The Big Picture - Macro Perspective on the Capital Markets, Economy, Technology, and Digital Media

Why is the Hamster commercial for the Kia Soul so damn addictive?

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The original Black Sheep video is here.

We have lots of things going on in the market today — do not be surprised to see some odd trading:

• Its the end of the quarter, so we have Quadruple Expiration: Options, Futures, Indices, etc.

• Russell 2000 rebalancing will be impacting lots of the smaller names

• FIFA World Cup today features the US vs Slovenia at 10am; Pebble Beach the rest of the day (PGA video)

• Summer Friday — rookies manning the terminals!

Looks to be a squelchy day — watch for the volume fade, especially after lunch . . .

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Source:
Is BP the Next Lehman Brothers?
Peter Gorenstein
Yahoo Tech Ticker Jun 17, 2010 12:18pm EDT

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/is-bp-the-next-lehman-brothers-505352.html

Awesome game 7 of the NBA Finals –

Got home from a Minyanville event around 10:15 pm. Watched the first half of the game on Tivo — by the the time the 2nd half started, I was caught up with the live game.

Just a terrific series.

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Of course, this means 4 hours sleep — and I will be worthless tomorrow . . .

Some intriguing reads for your afternoon:

• The rise and fall of BP (Guardian)
• WTF? Elliot Wave predicts triple-digit Dow in 2016 (Marketwatch)
• The Sagging of the Middle Class (Economix)
• UCLA Anderson: Economic recovery will be a long slow climb (San Jose Business Journal)
• CEOs to Washington: Spend on Energy R&D (Greenbiz)
• The world’s only immortal animal (Yahoo)
• The 101 Best Sandwiches in New York (New York)
• Its Damned Hot (Infectious Greeg)

What’s on your reading list?

WordPress, the blogging software that powers The Big Picture along with 11 million other blogs and has 256 million unique visitors to its hosted sites, may not be as revolutionary as movable type but it is a crucial element in what has made it possible for blogging to grow from a hobby into a major threat to the mainstream media.

Here’s the opening graphs of my story on The Big Money explaining who is behind WordPress and why they’ve been able to grow so big without becoming a big company themselves:

A year ago, Justin Halpern was an underemployed comedy writer who had to move back into his parents’ home in San Diego. Today, he’s got 1.4 million Twitter followers, the
No. 1 book on the New York Times nonfiction best-seller list, and a CBS sitcom starring William Shatner. All it took was writing down quotes from his father that he tweets out as “Shit My Dad Says.”

Technology and social media are redrawing the roadmap to authorial success. And for every Justin Halpern, there are 10,000 professional writers wondering how to turn blogs, microblogs, and Twitterfeeds into media empires, especially now that their magazines, newspapers, and media organizations are contracting at an alarming rate. Blogs, of course, are the first refuge for professional writers fleeing the withering establishment media, and for hordes of would-be scribes finding their own voice. For these multitudes, WordPress.com has become the 21^st-century equivalent of Gutenberg’s printing press.

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Source:
The Son of Gutenberg
Marion Maneker
June 16, 2010; TheBigMoney.com
http://www.thebigmoney.com/articles/impressions/2010/06/15/son-gutenberg

To follow up on my comment yesterday about the markets perception of the credit of the State of California and Illinois, Illinois has officially taken the baton of the most financially troubled state in the country as measured solely by the 5 yr CDS market. Illinois 5 yr CDS is trading at 305 bps vs California at 296 bps. New York is #3 at 250 bps, the highest since Apr ’09 and up 50 bps in just the past 2 weeks.

Nice infographic, via Vizworld:

click for ginormous graphic

Hedge fund manager Jim Chanos, founder of Kynikos Associates Ltd., spoke with Bloomberg Television’s Erik Schatzker for a special that will air on “For the Record” next Friday, 6/25. Chanos talks for the first time about his new short positions since he went public with his bet against Chinese property in January 2010.

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Transcript after jump

Read the rest of this entry »

Very interesting new book concept that might impact the coming  regulatory changes: The Squam Lake Report.

The original group’s report can be found at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Here is the NYT on this:

“Rather than setting pay levels, the government should require banks and other critical financial institutions to withhold a share of each senior manager’s total pay for several years, a group of leading economists is urging in a new book. The money would be forfeited if the company went bankrupt or had to be bailed out.

The pay proposal is one of the main suggestions in “The Squam Lake Report,” to be released on Wednesday by Princeton University Press. In a sign of the seriousness with which the recommendations are being examined, the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, will help introduce the book at a conference at Columbia University.

The book, a consensus of 15 academics, including former advisers to Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, is coming out as Congress works toward completing the biggest changes in financial regulation since the Depression.

About half of the group’s eight core recommendations — though not the pay proposal — are strongly reflected in the two bills that are now being merged by a conference committee. But the scholars also say the legislation contains flaws that have resulted from political imperatives rather than sound economic thinking.

That ambition is reflected even in the book’s cover, whose design resembles that of the 9/11 Commission report, a surprise best seller of 2004.

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Source:
Fifteen Economists Issue Crisis-Prevention Manual
By SEWELL CHAN
NYT, June 16, 2010
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/16/fifteen-economists-issue-crisis-prevention-manual/