Non FOMC Related Reads
I am S O – B O R E D of all the Fed chatter. Its become meaningless blather, as we now know they are not going to tighten til around 2020 or so.
So instead of focusing on that nonsense, here are some unrelated, non-Fed readings that are well worth your while.
• Inside the Dire Financial State of the States (Time)
• Asia’s wealthy surpass Europe’s for first time (AP/Yahoo)
• Fannie Mae Increases Penalties for Strategic Defaulters — Borrowers Who Walk Away (Fannie Mae)
• Victor Niederhoffer on Being Wrong (Slate)
• Contemptible Advocates of Debt Default (Capital Gains and Games)
• A Colossal Fracking Mess (Vanity Fair)
• The most comprehensive iPhone 4 review you are likely to see (Engadget)
• Why Amazon’s Kindle Will Eventually Win the e-Book Wars (gigaom)
• How a Four-Year-Old Plays Grand Theft Auto — very differently from an adult (Bitmob)
• Giant time suck: Ragdoll Cannon (Game)
What are you reading?
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June 23rd, 2010 at 4:18 pm
Reuters Story: Soros says Germany could cause euro collapse
http://market-vipasyana.blogspot.com/2010/06/soros-germany-could-cause-euro-collapse.html
“…German policy is a danger for Europe, it could destroy the European project,” he told German weekly Die Zeit. Soros, who earned $1 billion in 1992 by betting against the British pound, added that he “could not rule out a collapse of the euro.” “If the Germans don’t change their policy, their exit from the currency union would be helpful for the rest of Europe,” he said.
Chancellor AngelaMerkel unveiled plans earlier this month for 80 billion euros ($107 billion) in budget cuts over the next four years — a package she hopes will bring Germany’s structural deficit within European Union limits by 2013. “Right now the Germans are dragging their neighbors into deflation, which threatens a long phase of stagnation. And that leads to nationalism, social unrest and xenophobia. Democracy itself could be at risk,” he said. “Germany is globally isolated … Why don’t they let their salaries rise? That would help other EU states to pick up.”
I guess the shift is consciousness is getting some strong reaction from a one time market mafia/fundamentalist (and of course a philanthropist Mr. Soros). The irony and the contrast lies in the article itself. He is the same guy who has profited from the collapse of certain currencies like Malaysia and UK as mentioned above. I guess his roots in Europe are forcing him to speak up for the Euro?!
(disclosure: I am not short Euro or any other currencies and I do not wish ill-will to Euro-zone)
June 23rd, 2010 at 4:25 pm
high speed rail in NY ? I don’t think so. http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=944084
June 23rd, 2010 at 4:27 pm
More oil into gulf as robots have accident. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1416392020100623
June 23rd, 2010 at 4:39 pm
Go USA, go Futbol!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glASWhQgLs0
June 23rd, 2010 at 4:43 pm
I ment this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZD_7zHTvDl4&feature=fvw
June 23rd, 2010 at 4:47 pm
I must confess to reading the following:
http://www.harpersbazaar.com/magazine/feature-articles/fashionable-life-fendi-dinner-0508
And I am still asking myself what the following means: “her chartreuse lambskin micro Baguette”
“Lauren Taschen outbid me on the Koons,” said cohost Maria Bell. “I went to $18,000!” New York social [sic] Fabiola Beracasa fiddled with her chartreuse lambskin micro Baguette. “This afternoon, [Fendi CEO] Michael Burke told me that to raise the logo, they inject it with silicone,” Beracasa said. “I told him, ‘God, that’s so L.A.’”
I would love to know what a micro Baguette is and whether it was fiddled with on account of its color or the lambskin.
June 23rd, 2010 at 4:51 pm
“Reading” the lower right corner of the “Colossal Fracking Mess”, in Vanity Fair, which is a photograph of the luscious Brigette Bardot, looking her level best in a clip from, “And god created Woman”.
Beats anything about natural gas.
