My morning reads:
• 2012: The year of bank fraud (Reuters)
• And still, no criminal charges: Leniency Denied, UBS Unit Admits Guilt in Rate Case (DealBook) see also UBS Trader Hayes Exposed at Core of Libor Investigation (Bloomberg)
• Investment Fads and Themes by Year, 1996-2012 (The Reformed Broker)
• Fed’s $4 Trillion Rescue Helps Hedge Fund as Savers Hurt (Bloomberg) see also Fed Up With the Fed (Barron’s)
• 10 ways index funds can save your retirement (MarketWatch)
• Fiscal Clifford the dog:
…..-Obama and Boehner Diverge Sharply on Fiscal Plan (NYT)
…..-White House Said to Tell Business Groups Talks Stall (Bloomberg)
• Shiller: Housing Hasn’t Necessarily Bottomed Yet (Pragmatic Capitalism)
• Corporations are the people of the year, my friend (Quartz)
• The Worst CEOs of 2012 (Businessweek)
• The 25 Funniest AutoCorrects Of 2012 (BuzzFeed)
What are you reading?
Stocks Love Inflation
Source: Crossing Wall Street
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.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/12/postscript-robert-bork-1927-2012.html
Postscript: Robert Bork, 1927-2012
Jeffrey Toobin
Robert Bork, who died Wednesday, was an unrepentant reactionary who was on the wrong side of every major legal controversy of the twentieth century. The fifty-eight senators who voted against Bork for confirmation to the Supreme Court in 1987 honored themselves, and the Constitution. In the subsequent quarter-century, Bork devoted himself to proving that his critics were right about him all along.
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/12/postscript-robert-bork-1927-2012.html#ixzz2FbWb0A9g
Thank goodness they found the kingpin for the Libor scandal.
I can’t wait to read his bio, he must be a real life Doogie Howser. I can see him now, in his mid-teens, pushing around titans of the financial services industry like they were his bitch, showing them how he was going to put the fix in on the LIBOR.
yon’ QOTD..
“The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.”
-John Maynard Keynes
~~
re..
• The Worst CEOs of 2012 (Businessweek)
Meg Whit(-less)(HPQ) is in the Top 3, yes?
Beyond Mechanical Markets: Asset Price Swings, Risk, and the Role of the State (ht Mark Thoma)
This raises a semantic issue that took me awhile to understand. The word “rational” as typically used by economists does not necessarily mean “reasonable.” The term more usually means mechanical or predetermined; e.g., bureaucracies attempt to “rationalize” procedures so that they can be reliably repeated and tracked, that lead to certain institutional efficiencies (or at least satisfy the prejudices of some set of elites), but that is not the same thing as saying those procedures will necessarily appear reasonable or even tolerable to individuals obliged to deal with them.
more LIEBOR
http://business.time.com/2012/12/20/libor-scandal-yep-its-as-bad-as-we-thought/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+time/business+%28TIME:+Top+Business+Stories%29
more LIEBOR
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/12/19/ubss-lies/
almost makes Walmart’s bribing scandal look small time
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/business/walmart-bribes-teotihuacan.html?ref=business&nl=business&_r=1&emc=edit_dlbkam_20121218&
so why is it we think that the private sector is more…trust worthy than the government?
also, re..
• The 25 Funniest AutoCorrects Of 2012 (BuzzFeed)
see also..
http://clusty.com/search?input-form=clusty-simple&v%3Asources=webplus-ns-aaf&v%3Aproject=clusty-original&query=Psychological+Warfare
http://clusty.com/search?input-form=clusty-simple&v%3Asources=webplus-ns-aaf&v%3Aproject=clusty-original&query=Psychological+Warfare+Memes+and+Mind+Viruses
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-20/obama-splits-republican-alliance-with-ceos-favoring-tax-increase.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-19/the-capital-gains-tax-a-tragedy-in-two-acts.html
“The U.S. gun homicide rate is 30 times that of France or Australia, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, and 12 times higher than the average for other developed countries.” – Fareed Zakaria
http://goo.gl/0cY2Q
——
According to the UNODC doc the gun homicides per 100,000 people for Australia, France and the US for 2009 are 1.2, 1.1, and 5.0, respectively (2009 is the last year for which data is shown for France) . . . 30 times?
