My morning reading material:
• Investing: Stop Me Before I Do Something Stupid (WSJ)
• Vanguard switches to lower-cost fund benchmarks (Yahoo Finance) see also ETFs That Mature Like Bonds (WSJ)
• Shares of Asian Tigers Are Roaring Again (Barron’s)
• Surowiecki: Corporate Welfare Queens (New Yorker)
• Restoring Criminal Liability For Financial Fraud (Grumpy Old Accountants) see also Cynicism aside, why the NY AG’s MBS suit vs JPMorgan matters (Reuters)
• Financial innovation: The bright and the dark sides (VOX)
• Eating for Health, Not Weight (NYT)
• Almost 2,400 Millionaires Pocketed Unemployment Benefits (Bloomberg) see also Should Millionaires Get Unemployment Benefits? (WSJ)
• Advertising Mourned on First Day of Advertising Week (Ad Age)
• Work As A Game (My Life Scoop)
What are you reading?
Fund Return vs Investor Return
Source: WSJ
Category: Financial Press
Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor implied. If you could repeat previously discredited memes or steer the conversation into irrelevant, off topic discussions, it would be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.
Krugman has a piece on shooting yourself in the foot with austerity when the economy is down.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/03/the-economic-consequences-of-mr-rajoy/
Interesting graph about how Britain did severe austerity and barely made a dent in their debt/GDP ratio back in the 1920′ies. For all those who are in the grip of panic over the current US national debt, please note that this data show a debt of 195% GDP for Britain in 1923. So why are we all worried that the sky is falling and we are all going to die?
UN: We Don’t Want To Take Over The Internet… Just Fundamentally Change How It Works
We’ve been covering how there are a number of troubling proposals before the UN’s ITU (International Telecom Union), which has been trying to use its role as the global regulator of international telecom issues to insert itself into how the internet should work. So far, the leaks from the secretive process have really only served to highlight how various telcos are using this as an opportunity to get regulators to divert money their way from internet innovators, because they’re jealous of the revenue that actual innovators can generate. Vint Cerf recently gave an insightful, if worrisome, interview with Jerry Brito about how the ITU is being misleading with its statements on the matter. Cerf notes that the ITU has been trying to insert itself into internet issues for many years now, recognizing that its existing mandate, covering telco issues, is becoming increasingly obsolete. Rather than do something useful, like disband, it’s trying to gobble up internet issues, despite a very different view on them….
> Investing: Stop Me Before I Do Something Stupid
I drew a blank on the link for this story . . . try: http://goo.gl/Igj0L
I guess there are all kinds of ways to attack unemployment benefits and certainly we may have a cosmetic problem when members of families with million dollar incomes get benefits.
But seriously, are the people like Tom Coburn who are in charge of dealing with the budget and spending, unable to understand that fixing a problem with 0.02% of the recipients of unemployment benefits (for a total maximum saving of $50 million, 2500 people x 20K max) is not going to fix a 1.1 trillion deficit. Why do we put completely innumerate people in charge of fixing the federal budget.
Or could this be a case of just trying to attack a program they want killed under the disguise of being serious about the deficit.
Apple has done it again, the iFund!
Presenting The World’s Biggest Hedge Fund You Have Never Heard Of:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-09-30/presenting-worlds-biggest-hedge-fund-you-have-never-heard
Link bait but fun:
Hobbit Returns to Find Middle Earth Has Become Expensive
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-02/hobbit-returns-to-find-middle-earth-has-become-expensive.html
BR: Thanks for posting the NYT article on eating for health. It’s been a long time since I read an article regarding nutrition where I learned something I hadn’t heard before. I’ve known the overall premise for years but the research on chromosome-lengthening is new to me… I’m curious to learn more about the research.
“…Without a doubt, the economic performance during Obama’s presidency has been sluggish and GDP growth has been getting even slower…”
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/10/03/four-ways-romney-must-hold-obama-accountable-for-economy/#ixzz28FtRARkQ
…except that it was DECLINING when he took office and is UP for every quarter since June ’09.
Why does anybody even listen to Fox?
~~~
BR: For Confirmation bias — not limited to Fox, but thats the most egregious example.
WRT the New Yorker article on corporate ‘welfare queens’ and the Bloomberg article on millionaires collecting unemployment, those topics certainly bear lots of repeating, particularly given the mountains of slurs and calumny heaped on the working poor and middle class by corporatist plutocrats and their apologists, but Dean Baker covered this territory and more in greater detail back in 2006; better yet it’s free and downloadable in multiple formats (HTML, PDF, Kindle, MOBI, NOOK).
The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer
Economist Dean Baker debunks the myth that conservatives favor the market over government intervention. In fact, conservatives rely on a range of “nanny state” policies that ensure the rich get richer while leaving most Americans worse off. It’s time for the rules to change. Sound economic policy should harness the market in ways that produce desirable social outcomes – decent wages, good jobs and affordable health care.
Quick, someone send Michael Pollock a correlation table. Seriously, the idea that you should put money into buckets is clearly ironic given the title of the piece is “Stop me before I do something stupid.” Or more specifically mental accounting bias.
… I’ve been waiting a while to pull out that Michael Pompian reading from the CFA materials.
Based on the FICO score for the US, the average consumer should be able to borrow (including unsecured credit cards) at lower rates than Treasuries:
http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetell/2012/10/03/whats-americas-fico-score-one-analyst-tries-to-find-out/