June 23rd, 2010 at 4:59 pm
Here’s a heartening tale about the benefits of the Homebuyer’s tax credit:
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2010/jun/23/231135/report-inmates-got-9-million-homebuyer-tax-credits/
That worked out well, huh! Surely it will help to prop up the housing prices over the long term and fix the broken housing market and economy, right? Wait, it didn’t and it was full of fraud and corruption? OOOPS! Who could have seen that coming?
June 23rd, 2010 at 5:18 pm
When Greatness Slips Away
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/opinion/22herbert.html?th&emc=th
Faustus Makes a Deal
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/opinion/22brooks.html?th&emc=th
June 23rd, 2010 at 5:20 pm
10-hour match today at Wimbledon, still unfinished
http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/tennis/wimbledon10/news/story?id=5319726
June 23rd, 2010 at 5:30 pm
Oil soaks miles of Pensacola Beach
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/06/23/pensacola.beach.oil/index.html?eref=igoogle_cnn
I nominate the GOP for a CLIO for their advertising slogan, “Drill, Baby, Drill.”
http://www.clioawards.com/
June 23rd, 2010 at 5:41 pm
Nike Sales Miss the Goal – Good earnings growth; sales below expectation
Paychex fourth-quarter net income rises 2% – Sees flat Net Income growth for fiscal 2011.
Bed Bath & Beyond: Great results; outlook cautious.
The household-goods retailer said it expects second-quarter earnings in the range of 59 cents to 63 cents a share, below Wall Street’s forecast of 64 cents.Thie guidance appeared to overshadow what was a solid first quarter for the company. During the period, Bed Bath & Beyond earned $137.6 million, or 52 cents a share, compared with $87.2 million, or 34 cents, in the year-ago period. Analysts were calling for a profit of 48 cents a share.
Adobe: Stock falls after great earnings last night – …Miedler said the stock decline may be due to disappointment from investors in Adobe’s third-quarter outlook. “They maybe wanted to see more of that momentum from the second quarter carry into the third quarter as well,” the analyst said. Adobe said it expects earnings for the third quarter, excluding items, to be between 46 cents and 50 cents a share and revenue to be $950 million to $1 billion. Analysts have been looking for third-quarter earnings of 48 cents a share and $958.7 million in revenue, according to Thomson Reuters.
Yahoo Finance/Zacks: Jabil’s Blowout Third Quarter – Stock was up over 10% at one point today; strong close.
Jabil provided better-than-expected guidance for the fourth quarter and expects the full year 2010 to be a record year in terms of both revenues and earnings. The company expects net revenue for its fourth quarter of 2010 to be in the range of $3.8 billion to $4.0 billion, an increase of 10% to 16% sequentially and above the consensus expectation of $3.40 billion.
AP Story: CarMax net income more than triples in 1st-quarter as it sells more used cars
Used car dealership chain CarMax Inc. said Wednesday its net income more than tripled in the fiscal first quarter because it sold more vehicles as the industry slowly recovers from the worst U.S. auto sales market in decades. The results beat Wall Street expectations, and its shares rose $1.74, or 8.7 percent, to $21.74 in morning trading after climbing more than 10 percent earlier in the session.
CEO Tom Folliard said customer traffic is gradually improving but noted sales remain “well below” pre-recession levels. The Richmond company, which will join the Standard & Poor’s 500 after the market closes Friday, said its net income climbed to $101.1 million, or 44 cents per share, in the three months ended May 31, up from $28.7 million, or 13 cents per share, a year ago. Excluding a benefit related to lower-than-expected loan losses, its adjusted earnings totaled 41 cents per share, topping analysts’ estimates for earnings of 33 cents per share.
All in all:
* The revenue & earnings growth story for most companies was good as of May end quarter (except for Paychex, which is obvious bad given the bad employment picture).
* There is a word of caution coming out from the likes of BBBY, ADBE so far.
* Generally speaking it is fair to say that things have not fallen apart as of the May end.
* The stock reaction to some of these earnings results imply some more caution heading into summer; a slow down can turn into a recession.
* More importantly the growth assumptions baked in the stocks/markets for 2011 may prove to be a total disappointment.
