Monday PM Trick or Treat Reads
Here is today’s train reading home for Trick or Treat:
• Say What? In 30-Year Race, Bonds Beat Stocks (Bloomberg)
• Stephen Roach: America’s Other 87 Deficits (Project-Syndicate)
• Crumbling Bridges’ Leaves Business Paying (Bloomberg)
•Hussman: Whipsaw Traps www.hussmanfunds.com/wmc/wmc111031.htm
• What Does ‘Recapitalizing Banks’ Actually Mean? (Economix) see also Getting Over Our Over-Levered Selves (Forbes)
• Bill Gross: Pennies from Heaven (Pimco)
• Consumer ’Scared to Death’ But Still Spending (Bloomberg) see also 10.4 Million American Families Slide Toward Losing Their Homes (Alter Net)
• ECRI Recession Watch: Growth Index Virtually Unchanged (Advisor Perspectives)
• Apple spending big next year on retail and cloud (Gigaom)
• ‘Once you get beyond a million dollars, it’s still the same hamburger’: Bill Gates says being a billionaire is overrated (Daily Mail) see also Millionaires Support Warren Buffett’s Tax on the Rich (WSJ)
What are you reading?
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October 31st, 2011 at 5:28 pm
via Infectious Greed Twitter….
http://www.freddestin.com/blog/2011/10/ows-one-insiders-view-on-how-banking-lost-its-way-and-what-to-do-next.html
October 31st, 2011 at 5:29 pm
Europe plans to fund a total of ~€1 trillion in EFSF, but it cannot even raise €5 billion.
And the stupid dog (stock market) rallied ~400 Dow points last week on this non-news EFSF B.S.
FT reports, “The bond from the European Financial Stability Facility will only target €3bn, instead of €5bn, and will be in 10-year bonds rather than a 15-year maturity because of worries over demand.”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/cfe1b102-03d2-11e1-bbc5-00144feabdc0,Authorised=false.html?_i_location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2Fcfe1b102-03d2-11e1-bbc5-00144feabdc0.html&_i_referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fnews%2Fdemand-efsf-paper-collapses-world-wakes-post-bailout-hangover#axzz1cNh26TRH
October 31st, 2011 at 5:30 pm
David Rosenberg, “I wonder whether we’ll say 2008 wasn’t the real crisis — it was a warm-up, but the real crisis was the sovereign debt crisis in Europe….”
October 31st, 2011 at 5:50 pm
re: Gates..
‘Once you get beyond a million dollars, it’s still the same hamburger’: Bill Gates says being a billionaire is overrated (Daily Mail)
add’l context…
http://www.finviz.com/insidertrading.ashx?oc=902012&tc=7
~~~
yon’ QOTD..
“The more people who believe something, the more apt it is to be wrong. The person who’s right often has to stand alone.” -Soren Kierkegaard
big Reason the u. S. of A. was founded as a Republic, not a ‘Democracy’, no?
October 31st, 2011 at 5:58 pm
Why the EU ist not working…..
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/europe-according?
October 31st, 2011 at 6:13 pm
Uwe Reinhardt piece on recapitalizing banks is interesting, esp. figure 2 which pretty much tells the sorry story of financial institutions in europe and the u.s.
I know there was an original reason for a banking sector but perhaps its “special status” is so last century/millennium. Perhaps the Treasury should just print a certain amount of money, guarantee some deposits and then back away. Let the risk take place “away” from the government (and its associated taxpayers, i.e. us, financing bad decisions, excessive compensation for making those same bad decisions, and the resulting recaps, TARPs, whatever you want to call them). Rely on barter and PayPal. Leverage should be a private affair with appropriate risk measures applied, also known as skin in the game.
October 31st, 2011 at 6:25 pm
Barry, have you notice that the ECRI Weekly Leading Index WLI Growth is starting to look like a seismograph during an earthquake
October 31st, 2011 at 6:49 pm
ECRI is to much based on poor analysis. Why people follow it, is beyond me.
Everyone should be focused on Europe, it is the bottom line. They implode, credit is impeded exposing the global economy.
Thanks to years of public disinvestment, the US economy would probably lose 50% of its total size(if not a bit more).
~~~
BR: Whats your basis for critiquing ECRI ? Have you analyzed their track record?
October 31st, 2011 at 6:58 pm
Re: Bomber Girl…there is a school of thought that asks “Why do we need banks?” You help make their case. Given the masses a few insured savings plans and the rest can open up.
October 31st, 2011 at 7:00 pm
Giving..
October 31st, 2011 at 7:09 pm
Happy Halloween, Barry! Sneak some candy from the kids.
October 31st, 2011 at 7:49 pm
As the official candy-giver-outer in the house I can say Halloween is still alive and well. Ya gotta love the young family with one at the door with dad and the other hanging from a carrier on mom. Really delightful! Even the teenagers have been polite (so far).
October 31st, 2011 at 8:29 pm
Hopefully you guys know how to trade commodities (while you still can):
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/10/31/357683/crippling-5-3-billion-texas-drought-hits-global-cotton-beef-peanut-butter-and-even-pumpkin-market/
Wow, for the first time since i’ve moved in here I GOT TRICK OR TREATERS! WOOO-HOO!
