Tuesday Clickage
Tuesday clickage — quite a few items from around the web:
• Michael Lewis amusingly opines: Bashing Goldman Sachs Is Simply a Game for Fools Its important to remember, the vampire squid doesn’t feed on human flesh. (Bloomberg)
Related to the above: We Fear What We Don’t Understand (Kid Dynamite’s World)• The Great Recession: A Downturn Sized Up: What makes the current recession so bad? Other downturns have been more painful by some measures, but none since World War II has delivered so many severe blows to the economy at the same time. Already it is the longest. (WSJ)
• Fed Has Few Fans, Poll Finds (CBS News)
• Stock markets are rising even as the economy bombs – what’s going on? Ultimately, stock markets are driven by the outlook for corporate earnings. A number of US companies have surprised on the upside in their most recent results, though it is fair to say that quite a few others have disappointed. None the less, this renewed focus on the positive is in itself an encouraging sign. Stock market values are determined as much by sentiment as underlying realities. As such, they frequently get things hopelessly wrong. (Telegraph)
• What does it mean when Insiders are selling (Marketwatch)
• Floyd Norris writes: Politicians Accused of Meddling in Bank Rules: Accounting rules did not cause the financial crisis, and they still allow banks to overstate the value of their assets, an international group composed of current and former regulators and corporate officials said in a report to be released Tuesday. (NYT)
• A CLOSER LOOK AT THOSE GREAT HOUSING FIGURES (NYPost)
• A Fed Inflation Hawk Speaks: “I think we will probably have to begin raising rates sometime in the not-too-distant future,” Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia President Charles Plosser (Fox Business)
• U.S. Issues New Rules on Short-Selling (WSJ)
• Why Don’t Lenders Renegotiate More HomeMortgages? Redefaults, Self-Cures, and Securitization Servicers have been reluctant to renegotiate mortgages since the foreclosure crisis started in 2007, having performed payment-reducing modifications on only about 3 percent of seriously delinquent loans (Boston Fed)
• A Golden Age for Venture Capital (Dealbook)
• In Battle, Hunches Prove to Be Valuable: High-tech gear, while helping to reduce casualties, remains a mere supplement to the most sensitive detection system of all — the human brain. (NYT)
• FINRA on Leveraged and Inverse ETFs (PDF)
• Drowning Endowments Leave Tuition Money Stuck Underwater (Bloomberg)
• Apple targets new player revolution (FT) Video (Bloomberg)
• A Quest for Batteries to Alter the Energy Equation: R&D has to tweak the chemistry of devices and improve the manufacturing process, bolstering the batteries’ capabilities. Prices have to come down — a problem that is far more daunting when it comes to batteries for vehicles and the grid (NYT)
• Was Moore’s Law Inevitable? (The Technium)
• Frickin Hysterical: William Shatner reads Palin’s resignation speech, as poetry (Conan O’Brien)
• Finally, the Irrational Exuberance Matrix
Anything else clickworthy?
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July 28th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Bernanke’s Wealth Drops Amid 2008 Market Plunge
The bloodbath on Wall Street last year appears to have claimed one more high-profile victim: U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.
His wealth took a hit last year, according to financial disclosure forms released by the Fed Tuesday. As of the end of 2008, Bernanke’s asset holdings were between $850,000 and $1.9 million. That compares to a $1.2 million-$2.5 million range the year before.
A good deal of Bernanke’s hit came from a large-cap stock variable annuity he holds, whose value dropped from between $500,000 and $1 million at the end of 2007 to $250,000-$500,000. Bernanke’s Vanguard international growth fund also lost value.
Bernanke sold Canadian government bond holdings in two transactions last July and November.
July 28th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
“From the moment I left Yale and started working for Goldman Sachs, …” – Michael Lewis, in the first article linked above.
According to Liar’s Poker, his own book, he went to Princeton and worked for Salomon Brothers.
WTF?
July 28th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Read the entire piece
Its satire
July 28th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
The Moore’s Law link doesn’t appear (literally) to be working. The ML article on GS was too, too, good.
~~~
BR: Cause I included the source (The Technium) as part of the URL!
Fixed
July 28th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
I will go out of my way to read ANYthing written by M.L.
As usual, after reading his piece on G.S., I am howling with laughter.
July 28th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Here’s one that sticks out today for me. Doesn’t fit f411′s green shoots meme though.