June 23rd, 2010 at 5:50 pm
About 20 percent of the 48,000 apps in the Android marketplace allow a third-party application access to sensitive or private information, according to a report released on Tuesday.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20008518-245.html
June 23rd, 2010 at 5:56 pm
“Fannie Mae Increases Penalties for Strategic Defaulters — Borrowers Who Walk Away”
And then there is this….
Amnesty for the Banksters, Debtor’s Prison for the Serfs
by William Norman Grigg
http://www.lewrockwell.com/grigg/grigg-w151.html
System is definitively broken and I see no fixer in sight.
June 23rd, 2010 at 6:05 pm
Nice link to Vanity Fair for this important article. Thanks! It’s a very interesting read..
A Colossal Fracking Mess
The dirty truth behind the new natural gas. Related: A V.F. video look at a town transformed by fracking.
Read More http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2010/06/fracking-in-pennsylvania-201006?currentPage=all#ixzz0riTVILtc
June 23rd, 2010 at 6:20 pm
@TakBak04: You can watch videos (You Tube) of people in Wyoming turning their kitchen faucets on and setting their water on fire. I came across that last fall. People in Cherry valley, NY are looking hard at selling their gas rights on their land, it’s big money and they have been distressed up there for so long, they will take the gamble. At least the Catskills are safe for now because of NYC watershed. And as of now the companies still don’t have to release the name of any of the chemicals that are used in fracking. Just another way to frack all of us.
June 23rd, 2010 at 8:16 pm
I was very surprised to see someone as intelligent as Simon Johnson recommend a “Keynesian clown” like Paul Krugman (as Mish would say) for Director of the OMB
http://baselinescenario.com/2010/06/22/paul-krugman-for-omb/
June 23rd, 2010 at 8:57 pm
The oil is being evaporated and/or burned off into the clouds, and coming down as rain. This is a game-changer if ever there was one.
http://www.businessinsider.com/gulf-spill-may-be-causing-oil-rain-in-louisiana-2010-6
.
June 23rd, 2010 at 9:31 pm
DaveB:
I worked down there in the New Orleans area and southern part of Louisiana last October. I have been wondering what the effect of the oil getting in the sugar cane will be. I figured it can’t be good — and that is a huge crop down there.
That will be the secondary effects of the oil spill after the destruction of pretty much all of the seafood.
Then there is the question of what it will do to inland water systems such as Lake Pontchartrain and other waterways and bayous.
Ugh. At least I got to see it while it was in semi-pristine condition.
June 23rd, 2010 at 9:31 pm
Is Factcheck.org truly non-biased? Was it ever? I’ve always been a little skeptical, it certainly seems to lean left (maybe that’s because I lean right). But reading “fact checking articles” like this, I’m pretty sure that if they aren’t biased…at the very least, they’re incompetent.
http://wordpress.asc.upenn.edu/2010/06/oil-spill-foreign-help-and-the-jones-act/
When the first sentence of your offer says no, and the second sentence says yes….(and you leave off the sentence that says that there’s a HUGE maybe)…..your credibility goes way down in my book.
June 23rd, 2010 at 9:58 pm
Lariat1 Says:
June 23rd, 2010 at 6:20 pm
@TakBak04: You can watch videos (You Tube) of people in Wyoming turning their kitchen faucets on and setting their water on fire. I came across that last fall. People in Cherry valley, NY are looking hard at selling their gas rights on their land, it’s big money and they have been distressed up there for so long, they will take the gamble. At least the Catskills are safe for now because of NYC watershed. And as of now the companies still don’t have to release the name of any of the chemicals that are used in fracking. Just another way to frack all of us.
—–
The Hudson Valley of NY and indeed all of NY is beautiful in many different ways. Sad to see our dire economic times are causing NY’ers and folks in PA, and elsewhere to sell their land to these Natural Gas Companies..many owned by Big Oil. Our water supply is one of the few things we have left that we thought we had rights to. Sadly even that is now “For Profit.”
Maybe if they find NG under the Hedge Funder’s Homes in Greenwich CT. we will see a change.
