February 2010
54 posts
Fannie Seeks $15.3 Billion in Aid After 10th Loss →
This is why fear about research at the LHC is unfounded. We already have made black holes on Earth.
Kids, Don't Drink
Ok, how did I manage to make a short post about being drunk and then get teenagers to start following me?
Let me tell you something, kids. I’m in my 30s. When I was 8, I went to my first funeral. My dad’s cousin was killed by a drunk driver. Husband and wife, gone in an instant. I should restate that: mother and father, gone in an instant. Their surviving kid was younger than my...
With no modification and little debate, Democrats... →
At least the House had 97 votes against it this time. I disagree with the assessment in the article. This is not a win for Republicans. It is not a win for Democrats. It is not a win for any American.
You Have To Burn The Rope →
So, this is pretty much the best Flash game I’ve ever played, but you have to have sound enabled to enjoy it.
Why I Don't Like Yoo →
Localized Headlines
If you want to scare me with rising gas prices, don’t use $3 a gallon gas as a panic-inducing headline number. I live in Santa Barbara. Gas is already $3 a gallon.
I will only say this once:
robot-heart:
Embedded music that starts as soon as anyone opens your page? THE. WORST.
Worse than sexually assaulting a 3 month old? More than 100 victims. Video evidence. I think that’s the most sickening article on CNN I’ve come across.
Unemployment Insurance
Unemployment Insurance has had many extensions as part of the government’s efforts to alleviate the pain and suffering caused by the economic downturn. These extensions inevitably expire. At one point, we faced the possibility of all extensions expiring on a specific date. That would have immediately cut the benefits to roughly 3 million people. In terms of acting as a social safety net, the...
Living in Santa Barbara means that it’s acceptable to pair a Carina Cellars Syrah with a Costco pot pie.
Also, I’m drunk and emptying my tumblr drafts.
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Unemployment: Initial Claims Jump
When I first saw the headline number, I thought “Someone tell me that this is a consequence of the weather and not a sign that the labor market is starting to crumble again.” Spoiler: it’s the seasonal adjustment. The Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report has been released. Initial claims grew to 496,000 while last week’s figure was revised up 1,000. This was was actually...
robot-heart-politics on Teacher Firings →
robot-heart-politics:
I’m not sure how much I trust that figure that the average salary was between $72 and $78K (reported by Gallo and I can find no other corroborating figures), because those are maxed out salaries. Does the school really have nearly 100% 30-year teachers? Either way, teachers are hired to work 10-month contracts, and their salary reflects that. It’s not as if they are being...
“The blue-and-white banner exclaiming “anticipation” on the front of Central...”
– Rhode Island teachers fired: Plan roils poor RI city - washingtonpost.com
Keep in mind that two hours a day adds up when you consider the average school year in the U.S. is 180 days. Lengthening the school day by two hours without raising pay would essentially mean teachers would not be paid for...
New Home Sales fall to Record Low in January →
This was a “real-time alert” from CNBC’s iPhone app this morning, except they added the word “unexpectedly.” And while the Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate came in below expectations (309k vs a Bloomberg consensus range of 345k to 380k), I have some problems with the label. Also, CR has some pretty graphs. Take that CNBC!
The local news station did a report on new...
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At Least the Saab Deal is Finalized
Look, good news. MarketWatch reports Spyker Cars said it’s finalized Saab deal. And while this is good news for Saab fanatics moorewr and benkraal, it wasn’t the news that set the tone for the day.
The stock market responded rather negatively to the report that Consumer Confidence in U.S. Falls More Than Forecast. The drop from 55.9 to 46.0 was a huge swing. The most noteworthy...
Senator Feinstein Considering Legislation to... →
California’s water/ag problem meets California’s over-fishing problem meets the Senate jobs bill. I recommend you also read the SFGate article referenced in this HuffPo article.
“Under No Child Left Behind … 11 states lowered their standards for math.”
– President Obama, in his speech today (right now)
Can someone tell me if this includes California? I understand many districts have split second year algebra into two courses. There are now courses for Algebra I, Algebra II, Algebra IIa, and Algebra IIb. Since there still exists a one-year version,...
“And how did [the bailout] do? 1) It stabilized the financial system. 2) It looks...”