Had to chain ol’ Thunder up out back so’s he wouldn’t eat them, but it was real nice. Hope their insulin is up to snuff, what with all that sweet stuff in ‘em bags ‘n all . . .
Happy Halloween
October 31st, 2011 at 9:37 pm
Listening, not reading, interview with economist John Quiggin
http://www.plutocracyfiles.com/2011/10/occupied-media-interview-with-john.html
October 31st, 2011 at 9:51 pm
http://www.bcaresearch.com/public/story.asp?pre=PRE-20111025.GIF
October 31st, 2011 at 10:23 pm
What is Stephen Roach smoking?
He wants us to save more. Who can argue with such common sense? BUT the question is more loaded than Roach.
Why would anyone want to save a devalued unsound currency? The point of saving is to store past labor for the future. If that aim is going to be sabotaged by the Fed and the endless spending of politicians than people aren’t going to save, they are going to spend any additional income before it falls in value.
When are perfectly intelligent people like Stephen Roach going to understand this simple concept?
Compound interest is only possible if the yield exceeds inflation. The yields paid by banks today?
Fuggedaboutit.
October 31st, 2011 at 10:58 pm
No electricity since Saturday, generator running and nine people in my house over the weekend, staying warm and taking showers. Took grand-kids trick or treating tonight, who has time to read?
November 1st, 2011 at 5:45 am
Lariat1: i hear ya – we were out for 8 hours (which means i don’t even get tap water ’cause i’m on well water & well pump is, you got it, electric) – went to my sons house for dinner, football games and warmth.
This storm, 30 yrs since the supposed ‘last time it happened’ (though i can’t recall it, it was supposed to have occured in 1979 around here – PA), was pretty hard on the trees in the area which still have most of their leaves, making some of the branches too heavy to support – so down they came. i saw reports of huge trees landing on houses, pick-ups and cars, across roads (taking wires with them). It doesn’t take much to put us back in the Stone Age. Hope you’re up and running soon.
November 1st, 2011 at 6:30 am
Halloween was cancelled in Hartford.
I’m waiting for the mother ship to take me away from this treemageddon…
Wiki:
The Theory of Interstellar Trade[1] is a paper written in 1978 by economist Paul Krugman. The paper was first published in March 2010 in the journal Economic Inquiry. He described the paper as something he wrote to cheer himself up when he was an oppressed assistant professor, caught up in the academic rat race. [2]
Krugman analyzed the question of
how should interest rates on goods in transit be computed when the goods travel at close to the speed of light? This is a problem because the time taken in transit will appear less to an observer traveling with the goods than to a stationary observer.
Krugman emphasized that in spite of its farcical subject matter, the economic analysis in the paper is correctly done. In his own words,
while the subject of this paper is silly, the analysis actually does make sense. This paper, then, is a serious analysis of a ridiculous subject, which is of course the opposite of what is usual in economics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_Interstellar_Trade
November 1st, 2011 at 6:31 am
The Theory of Interstellar Trade[1] is a paper written in 1978 by economist Paul Krugman. The paper was first published in March 2010 in the journal Economic Inquiry. He described the paper as something he wrote to cheer himself up when he was an oppressed assistant professor, caught up in the academic rat race. [2]
Krugman analyzed the question of
how should interest rates on goods in transit be computed when the goods travel at close to the speed of light? This is a problem because the time taken in transit will appear less to an observer traveling with the goods than to a stationary observer.
Krugman emphasized that in spite of its farcical subject matter, the economic analysis in the paper is correctly done. In his own words,
while the subject of this paper is silly, the analysis actually does make sense. This paper, then, is a serious analysis of a ridiculous subject, which is of course the opposite of what is usual in economics.
November 1st, 2011 at 8:33 am
Woo Hoo! Those wonderful hard hatted men, the tree cutters and utility line men are flipping the breaker on the end pole as I write. Full electricity any moment. Generators are great but they average about a gallon an hour. That can add up fast. Some folks could only run theirs a few hours a day. Got to remember you can’t take any thing for granted in todays world.
November 2nd, 2011 at 5:09 am
Hopefully sooner than later BOMBER GIRL. Keep spreading the obvious message: The status quo has to go. Barter Baby! The serfs are figuring it out — the preppers are, anyway. It may take a little more time for people to realize that they can live peacefully in a world without money. I should rephrase that: we already know we can live in a world without money — we just have to take care of ourselves and one another, without bowing to the self appointed ruling class and their fiat currencies
http://www.shtfplan.com/emergency-preparedness/top-post-collapse-barter-items-and-trade-skills_06102011
I’ve already had a few neighbors who inquired about our wood stove. Every fall when they walk by our mountain of wood they would look at us stacking it for the winter and say “too much work”. Now they want the guys number and the name of the place where we purchased the wood stove fireplace insert.
get to work people…
Learn how to trade something of value, and then go help someone else.
What is so F-ing complicated here people? “We are the ones we have been waiting for”
Replace competition with cooperation.