Click on the image to view a 2400 x 1800 version
From the monthly archives:
September 2009
“When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer “Present” or “Not guilty.””
–Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) 26th President of the United States
“Economics: The science of explaining tomorrow why the predictions you made yesterday didn’t come true today”
I may have to get started on investment bankers soon, because I’ve just about mined all the economist jokes on the planet. I told you all that it was a finite supply, and I fear we may have accidentally disrupted the pricing model by creating short term artificial demand.
On the other hand……..
Another in our occasional visits to the ongoing PBS series about some of the people that keep NYC humming along. Enjoy!
New York on the Clock: Chris Baker, Tugboat Captain from Thirteen.org on Vimeo.
“Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”
–Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) 26th President of the United States
When God created the universe and everything, he used the principle of duality or complementarity (yin/yang). He made matter and anti-matter, positive and negative charges, and gave electrons up spin and down spin. He made light and dark, land and water, and made humans male and female to complement each other.
But when He made the first economist, He didn’t know what to make as a complement, so she just made another economist knowing that they would always disagree with each other.
Simply because that was so bloody awful, here’s a bonus round as an apology;
The economics professor was discussing the “underlying assumptions” involved in the micro-economic model under study.
A student asked “What would economics be without assumptions?”. Another student shouted out “Accounting”.
President of the World Bank, Robert M. Zoellick, seems to have made a decision to inject himself into the bureaucratic fight between Congress and the Federal Reserve.
Readers, please stand by one moment as I “uncage the outrage” We haven’t had a really serious rant on these pages in a while. OK, there we go – let’s have at it.
In a speech to be delivered today at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Mr. Zoellick says that central banks worldwide fell down as regulators. He goes on to question whether Congress ought to give the Fed any additional power, as it looks for ways to reconfigure financial sector oversight.
Central banks failed to address risks building in the new economy,” Zoellick says. “They seemingly mastered product price inflation in the 1980s, but most decided that asset price bubbles were difficult to identify and to restrain with monetary policy. They argued that damage to the ‘real economy’ of jobs, production, savings, and consumption could be contained once bubbles burst, through aggressive easing of interest rates. They turned out to be wrong.
Well OK, that’s a statement of the fairly obvious. In poor taste, and hardly what anyone would be described as a friendly overture. But wait, it gets even worse…..
[click to continue reading this post…]
Wednesday Morning Market Commentary 2009-09-30
by dionysus on 2009/09/30
Equities had a slightly disappointing day yesterday in a generally lackluster session, as absence of leadership left stocks to drift sideways all afternoon, unable to reclaim their initial gains. Consumer confidence edged back just a tad, as consumers expressed deepening pessimism over the jobs market – and as a derivative conclusion - their income outlook. An earnings-led ‘mini-rally’ for Walgreen partially offset the declines and provided a backstop for the consumer staples sector.
The market held fairly steady in quiet trading, awaiting the results of today’s ADP report, the weekly initial jobless report on Thursday, and Friday’s nonfarm payroll data. Stocks started the session in higher ground as a better-than-expected S&P/Case Shiller Home Price Report for July provided some modest support. The 20-City Composite showed a 13.3% year-on-year decline, which wasn’t as bad as the 14.2% consensus had previously indicated.
The seemingly solid state of things started to get unglued however, as the Consumer Confidence index pulled back from 53.1 from 54.5 in August. That dip was unexpected. The consensus had been expecting a reading of 57.0. The unraveling began…… [click to continue reading this post…]
Be the first to comment