– Squashed: Opposing the Bailouts?
Unfortunately, the first points are a bit at odds with official reports (although, all official reports do call the program a success). The Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program released a Quarterly Report to Congress at the...
Fed Raises Discount Rate by Quarter-Point to 0.75% →
(via continuum):
Feb. 18 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve Board raised the discount rate charged to banks for direct loans by a quarter point to 0.75 percent and said the move will encourage financial institutions to rely more on money markets rather than the central bank for short-term liquidity needs.
I readily admit that this was not how I expected interest rates to start rising. The...
Stimulus Rant
Now that I have lulled you into a false sense of security with my various unemployment, GDP, and other economic indicator summaries, it is time to alienate my 80% Democrat and 19% Republican readers and pander to my 1% Libertarian reader(s?). Heck, we’ll see if I can’t alienate him (them?) as well.
People everywhere are praising the stimulus as successfully saving the economy. This...
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Unemployment: New Claims Rise
Some less-than-stellar news on the unemployment front. The Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report has been released. Initial claims grew to 473,000 while last week’s figure was revised up 2,000. This was above the Bloomberg concensus range of 410k to 450k. Just to provide some positive spin: the 4-week moving average still fell, though not to where it was the second week of January (440k, the...
IMF to sell another 191 tons of gold →
The International Monetary Fund said Wednesday that it plans to sell 191.3 tons of gold, likely on the open market, pushing spot prices and gold-miner shares lower.
It appears as if I will have more opportunities to buy gold.
Greece: Our Debt, Your Problem →
This is a thought-provoking piece. I have two disagreements:
“Debt is not dealt with very well by economic theory. Debts net out. For every lender there is necessarily a borrower.” This is open to some interpretation. It is true that every borrower requires a lender. However, because of fractional reserve lending, the same lender can lend a given amount of money 10 times, assuming...
One American Growth Industry: Lobbying →
This is one business we didn’t want to see expand.
Dubai debt concern grows →
Do I need to clear my cache or something? I thought Dubai was clear until April.
Dubai CDS spreads are back near their all-time highs. Bond investors appear to be getting a little spooked. Since bond investors are the “smart investors,” this might be a signal for more trouble ahead.
I feel a little silly for suggesting this, but I’ve also heard rumors of countries trying to...
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I am Jealous x4
ninak is at TED and I am not
her notes are amazing; I feel like I can follow the talks
her doodles are better than my most carefully made figures
a fourth reason to provide a link to the fourth set of notes
Sorry about that
That last article was a bit disturbing. How about some obscene pictures of fruit?
My coworker sent me that, so once again I must assume it was on reddit.
The US Is a Police State →
As our Founding Fathers and a long list of scholars warned, once civil liberties are breached, they are breached for all. Soon U.S. citizens were being held indefinitely in violation of their habeas corpus rights. Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, an American citizen of Pakistani origin, might have been the first.
Dr. Siddiqui, a scientist educated at MIT and Brandeis University, was seized in Pakistan...
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Unemployment: New Claims Down
The snowstorm that closed down the Eastern Seaboard was not sufficient to delay the release of the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report. Good thing, too, because there’s good news in this week’s report. Initial claims fell to 440,000 while last week’s figure was revised up 3,000. This hit the optimistic edge of the Bloomberg concensus range of 440k to 475k. From the...
California: Slightly Less Screwed →
State Controller John Chiang today released his monthly report covering California’s cash balance, receipts and disbursements in January. The month’s receipts rose above the Governor’s 2010-11 budget estimates by $1.28 billion, or 18.6%.
Good News!
(via CalculatedRisk)
Canadian Housing Bubble
There’s no bubble…
…but don’t change anything, otherwise it will pop
Worse than Banning Gmail?
Is anyone else just a little afraid of what Iran’s “punch” tomorrow is going to be? It’s supposed to leave us stunned. If I wake up tomorrow to nuclear devastation, I’m going to be a little pissed that none of you warned me. Are we supposed to take Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s threats seriously?
I’m really hoping they announce an efficient diesel-electric...
