:33 pm
    I want to do some myth-busting around the notions that: 1. Poor people are risky 2. Cash payers are risky To make it real, I want to share a lending story about a woman who is small in stature and had very meager beginnings, but who is a giant in terms of faith and determination, Her name is Estella, and I actually dedicated both of my books to her and she has been a lifeling mentor to me. Estella was raised in poverty in rural Tennessee, and her parents were share croppers. She had to overcome many hurdles involving economic hardship and access to education. Estella's life story is an…
 
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    Bluematter.

  • These are my ideals too. You make me proud!

    datacharmer
    8 Feb 2010 | 5:35 pm
    'You don't need to be born Greek to be Greek' - Έλληνας και γεννιέσαι και γίνεσαι. These are the words of Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou in Parliament yesterday. They make me proud to be Greek. If we really love our country, we have to help make their (immigrants') dreams the dreams of our country. Why raise the ghost of 'dilluting the purity of the nation'? After all, what does it mean to be Greek? Democracy, equality, humanism. Is our faith in Greece and our ideals across the centuries so weak and shallow? We can't be fooling ourselves; we can't keep…

  • A message to all PIIGS shorters out there

    datacharmer
    7 Feb 2010 | 4:37 pm
    I'm wondering what the shorters' game is. As I said before, there is no real possibility of default in an EMU country. In fact, the very notion of an EMU country folding with 120% or even 150% debt to GDP ratio is laughable, not only because it's very, very easy to fix the situation (the PIIGS governments announce a 5% cut in public sector pay, or a rise of 2% in VAT) but also because healthier EMU countries have a lot to lose by letting the PIIGS go down, both politically and economically. Worst case scenario, Germany says 'enough', and the whole thing just blows over. So, dear shorters, you…

  • Marc Faber and Jim Rogers are idiots

    datacharmer
    6 Feb 2010 | 12:16 pm
    Just needed to say this.

  • Friday Special 133

    mendoza
    4 Feb 2010 | 5:07 pm
    Scott Stulberg's Photography Priest checks fingerprints for mass attendance

  • Operation Mincemeat

    datacharmer
    4 Feb 2010 | 2:46 pm
    In January 1943, Churchill and Roosevelt agreed that after the successful North Africa campaign, the next target would be Sicily. The island was the logical place from which to deliver the gut punch into what Churchill famously called the soft “underbelly of the Axis”. But if the strategic importance of Sicily was clear to the Allies, it was surely equally obvious to Italy and Germany. Churchill was blunt about the choice of target: “Everyone but a bloody fool would know it was Sicily.” This presented the intelligence chiefs with a conundrum: how to convince the enemy that the Allies…
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    EconomicPolicyJournal.com

  • Chiesi: I'm Going to Walk

    Robert Wenzel
    9 Feb 2010 | 6:57 am
    With a confidence not seen since John Gotti fixed juries, Danielle Chiesi, the former hedge fund analyst who is accused of insider trading by the SEC, told Reuters that "There is not even a chance we will do one day in jail. We didn't do anything wrong." The "we" she was referring to was herself and Raj Rajaratnam, the leader, according to the SEC, of an insider trading ring. It's "an honor and a

  • More Iranian Warnings About 2-11

    Robert Wenzel
    9 Feb 2010 | 4:24 am
    Something is up.Last week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Iran will deliver a harsh blow to "global arrogance" on February 11.Iranian Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is now out with pretty much the same message."The Iranian nation, with its unity and God's grace, will punch the arrogance (Western powers) on the 22nd of Bahman (February 11) in a way that will leave them

  • More Panic Talk Out of Greece

    Robert Wenzel
    8 Feb 2010 | 7:49 pm
    These guys have no clue as to what to do.As financial sophisticates continue to pound on Greek debt, Greek Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou said he can’t call for outside aid. “The worst possible signal which we could send out is one calling for outside help,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Athens yesterday. “We will tackle the deficit,” he said, adding that tax

  • Geithner to Meet with Global Warming Crazies and Opportunists, in Snow Buried D.C.

    Robert Wenzel
    8 Feb 2010 | 7:32 pm
    On Tuesday morning, Treasury Secretary Geithner will host a breakfast meeting for members of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, an alliance of leading businesses and environmental organizations that have advocated for federal climate legislation. Secretary Geithner will then join the President and the Vice President to meet with bipartisan leaders of the House and Senate to discuss working

  • The Breakdwon of the BLS Models

    Robert Wenzel
    8 Feb 2010 | 6:31 pm
    Last week, when the BLS numbers came out, I highlighted the huge upside swing in the birth/death index:Most bizarre about the January number is that the notorious and mysterious fudge factor, the birth/death index had a huge downward adjustmnet.. The January Birth/Death adjustment was -427,000 from +25,000 in December. Got that? Without the Birth/Death downward index adjustment (which is
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    Free Market Mojo

  • States Consider The Obvious

    Ariel Goldring
    9 Feb 2010 | 2:12 am
    It took this long for governments to realize the obvious? States suffering through tough times are reaching for a tonic. Lawmakers in several states with tight control of liquor sales are considering legislation that would shift the job to private industry, saving money and raising revenue. Some states are seeking a windfall by auctioning licenses to private companies to run the retail operations. Others are considering selling distribution centers. Also, privatization would remove costs including paying employees and overhead such as energy bills. Virginia, North Carolina, Washington,…

  • The Drug War Lives

    Ariel Goldring
    9 Feb 2010 | 1:36 am
    Some facts: We’re still spending twice as much on the war as we are on treatment for the actual people our drug policy is supposed to help. The urge to describe this as “balanced” is just the trademark dishonesty we’ve come to expect from the drug czar’s office anytime they’re required to sum up their agenda in one sentence. The chart below shows where federal dollars go in the government’s “drug war.” HT: Andrew Sullivan

  • France gets serious

    Ariel Goldring
    9 Feb 2010 | 1:27 am
    From the Guardian: French children are to be given a “citizen’s handbook” to teach them to be better republicans, as part of national identity measures announced by the government today. Schools will be ordered to fly the French flag and to have a copy of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in every classroom. Under new rules, immigrants who come to live in France, who since 2007 have had to sign a contract of welcome and integration, will have to take part in a more solemn ceremony to become French citizens. They will also be expected to demonstrate…

  • Boredom Can Kill You

    Ariel Goldring
    9 Feb 2010 | 12:53 am
    According to a researchers at University College London, boredom can kill you. The researchers found that subjects who reported feeling bored were 37% more likely to have died by the end of the study. Scientists said that this could be a result of those unhappy with their lives turning to such unhealthy habits as smoking or drinking, which would cut their life expectancy. “The findings on heart disease show there was sufficient evidence to say there is a link with boredom,” the Courier Mail quoted researcher Martin Shipley, who co-wrote the report, as saying. So to avoid imminent…

  • Why does Israel have among the lowest violent crime rates in the world?

    Ariel Goldring
    9 Feb 2010 | 12:26 am
    John Lott’s answer: I will have to agree with John on this one. I work in Tel Aviv and see armed soldiers daily. Few people are dumb enough to rob a store when even eighteen-year-old girls have assault rifles.
 
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