My morning reads:
• Not in my house: how Vegas casinos wage a war on cheating (The Verge)
• Nocera: The Foreclosure Fiasco (NYT)
• 4 Ways to Avert the Debt Ceiling (and the Most Likely Option Is the Scariest) (The Atlantic) see also The Game Theory of the Post-Platinum Coin Debt Ceiling (Next New Deal)
• The central bank money-printing party (Bill Fleckenstein)
• California could be next oil boom state (CNN Money)
• Life in the Red (NYT) see also Stock Investing Isn’t the Only Risk in Your Life (Bucks)
• On the Geithner Legacy (Next New Deal)
• The small job creators versus the big non-creators (FT.com)
• The Latest Chinese Pollution Crisis (The Atlantic)
• The 9 Most Insane Moments Of The Golden Globes (Thought Catalog)
What are you reading?
Has a New China Bull Market Begun?
Source: Bespoke
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.
Re Geithner’s legacy:
I don’t think it will be possible to really assess Geithner’s legacy for a decade, similar to the way the ramifications of Robert Rubin’s tenure at the position didn’t become fully understood until 2008.
1. Geithner made an “all-in” bet on the financial sector executives and their companies by handing them wads of cash and not investigating or prosecuting them. Has he just postponed the reckoning or did this really solve the imbalances in the system? Has he eroded the rule of law in the country?
2. People are looking at head-count of employment. However, is that an appropriate measure if the new jobs pay less than the old jobs? Did Geithner do anything about the continued decline of the middle-class or has he potentially even accelerated it?
3. We still have a fundamental mismatch of supply of money in the system and demand for goods and services? The M2 multiplier still looks anemic, so it does not appear that pumping wads of cash into the financial institutions is stimulating the demand side of the economy. Has Geithner started a process that will lead to a higher multiplier and a reduction in the financial stimulus that the government and central bank need to provide?
4. A push for serious long-term investment in the country’s infrastructure instead of annual sugar high pops of long-term unemplyment insurance etc would be starting to pay dividends to day. By now, the engineering and procurement could have been done for major infrastructure repairs and improvements with construction kicking into gear that would have a serious impact on good paying jobs. This would have also left a legacy for our kids and grandkids. Instead, we have crumbling infrastructure and very wealthy financial sector moguls.
America is a strong and proud country – not a deadbeat nation. Refusing to pay the bills is a humiliation of our nation.
http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/14/news/economy/debt-ceiling-deadline/index.html?hpt=hp_t3
At least if you ask some of us.
A bit of a fun article on IBM’s Watson, the computer that won at Jeopardy. It seems that Watson was introduced to the online Urban Dictionary, and may now need to have its speakers washed out with soap.
are CEO’s really worth the money?
http://baselinescenario.com/2013/01/14/weak-defense-of-the-ceo/
some say they are but don’t have much of an argument in favor it
banksters still just get slaps on the wrists
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2013/01/15/1336432/jpmorgan-slapped-on-wrists-by-regulators-who-forget-to-slap-own-wrists-too-grrr/
and the police (Feds and OCC) on the job weren’t slapped either for not seeing the obvious
the latest and greatest business model. sell out your customers to not just advertisers but to communist governments (like China).
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/01/the-power-of-selling-out-your-customers-as-political-capital.html
the new business model coming soon to a web site near you!
The President’s Priorities Are Not In Order
F The Deficit
The Atlantic article linked to above was almost useless, as most Atlantic articles are now. But not quite useless, because it linked to this analysis in Politico, which I had not seen, and which managed to scare the shit out of me:
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/behind-the-curtain-house-gop-eyes-default-shutdown-86116.html
One interesting aspect of the whole thing is that Boner (I know)) seems to be faced with a choice: let the world economy go down the tubes, or risk his job. The betting seems to be that the world economy is in trouble.
I just read my new health insurance quote, up 100% for 2013 to provide health coverage for my 11 full time employees. This is a real kick in the teeth as I have been paying 100% of the premiums. Obama promised that insurance would go down an average of $2,500 per family when in fact nationwide this year it is going up an average of $3,000, a difference of $5,500. In my case though my $145,000 annual premium is now $290,000! Thanks to Obamacare I am having to reduce the number of hours I give to my part timers to a maximum of 28 hours. I just got done explaining to these same employees why their take home pay is less due to the fiscal cliff agreement. I was planning on hiring another full time employee but that will now be put off. The person that I had interviewed would have been great. This expense of course is in addition to the 3.8% Obama fee I will be paying for my investment income plus the new cap gains tax that is up from 15% to 23.8%. Frankly Obama and his crew would not be qualified to work for me. Not only are they arrogant and incompetent but extremely divisive. In fact, I doubt that Obama could even manage my daughter’s successful dog grooming spa! What a joke!
Correction, I probably will not have to reduce the part time hours because I have less than 50 employees but everything else is correct.
new report shows that black carbon is a bigger threat to global warming than previously thought, second only to CO2:
http://www.igbp.net/news/pressreleases/pressreleases/blackcarbonlargercauseofclimatechangethanpreviouslyassessed.5.4910f0f013c20ff8a5f8000152.html
this is important because the sources of black carbon (diesel, wood fires, etc.) are easier to identify and control.
think our banksters got away with a lot? consider that in the UK they seem to have gotten away with a lot more
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/01/the-incredible-shrinking-hbos-fraud.html