Weekend Reads
By Barry Ritholtz - February 4th, 2011, 4:00PM
Here’s what I will be perusing this weekend:
• Michael Lewis: When Irish Eyes Are Crying (Vanity Fair)
• Rethinking Stocks for the Long Haul (Businessweek)
• Permabears’ growling, grudging bullishness (Marketwatch)
• What Ever Happened to Robert Prechters Dow 1,000 Call? (WSCS)
• Simon Johnson: The Ruinous Fiscal Impact of Big Banks (Economix)
• Angela in Wunderland: What Germany’s got right, and what it hasn’t (Economist)
• Ten Stupidly High P/E Ratios in the S&P! (MarketBeat)
• One Million Surveys Reveal Portrait of Americans’ Well being (Gallup)
• Why and How To Write: In Which We Get You Writing Something Dark And Very Disturbed (This Recording)
• Huge ISPs want per-GB payments from Netflix, YouTube (Ars Technica)
What are you reading?
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February 4th, 2011 at 4:09 pm
I know it is dated but this caught my eye, especially given Scott Adam’s blueprint:
http://financialtales.com/financial-tales/behavioral-tales/a-tale-of-destruction/
The rest of the site is also interesting and on a lighter vein with perception vs. reality or perhaps more definitional issues:
http://www.cracked.com/article_18983_5-complaints-about-modern-life-that-are-statistically-b.s..html
February 4th, 2011 at 4:30 pm
If you’re not going to pay your web designer, you had better disable their access -
http://winonachiropractic.com/
February 4th, 2011 at 4:48 pm
That web (http://winonachiropractic.com/) is bloody funny…did you see what you get of you click on any of the info?
February 4th, 2011 at 5:23 pm
“What Ever Happened to Robert Prechters Dow 1,000 Call? (WSCS) “
1000 is where Prechter sees the Dow at the end of the secular bear market, sometime between 2016-2022. So WSCS implying he made the call that this would happen within 7 months is just bad and sloppy reporting, even if you think he is crazy.
Look at all the charts in Grantham’s Pavlov’s Bulls article recently highlighted here, where he makes the point that when bubbles break, they retrace back to their origins. The Dow was 800 in 1982.
Now of course it’s highly controversial to say the whole rise from 1982 was bubble, but look at a chart of the increase in total credit (read debt) and you will see a chart that has a slope very much like the Dow during that period. If there is another severe credit collapse or fiat money crisis in the next 10 years this ‘no possible way’ prediction could come true. This would also be a ‘panic low’ if it occurred, not an enduring low, something he always points out.
With oil at $147 and rising, what complete idiot would forecast oil would be trading at $35 dollars a few later? So it is with Pavlov’s Bulls.
“That’s why an overwhelming majority of pundits and money managers can’t beat the indexes: they simply look at the past and predict a repeating pattern.” Mark Hulbert has said that Pretcher’s Theorist letter has beaten the market on a 5, 10 and 30 year basis. So lazy reporting once again.
So WSCS should at least let the time window expire before passing judgment.
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/02/pavlov%e2%80%99s-bulls/#more-62739
February 4th, 2011 at 5:23 pm
I’ll be reading a reasonably long, detailed expose about how Google was WRONG in its accusations of Bing copying its results with nearly a retraction by Search Engine Land. Also some useful info about Search Streams and how some of the internet “works”.
http://searchengineland.com/bing-why-googles-wrong-in-its-accusations-63279
February 4th, 2011 at 5:32 pm
The Spaniards are learning German to find work. “You can’t live without money.” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12359897
February 4th, 2011 at 5:37 pm
@cthwaites, yeah, pretty great.
February 4th, 2011 at 5:42 pm
Gene Wolfe. That article quotes Gene Wolfe.
February 4th, 2011 at 6:12 pm
Digital Darkness: U.S., U.K. Companies Help Egyptian Regime Shut Down Telecommunications and Identify Dissidents
February 2nd, 2011
Via: Democracy Now:
Doing the regime’s bidding, British-based Vodafone shut down Egypt’s phone and internet service. The American company called Narus — owned by Boeing — sold Egypt the surveillance technology that helped identify dissident voices. We are joined by Tim Karr of Free Press and CUNY Professor C.W. Anderson. Karr outlines how communications was shut down in Egypt and discusses the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, a proposed Senate bill that could lay the foundation for blocking communications in the United States in the case of a “national threat.”…
http://cryptogon.com/?p=20318
New Mexico: Tens of Thousands Without Natural Gas Service; State of Emergency Declared
February 4th, 2011
Via: Mercury News:
With tens of thousands of people across New Mexico without natural gas service, Gov. Susana Martinez on Thursday declared a state of emergency, ordered all government offices be shut down Friday and urged schools to “strongly consider” remaining closed for the day.
