10 Thursday Reads
By Barry Ritholtz - June 23rd, 2011, 9:00AM
My reads for this morning:
• What Stock-Market History Is Telling Us (Market Watch)
• Does an expanded Government role impact investment returns? (Stewart Partners)
• Bill Gross to Deficit-Obsessed Congress: Get Real (TPM)
• Big bills racked up to buttress economic recovery are coming due (LA Times)
• Crude Oil Supply & Demand (Ed Yardeni Blog)
• The Fed’s Dual Mandate: Lessons of the 1970s (St. Louis Fed)
• Harnessing the Power of Feedback Loops (Wired)
• The Cloud Wars: With Google Docs, Box.net Takes On Microsoft (Fast Company)
• Michele Bachmann‘s Holy War (Rolling Stone)
• The Illusions of Psychiatry (NY Review Of Books)
What’s on your reading list?
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June 23rd, 2011 at 7:06 am
A good read on all the tech bubble talk:
http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2011/06/22/on-bubbles-and-why-well-be-just-fine/
June 23rd, 2011 at 9:10 am
A chilling very real look back.
Mysteries of a Nazi Photo Album
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/21/mysteries-of-a-nazi-photo-album/?hp
Matt Taibbi is right, Bachmann looks like a smiling -late in the movie Terminator- but she is to be taken seriously, Tea Party psychopath.
June 23rd, 2011 at 10:05 am
@beaufou
Thanks for the link. Very interesting.
The Nazi Photo Album article is also interesting in what it says about the owner and America, the fading belief in the exceptionalism of America and that we are, like those in earlier times, riding the wheel of fortune.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rota_Fortunae
June 23rd, 2011 at 12:16 pm
Always find something good in your links. Thanks. BTW, I picked up that ‘Willful Blindness’ book just recently (mentioned here mid-May) and it is a great read.
June 23rd, 2011 at 12:54 pm
“Bill Gross to Deficit-Obsessed” .. get going on inside our borders, public infrastructure works project* – I agree .. and focus on a slow rebalance’g to debtless freedom** – I agree
the next question is what is the prevailing wage to be .. to little and you get near slave labor installing the products manufactured by the last century prevailing wages .. to much labor $s paid and the process of slow rebalance’g is not move’g in those baby steps
the added labor force the world around is the big rebalance issue combined with every eco system’s need to maintain its bouyancy – to not sink as the waves slapslapslap upside the head & checkbook
* money doesn’t evaporate when you spend it in borders – it makes everyones day who touches it
** paygo and balanced – would set everyday perspectives – match the eyes with the wallet
June 23rd, 2011 at 1:03 pm
Did posting the story about Bachmann automatically lead you to thinking about psychiatry? I always enjoy Rolling Stone articles.
For my reading list, I just finished the book Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder. One of the best books I’ve read in a long time.
http://www.amazon.com/Mountains-Beyond-Farmer-Random-Readers/dp/0812980557/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1308848439&sr=1-1
June 23rd, 2011 at 1:50 pm
I’m really glad that Matt Taibbi took it to wrap his head around the financial crisis (Griftopia) and the Tea Party and their ilk. He comes up with some classic lines. IMHO he is the premier muck-raker of our times.
June 23rd, 2011 at 6:34 pm
Inflation and the 1970′.
I graduated with an MBA in 1969 and was teaching basic economics at a junior college.
Nixon had borrowed a lot for Vietnam, unions were strong, government was growing and with it the salaries of it workers, unions were strong, the rust belt oligopolies were very strong and could pass along pricing pressures to prices, and natural monopolies paid high wages. The result was an inflationary psychology. Wages were increased, as a result, price were increase, which meant wages had to be increased … Nixon, of all people, put on wage and price controls which made things worse. Then OPEC raised prices and we were really cooked. Then they did it again!
I don’t see any of these problems now. Industrial unions are week, people are figuring out that government workers are somewhat overpaid so we can hold the line or cut, the rust belt has no pricing power to pay workers because on competition from Europe and Asia, and natural monopolies are gone.
While the world is not as flat as we thought it was in 2006, it is still flat and wages are not going anywhere. The fiscal drag that has started with state and local governments will spread to th federal government as h last of the stimulus is spent, QE2 ends, and congress cuts the 2011 budget.
The last time a cyclical down turn coincided with the end of a housing boom and a financial meltdown was in 1929 and it took WWII to get us out.
The average time to recover from something like this is seven years. If we are lucky, three years down and four years to go.
By the way, lets make sure President Obama freezes federal salaries with no step increase as well as no cost of living increases. Times are tough and getting the same check for 36 months after years and years of getting two raises per years might make them more appreciate having a job.