January 21, 2009
I’ve been meaning to post this for ages, but here it is, your moment of financial-political zen: 10 Dec 2008 : Column 527 Mr. David Cameron (Witney) (Con): … I am going to ask the Prime Minister again about the...
Agnotology, formerly agnatology, is a neologism for the study of culturally-induced ignorance or doubt, particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data. More here and here. [via Barry]...
PIMCO quits GM creditor group (Bloomberg) Nationalisation Magnus Opus (FT) Should the US worry about the drop in foreign demand for US long-term assets? (Setser) Was the euro a mistake? (Eichengreen) Unsettling increase in Google searches for “suicide methods”...
Nothing like playing catchup with downbound economic weakness, as evidenced by this series of GDP releases from Singapore. In the extreme case, Singapore has gone, in two months, from forecasting GDP up 2.0% to GDP down 5.0%, a 700 basis-point...
Well, it’s fairly obvious what’s going on: The stock market tumbled on the Obama inauguration yesterday, and it’s spiking higher today on the beginning of the new season of “Lost”. In short, markets hate minority Democratic presidents, but love TV...
Comparing the top four bestselling products on Amazon’s electronics page, two years ago and now. Interesting to see that AmazonApple has gone from three of the top four products, to one of the top four....
How Contango Affects Crude Oil ETF's and ETN's (market folly) Gold to gain thru 2012 (Bloomberg) Nice BBC special on probability (Source) IPO Drought Hides Bigger Tech Woes (GigaOm) Big companies still hate short-sellers (II) Option trades at GE...
I wish I had thought of making this Python-esque comment about bad banks first: From Mr Thomas Janichen. Sir, Why create another bad bank? We have enough already. Thomas Janichen, Leyton, UK [via FT]...
Great photo from a reader of Vancouver trapped in a temperature inversion, with the city in fog but sunlight overhead. The metaphors for our current predicament are many....
Nice graphic of how the major banks are just a fraction of their former selves, at least as measured by market value: Source: JP Morgan via FT [Update] The folks atJPM have apparently been reading the many critical comments...
China is to issue its Q4 GDP number late tomorrow, and Reuters has the consensus at 7.0 percent growth annualized. While that is down from recent quarters, anyone want to hazard a guess on the likelihood that's materially under that...
The British government plans to provide insurance for new asset-backed securities. That is like helping a junkie to detox by guaranteeing drug supplies until the local dealer resumes normal service. -- Source: John Kay (in FT)...
