10 For Tuesday
10 Quick hits for a lazy Tuesday afternoon:
• The Signs Don’t Point To a Typical Recovery (Washington Post) The wounded U.S. economy has shown signs of improvement in recent weeks. But many economists, who were caught off guard by the brutality of the downturn, are accentuating the negative, bracing for head winds that could cause the recovery to be weak.
• 10 Rules (Kirk Report) Applied sports psychology to Trading
• 25 habits of predictably irrational ‘nudgees’ (Marketwatch) “This mood isn’t just about the banks, Public Enemy No. 1. What the Great Recession has crystallized is a larger syndrome that Obama tapped into during the campaign. It’s the sinking sensation that the American game is rigged — that, as the president typically put it a month after his inauguration, the system is in hock to ‘the interests of powerful lobbyists or the wealthiest few’ who have ‘run Washington far too long.’”
• 1.5 Million to Exhaust Benefits by End of ‘09 (NELP) see also Structurally High Unemployment For A Decade
• “Too Big to Fail” Must Die (City Journal) Until the early 1980s, it was generally assumed that failure was a possibility for financial institutions, along with losses for investors who lent to them or held shares in them. Sensible regulation underpinned the assumption. Fifty years of policy died in 1984. That May, the nation’s eighth-largest commercial bank, Chicago’s Continental Illinois, found itself in deep trouble.
• Fed Says Banks Tightened Lending in Second Quarter (Bloomberg)
• Florida population drops for first time since 1946 ( Miami Herald) For the first time since the end of World War II, the growth state of Florida lost population, researchers say, in a sign that the economic recession is even worse than many had feared, according to a new estimate from the University of Florida’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research.
• Credit Crisis Timeline (Credit Write Downs)
• Sachs Appeal: Tim Geithner’s Wall Street consigliere (TNR) Sachs was one of the first economic officials in the door at Obama transition headquarters. The financial crisis team in those days was “shockingly skeletal,” one colleague recalls, and so, it fell to Sachs to survey the wreckage by shuttling between the Fed, the Bush Treasury, and a handful of agencies overseeing the banks. “I’ve got recollections of his feeling grim,” recalls Summers, who had yet to arrive himself. “The more he learned, the worse it looked.”
• The Nichepaper Manifesto (Umair Haque, HBS) Journalists didn’t make 20th century newspapers profitable — readers did. 20th century newspapers were never supernormally profitable because of what they wrote: it was the natural monopoly dynamics of classifieds that fueled massive margins.
Anything else linkworthy I missed?
August 18th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
The Florida population article is fascinating. . . .
” The population estimate also adds weight to the criticism of many economists who say Florida’s economy was a Ponzi scheme that relied on new residents.”
August 18th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Thought this was interesting.
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2009/08/odd-wsj-story-on-vermont.html
August 18th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
@Thor
In Florida, the PYTHON population is growing…
Any correlation?
August 18th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Southern California home prices fall as sellers get realistic about pricing:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aN3quz_Z5r8U
August 18th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
You know things are bad when people are leaving Florida. I wonder when people will start fashioning rafts in order to get across to Cuba?
Anyway, that is not why I’m posting. I have to think they got this idea from the movie Cars
Pranksters go Smart-car tipping
Owners of pint-sized Smart cars aren’t laughing about reports that vandals may be targeting the tiny vehicles in a 21st-century take on tipping cows over.
The Internet and blogosphere are abuzz with media reports that pranksters may have pushed several of the tiny vehicles into canals in Amsterdam.
August 18th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Expansive China Faces Grass Root Resentment – Trader Mark
quote: “So it’s sort of like colonialism all over again but with investment to placate local officials and citizens. Actually it reminds me of a Twilight Zone episode where the aliens land, give us gifts that benefit us…. all while planning how they will eat us.”
Great stuff. Mark’s witty and cogent analysis strikes again.
August 18th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Home Prices: There’s No Quick Recovery Ahead
(provided by WSJ)
http://finance.yahoo.com/real-estate/article/107533/home-prices-theres-no-quick-recovery-ahead.html
August 18th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
This was fascinating to me. I’m not posting this because I agree with the rightness or wrongness of the action. Just the fact that you can now kill someone from 2Ks away with a bullet….and this didn’t even set the record. It is amazing how efficient government can get when it comes to devising unique ways to kill people
British sniper describes moment he shot Taliban commander… from TWO KILOMETRES away
August 18th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
“…the system is in hock to ‘the interests of powerful lobbyists or the wealthiest few’ who have ‘run Washington far too long.’”