OOPS…I forgot..they can pay to have water come in from Tankers from Paraguay to replenish their swimming pools and their kids and they can take Rain Showers with pure water …so they never develop scabs or sores and all their kids go to Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Princeton! The rest of us eat TWINKIES and DIE.
Sorry…I’m a littlw OTT on this….
June 23rd, 2010 at 10:09 pm
That sure was a time wasting game. Finally gave up after level 20. Bet you can’t play it on your iPad :)
June 23rd, 2010 at 10:14 pm
Don’t worry Okie: just leave it and it will take care of itself like Rush says:
“The ocean will take care of this on its own if it was left alone and left out there,” he said. “It’s natural. It’s as natural as the ocean water is.”
June 23rd, 2010 at 10:31 pm
From many late-night viewings of Sex and the City reruns, I believe a ‘chartreuse lambskin micro Baguette’ is a small purse.
Terrie
June 23rd, 2010 at 11:08 pm
Rather interesting quirk of the new iPhone. Holding it certain ways drops the bars. Mossberg says Apple acknowledges the issue, but that it’s more of a bar-display problem. Most say it doesn’t cause it to drop calls, but one of the videos shows it interfering with a data speed test. Seems at odds with experience when TV’s had antennas and holding the antenna sometimes improved reception in a fringe area.
http://gizmodo.com/5571171/iphone-4-loses-reception-when-you-hold-it-by-the-antenna-band
Also a report of a yellow spot in the lower right portion of the screen.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/23/poll-is-your-iphone-4-retina-display-seeing-yellow-spots/
Probably the explanation most likely to satisfy the typical Apple user was “its residue from where the unicorn touched the device to infuse it with magic.”
June 24th, 2010 at 5:09 am
There have been water wells in Wyoming that also brought up hydrogen sulphide and methane without being hydro-frack’ed. In the old days, ranchers would pump the water out into a trough for cattle, put a 30-gal drum over the flowpipe and pipe off the methane to heat the house and hot water.
The frack’ing issue, however, is making this a much more common situation, and it isn’t funny.
I believe the fastest way to solve this issue (at least in the west) is to pass state legislation that directs the state water engineer to prohibit injection of anything but water into the ground (which is already the law in some western states), and further to impose penalties upon a gas driller when they compromise existing water wells. This is completely within the area of authority for state water engineers throughout the west. Since water rights are a state issue, and destruction of water quality for animal or human consumption would cause a loss of water rights through non-use, the issue could be solved rather quickly this way, rather than getting the idiots in Congress involved with the Clean Water Act, the oil/gas lobby and the legislative intent of the CWA, which doesn’t deal with sub-surface water quality in the same way it deals with surface water quality.
June 24th, 2010 at 7:31 am
DaveB we had the brightest yellow sky I’ve ever seen last evening after the 1.3″ of yesterdays rains came thru
like looking thru BlueBlockers – clouds floating by with the sun out for 2 hrs
what was I reading – this 3 day estate sale couldn’t be missed – 2/3rd of the back page of classfids in 3 sep ads
“located in Peru, IL at the Historic Castle House”
http://www.auctionzip.com/cgi-bin/auctionview.cgi?lid=856528&kwd=castle%20house&zip=61354&category=0
jetset auction goers – our town (across river of the sale) is having a car show & live band “Cadillac Casanovas” Saturday evening for after hours
proof’g reminds me to check the basement for water next
June 24th, 2010 at 8:18 am
Re Kindle:
All specialized book readers are soon to be obsolete. The iPad is an expensive, semi functional toy made groty by being covered with greasy fingerprints. Would you touch one after it was handled by a slob who probably picked his nose prior to rubbing his finger all over the screen? It just seems a lot dirtier than a keyboard. Plus reading through fingerprint smears is not appealing to me.
But the best news is that Amazon has a free PC kindle reader that taps into your purchase history from Amazon. You can instantly download your purchases into your PC (all of them if you own more than one) with this free application and read them there. Download it for free from Amazon.
June 24th, 2010 at 9:44 am
dear areola
i dont think even drug hazed eurotrash are yet fiddling in public with deployed lambskins?