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/07/cre-office-building-owners-walk-away.html
July 28th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
“America stands at a crossroads, and Goldman Sachs now owns both of them.” You gotta love satire…
Plosser isn’t even a “voting” member of the FOMC. He will get his chance to vote on rates in 2011. Until then, as the article implies, this is just more jawboning in order “to try and keep a lid on rates ahead of this debt sale” and to prevent the dollar from falling off a cliff. Read their actions not their lips.
July 28th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Let’s begin with the idea that the taxpayer is running a bigger risk than we are. The billions he stands to lose are trivial; after all, they round to zero.
LOL
July 28th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
One from the WSJ’s “day late & a dollar short” section……..
If banks’ earnings look better, you can partly thank accounting rulemakers. It’s another reason, along with one-time gains, that earnings at some banks may not be recovering as much as investors think.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124881205804687763.html?mod=djemheard
July 28th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
although Lewis’s piece is satire- everytime I read about the taxpayer money paid through AIG to GS to at 100% face value- no loss incurred- it infuriates me-
the USG should of – at the very least gotten some form of ownership stake in GS if it prevented them from incurring any losses-
it was merely the Treasury protecting its own at taxpayer expense-
mannwich-
no doubt- lipstick, pig, a big PT Barnum snow job- appears to give the market makers enough reason to play along because they know the fix is in
July 28th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
@ahab: What I find interesting is that MSM outlets seem more than willing to play along (even though some of this stuff like bank earnings reports are nonsense and the know it) until they sense a turn in the markets. It almost seems as if they’re accomplices in sucking J6P into the game and then coming out with useful “analyses” when it’s well too late for it to be useful to the average person. Then, like ahem, others (Cramer, cough), they can claim they made these calls and were “right” all along.
July 28th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
an article by Gerard Jackson “What Economic Recovery?”
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article12324.html
July 28th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
Satire is supposed to be humorous. This merely stated the general attitude of everyone at Goldman.
July 28th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
from the Michael Lewis article…
“…the U.S. government consists of three branches. Goldman owns just one of these outright; the second we simply rent, and the third we have no interest in at all. (Note there isn’t a single former Goldman employee on the Supreme Court.)”
July 28th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
For the mathematically inclined, a description of a paper that sounds like it has some good ideas of what’s wrong with the models.
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2009/07/28/64176/dragon-king-of-the-outlier-events/?source=rss
July 28th, 2009 at 10:18 pm
the Genre of Satire is becoming a Lost Art. Good for M.L. for giving it go. Others, should try their Hand.
~~
w/ this: • A Quest for Batteries to Alter the Energy Equation: R&D has to tweak the chemistry of devices and improve the manufacturing process, bolstering the batteries’ capabilities. Prices have to come down — a problem that is far more daunting when it comes to batteries for vehicles and the grid (NYT)
though, People might do Well by checking into ” Capacitors ” , Batteries, as with all else, have their Limits..
http://clusty.com/search?input-form=clusty-simple&v%3Asources=webplus&query=MXWL+Capacitors
some, already, take Capacitors as the ‘new’ Battery. They should. And work the ‘ownership’ model on http://clusty.com/search?input-form=clusty-simple&v%3Asources=webplus&query=car+rental+by+the+hour / Blue Rhino’s
aka ‘zipcar”s — pay when you use it. not when you don’t..
July 28th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
@MEH
Oh yeah that reminds me…
I’ve been getting ready to go SHORT (FCX)…
Might be about time to pull the trigger on that…
July 28th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
cvienne,
glad it reminded you..
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=FCX&
PEG Ratio nearing 5 ? Is that, really, of Value?
to me, these cats that have Claims on Materiel, in the Ground, are, both, ahead, and not, of the Game~
If these “Producers” are not keeping their Product, end/refined, in Inventory, they’ll are Invited the Whirlwind they seek to Offer hedge to..
“Going Concerns” are a, highly, Questionable proposition..
http://www.ino.com/ Produced Goods/Inventory , see: LIFO, has to begin playing a Larger Role..
IOW, it’s called Savings.
July 29th, 2009 at 10:18 am
low-grade syntax: “…they’ll are Invited the Whirlwind they seek to Offer hedge to..”
they are Inviting the Whirlwind they seek to offer Hedge to.
or, maybe, more prosaicly, these firms have significant Political and Operational Risks, to say little of Transportation Costs/Logistical uncertainties..
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/prosaic