Demand has soared because of extremely cold weather across the state since Tuesday. New Mexico Gas Company said rolling blackouts in West Texas also impeded the delivery of natural gas into New Mexico…
http://cryptogon.com/?p=20364
interesting priorities..
February 4th, 2011 at 6:40 pm
Good paper from David Mills referenced in: • Simon Johnson: The Ruinous Fiscal Impact of Big Banks (Economix)
If you removed the implied (now explicit) gov’t backing of debt financing — then larger capital cushions would be required for prudent risk management. End the TBTF doctrine or switch to Too Big To Save to allow the market to operate without the gov’t interventions.
***
New York-based banks might move to London, and vice versa. But the Bank of England is far ahead of the Federal Reserve in its thinking about how to rein in banks – see, for example, the new paper by David Miles (a member of the Monetary Policy Committee in Britain) on the need for much more equity financing in banks than specified in the Basel III agreement.
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/externalmpcpapers/extmpcpaper0031.pdf
February 4th, 2011 at 6:48 pm
Kort,
Bing is copying. Your summary of the article is misleading (and in CAPS?) You’re satisfied that Bing only copies some of Google’s search info, correction info, stream, etc?
Microsoft is a copier, has ripped off company after company, entrepreneur after entrepreneur, been found guilty of this sort of behavior on multiple continents.
February 4th, 2011 at 8:50 pm
Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12589
I have been working my way through this collection of essays and find it engaging in the extreme. It is a free download but be aware that it is a very large pdf file (12.29 MB).
Additionally, in light of Michael Lewis’ piece on Ireland, here is a video of Luke Kelly’s final performance (I believe) in which he sings an achingly beautiful rendition of The Night Visiting Song. Ireland, there mistreated, tattered and duped, fools the many, have you forgotten that God gave you nothing but breath and words? And to a precious few, the soul to weave them into truth? Lucas O Ceallaigh gave the best of his fine self staring death in eye. Can you do no less?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMGvQ2v-ZRM&feature=player_embedded
February 4th, 2011 at 10:38 pm
Ron Chernow’s biography of George Washington and the U.N. Arab Human Development Report 2009:
http://www.arab-hdr.org/contents/index.aspx?rid=5
February 5th, 2011 at 1:13 am
As usual, Michael Lewis is tremendous. Strikeout every reference to Ireland, and replace it with “United States.” How’s it different again?
But more interesting in its way is the article about the horror — horror! — of metered ISP bills. Any good techno-environmentalist in California would tell you that time-of-use rates to manage the grid are the way to go — and 8 out of 10 of those same people are for Net neutrality. How hard have they thought about these issues, do you really think?
February 5th, 2011 at 3:22 am
Mexican Government successfully sheds the US Dollar from its economy
http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2011/02/03/mexican-government-successfully-sheds-th
February 5th, 2011 at 9:31 am
…..“What happened was that everyone in Ireland had the idea that somewhere in Ireland there was a little wise old man who was in charge of the money, and this was the first time they’d ever seen this little man,” says McCarthy. “And then they saw him and said, Who the fuck was that??? Is that the fucking guy who is in charge of the money??? That’s when everyone panicked.”
And that’s about it!
February 5th, 2011 at 12:13 pm
Hackers penetrate Nasdaq computers
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/AP-source-Hackers-pierce-apf-3937403883.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=main&asset=&ccode=
When the flash crash happened I asked what would happen if hackers broke through the NYSE and Nasdaq computer systems and flooded the market with false sell orders.
I bet we find out one day.
February 6th, 2011 at 8:02 am
Finally,
A gadget I know you don’t yet own Barry
https://www.buytvhatnow.com/flare/next
February 6th, 2011 at 9:24 am
[...] Friday’s reading, I mentioned Michael Lewis’s piece in Vanity Fair: When Irish Eyes Are Crying. It is a must [...]
February 6th, 2011 at 3:43 pm
Detentions, and Aide’s Role, Anger Egyptians
“…The most notable example is the long disappearance of Wael Ghonim, a Google executive and leader of the young Internet activists …”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/world/middleeast/06detain.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
While Microsoft and Bill Gates … Oracle and Larry Ellison sell tools that the regime uses to suppress their people, Google people are leading the darkest parts of the world to light.
Remember this when you make your personal IT decisions.
February 6th, 2011 at 8:43 pm
All I know is that my new goal is to become an old man and do something so epicly rebellious as to inspire my grandkids to create a commemorative scrapbook of the event.
Give ‘em hell, Mr. Keogh.