Always been that way… always will be.
August 18th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
LB – great link! What’s telling is this -
“The July median price rose 1 percent from June, the third consecutive monthly increase, according to MDA DataQuick. That was due in part to a larger share of home purchases financed with loans of more than $417,000. About 15 percent of transactions involved such loans, the highest in 11 months. ”
Which is what many people here have been saying was going to happen.
August 18th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
“In Florida, the PYTHON population is growing…
Any correlation?”
Will they buy the unsold condos?
August 18th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
@Common man: With the drones, US army can kill people on the other side of the world – Pakistan, Afghanistan.
August 18th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Debt collector used sex threats, harassment
ALBANY, N.Y. – New York’s attorney general said Tuesday he is trying to shut down a debt collector whose employees used outrageous tactics in several states, such as threatening to sexually attack one debtor’s daughter, berating people as drunks and deadbeats, and bullying others with threats of arrest.
…apparently congress doesn’t like being treated that way
August 18th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
That’s true LB. And look what they can do with those zombie banks
August 18th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
@ BR:
Thanks for the Kirk Report link… great stuff!
Must read for traders.
August 18th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Why Obama’s Ratings Are Sinking
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204683204574354383543314054.html
“In January 2009, the Pew Research Center asked about 2,000 Americans, “Do you think the government does more to help or more to hurt people trying to move up the economic ladder?” Amid the most frightening economic crisis in decades, more Americans still said the government would hurt than the number who thought it would help (50% versus 39%). Independent surveys from roughly the same period found that only one in five Americans believed he or she could trust the government.”
“Most Americans see their best future in the free enterprise system when (as a March 2009 Pew Research Center poll found) 70% of respondents agree that, “people are better off in a free market economy, even though there may be severe ups and downs from time to time.” There is no evidence that more than a minority of Americans accept the idea that a $17 trillion national debt, greater reliance on government for jobs and health, and hyper-progressive taxation offer the hope they deserve for themselves and their children.”
August 18th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
You can ask TT a question, or 10!
http://digg.com/dialogg/Timothy_Geithner_1
August 18th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
The Kirk Report is a great site, not trying to pull people away from bp but I think Andrew offers subscriptions there for something like $50 per year.
August 18th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
from Calculated Risk. The Population Distribution by Age adjusting bar-graph tells a fascinating story.
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/08/us-population-distribution-by-age-1950.html
August 18th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
Like watching the Boomers move along the curve – like a mouse in a python. By 2050, or earlier, we are Japan.
August 18th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
nothing like the Barrett 50cal. to produce ‘the pink mist…’
August 18th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
“For all its pretense and manufactured consent, our government is just a corporate racket now, and probably will remain so from here on out. This is a white people’s thing, an Anglo-European tradition. Moreover, we no longer get real dictators such as a Hitler, or a good old bone-gnawing despot like Idi Amin. We get money syndicates in powdered wigs or Savile Row suits, cartels of robber barons and banking racketeers.”
If you thought Kunstler could rant, you obviously haven’t read Joe Bageant
http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2009/08/corporations-are-now-after-our-very-beings.html#more
August 18th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Some thoughts on the crude oil trade, which LB shares, more or less. Note the tight correlation with EUR:JPY.
Anyone who doubts the power of yen and dollar carry trades in the recent rally should spend more time with charts.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/pending-weakness-crude-oil
August 18th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
A real revolution
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/advertisers-deserting-fox-news-glenn-beck-2009-08-14
August 18th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
I wonder about our long term population prospects looking like Japan. Projecting demographics out that far is very difficult – remember in the 70’s they were worried about over population. Now they’re having to re-do all of the population projections because even the third world countries have drastically reduced their birthrate. Lot’s of things could change and there’s no real reason we couldn’t have another baby boom at some point. I’m also suspicious of any population projections for the over 65 crowd. Most of the country is obese now, we won’t have nearly as many people making it into their 70’s and 80’s unless we somehow get everyone thin again.
I’m curious though – does anyone reading this have more than 2 kids? What’s that like in this day and age.
August 18th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Quoth the Pew: “Do you think the government does more to help or more to hurt people trying to move up the economic ladder?”
That, my friends, is an brilliant example of “begging the question!”
August 18th, 2009 at 8:48 pm
@Ben. .. I thought his name was Charles?
August 18th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
thor-
i have 3 kids- always trying my best to populate the earth
August 18th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
Well this is news for tuesday…Obama was bribed a $150 million dollars and he took it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/13/internal-memo-confirms-bi_n_258285.html