Wells Fargo website under DDOS attack
http://www.bankinvestmentconsultant.com/news/Wells-Fargo-Web-Site-Inundated-Following-Cyberattack-Threat-2682501-1.html
“…Obama is the first Democratic President since FDR to win more than 50% of the vote in consecutive elections and the first President since 1940 to win re-election with an unemployment rate north of 7.5%. He has stitched together a winning coalition and perhaps a governing one as well. His presidency spells the end of the Reagan realignment that had defined American politics for 30 years…”
Thanks for the deficit lifestyle, Reagan. May your myth fade away.
http://www.time.com/time/pr/magcovers.html
Mortgage interest deduction claims, facts
Net Worth
Kathleen Pender
Published 7:38 pm, Tuesday, December 18, 2012
http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Mortgage-interest-deduction-claims-facts-4129555.php
- The Future of the NYSE Trading Floor (from a departing trader)
- http://www.sarge986.com/2/post/2012/12/the-future-of-the-nyse-trading-floor-from-a-departing-trader.html
- Congress Is Quietly Abandoning the 5th Amendment
- http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/12/scandal-alert-congress-is-quietly-abandoning-the-5th-amendment/266498/
james cameron:
you were looking at the wrong chart. the numbers you referenced are from overall homicides. on average, the u.s. has five times the amount of homicides than australia. in other words we are a more violent nation in that regard. the number of gun related deaths for the u.s. was 3.2 per 100k, and australia was .1 per 100k, so 30 times is factually correct. when you take in to account the difference in overall homicide rates, the factor is closer to 6.
interestingly, australia enacted their semiatomatic ban in 1996. here are the overall homicide rates for the years 1995 through 1999: 1.8,1.7,1.7,1.5,1.8. For the u.s. in same time frame: 8.1,7.3,6.7,6.3,5.6,5.5.
the u.n. charts don’t show the firearm homicides from that same time frame (their chart only goes back about 10 years), but clearly the aussies were still killing each other at a statistically consistent rate (using other means), while the u.s. overall homicide rate was declining.
One more…I thought this was interesting:
- Yield Spread Between Junk Bonds and Stocks
- http://pragcap.com/yield-spread-between-junk-bonds-and-stocks
Well – Tara Parker-Pope on Health
December 17, 2012, 6:21 pm
Grapefruit Is a Culprit in More Drug Reactions
By RONI CARYN RABIN
The patient didn’t overdose on medication. She overdosed on grapefruit juice.
The 42-year-old was barely responding when her husband brought her to the emergency room. Her heart rate was slowing, and her blood pressure was falling. Doctors had to insert a breathing tube, and then a pacemaker, to revive her.
They were mystified: The patient’s husband said she suffered from migraines and was taking a blood pressure drug called verapamil to help prevent the headaches. But blood tests showed she had an alarming amount of the drug in her system, five times the safe level.
Did she overdose? Was she trying to commit suicide? It was only after she recovered that doctors were able to piece the story together.
“The culprit was grapefruit juice,” said Dr. Unni Pillai, a nephrologist in St. Louis, Mo.,
…
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/17/grapefruit-is-a-culprit-in-more-drug-reactions/
“…Illinois home sales increased 30.6 percent over previous-year levels in November and median prices increased 7.7 percent…”
http://www.loansafe.org/illinois-sees-gains-in-november-median-home-sales-and-prices
These lies will all come back to them, I guarantee you. And isn’t your GE appliance still working like I said it would?
– Jack Welch
not holding the TBTF banks accountable?
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/20/last-ditch-attempt-to-derail-volcker-rule/
imagine that. some one wants to give the banksters a bye
hm. have an independent auditor reviewing answers supplied by the banks??? and this is independent review????
http://www.propublica.org/article/cheat-sheet-bofa-supplied-default-answers-for-independent-claims-reviewers
maybe this is the fox guarding the hen house?
> you were looking at the wrong chart
So I was! Here’s the complete Australian data with the year semiautomatics were banned indicated by *:
1.8 1.7* 1.7 1.5 1.8 1.6 1.6 1.6 1.5 1.3 1.3 1.4 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.0 (all homicides, 1995 thru 2010)
0.3 0.5* 0.4 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.1 0.2 0.2 0.1 0.1 (homicides by firearm, 1995 thru 2009)
Here’s the equivalent US data, the firearm homicide data beginning in 2003:
8.1 7.3 6.7 6.2 5.6 5.5 5.6 5.6 5.7(2003) 5.5 5.6 5.8 5.7 5.4 5.0 4.8 (all intentional homicides, 1995 thru 2010)
3.8 3.6 3.8 3.9 3.8 3.6 3.3 3.2 (homicides by firearm, 2003 thru 2010)
Here homicide means unlawful, and against another person.
> but clearly the aussies were still killing each other at a statistically consistent rate (using other means), while the u.s. overall homicide rate was declining.
For what it’s worth, both countries have seen significant declines in their homicides/homicides by firearm rates over the last 10 or 15 years, at least based on this data.