October 24, 2008

Links: France, Canada, Guns 'n' Roses, etc.

Some quick links to items of interest: France is showing new statist, anti-U.S. view in finance (Bloomberg) 30-year  treasury yields at lowest levels in 30 years (Bloomberg) News Guns 'n' Roses "Chinese Democracy" CD book-ends credit bubble & collapse: Last...

Bullish/Bearish Books and the Dow

No idea how I missed this, but there was a wonderfully tongue-in-cheek piece on business/finance books and the stock market from the Journal of Behavioral Finance. Here is a chart that drives it all home: Source: Exuberant Irrationality: Judging Financial...

White Powder, Threats, and Financial Services Companies

Okay, this is really off-color, but …. the trouble with sending threatening letters containing white powder to financial services executives is that the letters will likely be fought over. Mine! No, that's mine! More here....

California Highways as Economic Indicator

I'm a big fan of drive-by economic indicators, the sort of data that people disclose by their actions, as opposed to via surveys and the like on which they often lie. A case in point: Highway traffic in California. You...

San Diego's Bridge to Nowhere (from Nowhere)

How surreal is it in San Diego real estate right now? The city just broke ground on a footbridge downtown across a busy road and joining one luxury hotel to another luxury hotel plus the Petco Park baseball stadium. Trouble...

We're All ForEx Traders Now

Remarkable to me how many people are newly discovering that either accidentally or on purpose they are newly foreign exchange traders. This quote from a WSJ piece earlier in the week drove that point home: Hungary is at the center...

Chrysler, Pessimism and the Stock Market

I had someone email me a variant on this thought this morning, so I thought I'd share it here. Market participants aren't to be trusted at times like this because they're watching their world come down around them, and it...

A Quick Check of Dow Circuitbreakers

With Dow futures having hit circuit-breakers on declines early this morning, it's worth reminding yourself what the current limits are: Level 1 Halt A 1,100-point drop in the DJIA before 2 p.m. will halt trading for one hour; for 30...

Dow 36,000. Or 3,600. Or Something.

Two keeper book covers from the deranged stock market past. Both increasingly look like their authors slipped a decimal point....

Volcker: Rebuild Banks. Mundell: Cut Taxes. Stiglitz: Ick.

There was an interesting panel today in New York featuring Paul Volcker, Joe Stiglitz, and Robert Mundell. It's lengthy, but worth watching. Kudos to Barry for the find. click for video Teresa Tritch, a member of the board of editors...

From the Newspeak File: No Doc is Full Doc. Really.

John over at Bronte Capital found this gem of a Newspeak-ish disclosure in a filing from troubled mortgage insurer MGIC: In accordance with industry practice, loans approved by Government Sponsored Enterprise and other automated underwriting systems under “doc waiver” programs...