The Big Picture - Macro Perspective on the Capital Markets, Economy, Technology, and Digital Media

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I did about a 20 minute interview with Pete Dominick on Friday about the Mortgage deal.

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Barry Ritholtz, chief executive officer at FusionIQ, talks about Facebook Inc.’s initial public offering and U.S. weekly jobless claims. Ritholtz speaks with Betty Liu and Dominic Chu on Bloomberg Television’s “In the Loop.”

Feb. 2 (Bloomberg) -

This morning I’ll be joining Tom Keene and Ken Pruitt on Bloomberg Radio, broadcasting live from an undisclosed location. I will be on from 8:00am to 9:00am.

Then, its on to In the Loop with Betty Liu at 9:14am.

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You can stream Bloomberg Radio live by clicking below:

http://www.bloomberg.com/radio

Here’s my (2nd) Yahoo Finance video from yesterday:
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First video is here A Housing Bottom Is Nowhere In Sight; there’s a nother in the queue

Nice list from CNBC’s NetNet

Here’s my mention:

Barry Ritholtz is another “old school” financial blogger. Often cranky, often funny, and always informative. Stop by daily for the 10 a.m. ET read

Here is the full list:

1. DealBreaker
2. Business Insider
3. Zero Hedge
4. The Money Illusion
5. Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis
6. Credit Writedowns
7. Of Two Minds
8. Naked Capitalism
9. The Big Picture
10. Calculated Risk
11. The Reformed Broker
12. The Epicurean Dealmaker
13. Pragmatic Capitalism
14. Economonitor’s Edward Hugh
15. Ludwig von Mises Institute
16. Minyanville
17. TheMoneyIllusion
18. Abnormal Returns
19. Distressed Debt Investing

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A few months ago, I did an interview with and took some photos for a piece in January 2012 Money magazine. The scrum of photographer’s crew during the outdoor shots was absurdly hilarious. The full piece has now been published online.

It was a privilege to be included in this group: Mutual fund manager John Hussman, former Credit Suisse housing analyst Laurie Goodman; banking analyst Mike Mayo, and lil old me.

The overarching theme in the four part piece is about Wall Street Insiders who are none too happy with the state of their industry — not the usual criticisms about too much regulation, but rather, us being mortified at what the industry has become.

The article actually came out well — you can see all four of them here:

Me: Why Wall Street watchdogs won’t bite
Bank analyst Mike Mayo: Fix shareholder rights
Money manager John Hussman: 1 bailout equals endless bailouts
Housing analyst Laurie Goodman: 1 bailout America needs

I am never comfortable having my picture taken, and you can see the obvious reason why below.

It looks like the photographer had me fire up a big fattie just before he took this photo; Of course, that is the one which ran in Money Magazine:>
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Dude, Where are the Doritos?

Tonight I will be co-hosting Bloomberg TV’s Rewind with Matt Miller. (Rewind airs at 8pm on Bloomberg TV, 10pm on Sirius/XM Channel 113, or live streaming).

What I like about Rewind is the long-form conversation — its not thoughtful and in depth, not focused on the next 15 seconds. I’ve done TV with Matt Miller — he is an easy host to talk with.

On the list of items for discussion tonight:

- A look at New Hampshire voting
-Steven Leuthold, Neel Kashkari, Jason New and Darren Richman on investing
-Consumer Electronics Show
-Detroit Auto Show

Between the later hour and the Sirius/XM rebroadcast, I expect this might be a different audience for this show than the folks who know me.

Should be fun –

…than to open it and remove all doubt.

Invictus here.  I usually know exactly where I’m going when I sit down to write a post — some numbers tell me a story that I think would be interesting to be share.

Not so this time.

I’ve wondered often and aloud what it takes these days for an individual to be discredited.  The answer seems to be that it is simply not possible.  Being wrong — about anything and everything — no longer carries any consequences whatsoever.  On many levels, it’s quite remarkable.  As it relates to economics, stories about hyperinflation, sky-high interest rates, rampant government spending, expansionary austerity, an economic plan that will get the unemployment rate to 2.8%, etc., etc., have been making (or made) the rounds for the past few years.  Yet the purveyors of these fictions lose no credibility and somehow maintain their status as experts, continuing to appear on business television shows and on op-ed pages nationwide. (Post-market on Friday, December 23, Bloomberg Television trotted out Harry “Roaring 2000′s” Dent, for example.  How’d that call work out?)  Paul Krugman has railed about all this countless times, most recently here, and he has a very valid point.

But Rush Limbaugh has now taken it all to a new level by demonstrating a mind-numbing cluelessness about one of the most fundamental of our employment statistics, the unemployment rate.  Mr. Limbaugh did not just twist, distort, or massage statistics (though he most certainly did do those things), he displayed an abject ignorance of what the BLS measures and how it is measured.

In an error-laden, wince-inducing screed that was somewhat painful to read, Rush explains to his Dittoheads that the government manipulates its economic releases to make them administration-friendly.  (Of course, that being the case, he does not tell us why, three years into the current administration, the unemployment rate is not a second-term-insuring 5 percent instead of 8.6, but never mind that.)

In the hope of maintaining my sanity, I’ll confine myself to the most egregious assertion in Rush’s comedy of errors (emphasis mine):

What was the number of jobs created [in November]?  It’s 120,000 jobs.  It’s 120, 126,000, whatever. That’s in the ballpark.  That number of jobs created can lower unemployment rate 0.4%, almost one half of a percent? Creating 120,000 new jobs can do that?  [...]

A mere 126,000 job increase drops unemployment rate almost one half of a percentage point.

If you’re thinking, “Hey, Invictus, the payroll number comes from the Establishment Survey and the Unemployment Rate from the Household Survey,” congratulations, you know more about how BLS does its job than Rush Limbaugh.  Try as I might to think of something funny to say about this, words escape me.  What is there to say?  Millions (tens of millions?) of people listen to this man, and in all likelihood believe what he said, despite the fact that his claim is wholly, totally without any merit whatsoever because he conflated the two surveys to simply fabricate a narrative — the narrative being that a modest rise in payrolls could cause an outsize decline in the unemployment rate. So, the question then becomes, did he know what he was doing and just not care, or did he simply opine ignorantly on a topic about which he clearly knows nothing?  Honestly, as jaded as I have become, this one threw even me for a bit of a loop.

For those who are going to accuse me of picking on Rush, I’ll simply say this:  Find me other examples of such blatant intellectually dishonesty and I’ll criticize those, too.

If there are any Rush defenders in the audience, please drop it in comments — I’m tired of the market volatility and could use both a break and a laugh.

Fusion IQ CEO Barry Ritholz discusses the upcoming election year, the outlook for the U.S. economy and what may be in store for Europe in 2012.

This is the full 11 minute video

12/21/2011 1:36:43 PM