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Frugal Or Broke – Across The Boards
From Gallup:
PRINCETON, NJ — Baby boomers’ self-reported average daily spending of $64 in 2009 is down sharply from an average of $98 in 2008. But baby boomers — the largest generational group of Americans — are not alone in pulling back on their consumption, as all generations show significant declines from last year. Generation X… »
Inflation Dove
Paul Krugman penned a piece today telling us that all of the inflation scare talk is really just politically motivated so the Obama admin will stop its effort to “rescue the economy” – as Krugman puts it.
He begins by making the case that there is not now any real sign of inflation:
First things first. It’s… »
More Lies, Damn Lies & Statistics
Well, the place is lousy with optimists these days. The Stress Tests have been released – although I’m highly skeptical of them simply because they grossly understated the derivatives risk and hardly mentioned all those “toxic assets.” For lack of a better word it was nothing but theatrics. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t doubt… »
Keep An Eye On Bond Spreads
Minyan Brandine Rife says that a good tell on the economy is the high yield bond spread over treasuries.
As you can see, since early March, Corporate Investment Grade (subjective, but I digress) spreads have come in substantially from 6% to 4.78% as of yesterday’s close. It goes without saying that this isn’t a small move… »
Allan Metzler On Inflation
AS my regular readers know, I’ve been warning about inflation being a problem at some point in the future. I don’t know if I’ve written about it, but I also see the Fed as acting much like another agency of the executive branch – something that violates the charter of the Fed as an “independent”… »
Look Out Google
There’s soon to be a new search in town named Wolfram Alpha that is the internet’s first foray into artificial intelligence.
The real innovation, however, is in its ability to work things out “on the fly”, according to its British inventor, Dr Stephen Wolfram. If you ask it to compare the height of Mount Everest to… »
The Economics Of Wind Power
There’s and interesting post about wind energy at The Infrastructurist that points to the fatal flaws of wind power. He references an article published in Insights, an energy journal, by Ross McCracken which states:
As wind provides neither baseload nor peaking plant it has no impact on reserve capacity. . . [I]t increases redundancy in peaking… »
A Crises Of Confidence – For Good Reason
BofA chief Ken Lewis believes he was told by Ben Berneanke and hank Paulson to keep quiet to shareholders about the deteriorating condition of Merill Lynch:
Lewis testified in February to New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s office, which has been trying to determine if Merrill and Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America failed to provide adequate… »
A Look At The Crises And Regulation
Eric Falkenstein of Clusterstock argues that leverage was not the cause of the financial crises. Here are the money quotes:
Anyway, Posner’s book A Failure of Capitalism goes over the latest financial crisis, and Solow rips it a new binding. But Solow makes some statements that were clearly too good to check:
In the past, 10-to-1… »
Winners and Losers
H/T 2 Helena… »
“the only thing between you and the pitchforks”
So the President told Bankers and the White House Big Money Confab.
“These are complicated companies,” one CEO said. Offered another: “We’re competing for talent on an international market.”
But President Barack Obama wasn’t in a mood to hear them out. He stopped the conversation and offered a blunt reminder of the public’s reaction to such explanations…. »
Social Security Surplus About To Be Tapped Out
About 10 years ahead of schedule:
With unemployment rising, the payroll tax revenue that finances Social Security benefits for nearly 51 million retirees and other recipients is falling, according to a report from the Congressional Budget Office. As a result, the trust fund’s annual surplus is forecast to all but vanish next year — nearly a… »
More Bonuses for Those Who Helped Start The Fire
I wonder how Barney Frank will react to this:
Mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac plan to pay more than $210 million in bonuses through next year to give workers the incentive to stay in their jobs at the government-controlled… »
The ABCs Of AIG
Hoofy and Boo get down with a construction of AIG (and did you know the two are actually Emmy… »
Where Do I Go To Get My Reputation Back?
Just like Arthur Anderson, after being vindicated by the Supreme Court after the Enron caper, Ted Stevens has to be wondering this. From NPR.
In a move first reported by NPR, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said he has decided to drop the case against Stevens rather than continue to defend the conviction in the face… »
The Country’s In the Very Best of Hands
Yes, we… »
Geopolitical Acrimony
The president of Brazil said this yesterday:
Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Thursday blamed the global economic crisis on “white people with blue eyes” and said it was wrong that black and indigenous people should pay for white people’s mistakes.
Speaking in Brasília at a joint press conference with Gordon Brown, the UK prime… »
Bonus Outrage
Allen Sloan writes this:
Finally, if you want a real bonus outrage, consider this: The operation getting the biggest taxpayer subsidy of all – the federal government – pays bonuses to its employees too. This year it plans to hand out about $1.6 billion of bonuses, despite running more than $1 trillion in the red.
I can’t… »
If Anyone Should Get Fired…
It’s this… »
Oh, Yes! We’re In The Very Best Of Hands
Because Congress is a bunch of hapless nitwits we’re discovering how to lose $180 Billion faster than you can say “Greedy Wall Street Bankers.”
Amid the flap over bonuses at American International Group Inc. two of the company’s top managers in Paris have resigned. Their moves have left the giant insurer and officials scrambling to replace… »
A Truth And A Lie
Hillary said something that’s right today:
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday that an “insatiable” appetite in the United States for illegal drugs was to blame for much of the violence plaguing Mexico.
She also repeated the BS that Obama said last night:
“…Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally… »
Good Work!
Here is a resignation letter printed in the New York Times today from the EVP of AIG-FP. I’ve highlighted certain passages withing the broader quotes that I’m posting. The real story here is that Congress’s McCarthyite process in this caper never bothered to learn the real facts about the AIG employees. The ineptitude… »
I’m Told We’re In The Best Of Hands
Thank God we have intelligent legislators like Maxine… »
From The “Two Wrongs Make A Right” Department
The president’s excuse tonight at the presser, where he began speaking in tongues when asked about leaving the huge deficit to future generations, was something along the lines of “Hey, my Republican detractors seem to have amnesia. I inherited a $1.75 trillion deficit.” Not withstanding the fact that A) the deficit he inherited was just… »
EFCA On Hold
Arlen Specter just announced that he would not vote for cloture on EFCA.
What surprises me is that this pusillanimous blatherskite didn’t decide to vote in the Scottish tradition with a “not proven.” He’s proven he knows how to do that.
[Update} Here’s parts of Mr. Not-proven’s floor speech with a bit of PJM… »