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How to invest for the debt-bomb explosion Paul B.... →
Every once in a while, I see something that makes me feel like a happy optimist. Observe:
This is no joke, folks. Are you prepared? Or preparing? Will your family survive in a post-apocalyptic world, when anarchy is rampant in America? Look at Washington, Wall Street and Corporate America today. You know it’s already begun.
I thought MarketWatch wanted people to take them seriously....
It's Official: Fannie And Freddie Now Exist Merely... →
I do have one problem with this policy (imagine that): these are still off-balance-sheet entities for the US. That means, among other things, that they are not included in the budget. Now that they are guaranteed to lose money (default rates on their portfolios have doubled over the last year and capital injections have been required), it seems prudent to somehow account for that. There are no...
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Links 2/8
I saw quite a bit of interesting news bits on my reader today. Here’s an attempt at organization:
I started to write a post on the popping of the Australian and Canadian housing bubbles this weekend. I haven’t seen a lot of discussion about Australia’s bubble, except for some noise made when Australia’s central bank didn’t continue to hike interest rates. The key...
Citi plans crisis derivatives →
I will summarize: The Too-Big-To-Fail entity known as Citigroup will sell you insurance that pays off if Citigroup doesn’t have the money to pay off their insurance bets. Fortunately, since the US taxpayer is perfectly willing to backstop Citigroup, there’s absolutely no counter-party risk. Buy as much as you like.
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The CRE Bust
Commercial Real Estate is quickly deteriorating in the US. In early January, Stuyvesant Town defaulted. Stuy Town will likely serve as the poster child for the CRE bust, as it was the largest deal during the boom and will probably result in a roughly 50% loss when all is said and done. January saw the default rate for Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities rise to 5%, with an average loss severity...
Chicago Federal Reserve Joins Zero Hedge In... →
southpol:
(via shorterexcerpts)
Attention CNJ and fans of worlds colliding.
Yeah, I saw. Thanks. You can assume I read every post at zerohedge. My concern is that this won’t actually translate into any substantive change. Kind of like how the “Volker Rule” on prop trading was completely neutered. Something that is frequently overlooked here is how HFT is more likely to...
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Unemployment: 9.7%
The unemployment rate fell, jobs were lost, and large adjustments were made in January’s Employment Situation Report. The report itself also had substantial changes. New statistics were added, and the HTML format was improved. Let’s start with the most important data point: 20,000 jobs were lost on a seasonally adjusted basis in January. As I’ve pointed out before, there is a...
House approves $1.9 trillion debt-limit increase →
It passed the Senate last week. No technical defaults until at least August.
DOW 10,000! Woohoo!
We are allowed to celebrate it every time, right?
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Wacky Europeans
Things aren’t looking too great in Europe right now. Every bit of confidence gained in Greece seems to be borrowed from Portugal. But that’s just the beginning. Here are a smattering of stories.
ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet is confident Greece can control their deficit. At the same time, he feels the economic problems in Greece are a more pressing concern than inflation, and...
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Unemployment: New Claims Up
Hopes of pushing below 400k new claims a week are slowly evaporating. This week’s Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report has been released. Initial claims grew to 480,000 while last week’s number was revised up 2,000. This missed the Bloomberg consensus range of 440k to 475k. From the report:
In the week ending Jan. 30, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was...
I should probably post something before heading to bed.
There were several minor employment reports today (ADP was the most significant, coming in at -22,000 non-farm, non-government, seasonally adjusted jobs for January). There was also the non-manufacturing ISM, which showed expansion, but missed estimates. It also failed to show employment growth for January. Yay, jobless recovery?...
Is the US Reaching a Strategic Default Tipping... →
This is more about homeowners who choose to walk away. The referenced NYT article says:
New research suggests that when a home’s value falls below 75 percent of the amount owed on the mortgage, the owner starts to think hard about walking away, even if he or she has the money to keep paying….
Squashed and I have a disagreement about this. We both believe that a simple percentage is not...
Goldman's NFP Estimate: -25,000, And An Extended... →
NFP = Nonfarm Payroll, Friday’s report. The whole thing is a good discussion, but this was the part I wanted to draw attention to:
Seasonal wildcard (0 to +several hundred thousand). Believe it or not, without seasonal adjustment, payrolls always fall in January—or at least, they have for the more than 70 years of data that we examined. On a not-seasonally adjusted basis, payrolls have...