It's just my opinion, I could be wrong

In the spirit of the season, I have a suggestion for the reformers who strive to make the financial world a level playing field for individuals and big-money insiders. How is it that it can be hard to tell how much exposure a public company has to various industries and financial commitments? Why should it require an insider analysis, usually after the fact, to inform investors that a company has more leveraged exposure to risky investments than actual capital? I would suggest that it should not, in fact, be legal for public companies to obscure their financial records to the point where investors cannot tell exactly what the current financial state of the company is, including all investments and exposures. I suggest that company executives be personally liable for not only inaccurate financial disclosures, but also for incomplete or intentionally obfuscated financial disclosures. Specifically, I would suggest two changes to the regulations to enforce this: 1. Create a standard quarte...

So, I don't know if anyone else has observed this, but it seems like there's a trend in commercials to target stupid people, or at least imply that products are intended for stupid people. Perhaps the marketing people have come to the conclusion that it's more profitable to explicitly target dumb people (larger market? easier to sell to?), I don't know; but I have definitely noticed the trend. Case in point: Disneyland, and it's two-for promotional campaign. If you haven't heard the spots, it's basically an idiot calling up normal businesses which sell expensive items (cars, fine art, etc.) and asking if he can get a 2-for-1 deal like Disneyland has. Now obviously this is retarded, but that's the point of the commercial: the guy who bought the Disneyland tickets is a moron. The part I don't understand is: why would you make a commercial for your product that implied that customers are morons? Is the market for idiots large enough (and stupid enough) ...

Too funny not to repost... copied from a followup forum post on a news story about Dean saying they should resolve the nomination by July 1 (haha, yeah, right). TWO SENATORS - SHOCKING COMPARISON OF PRODUCTIVITY Senator Clinton, who served just one full term of 6 years and another year campaigning, managed to author and pass into law only 20 twenty pieces of legislation in all of her six years. (These bills can be found on the website of the Library of Congress www.thomas.loc.gov) 1 . Establish the Kate Mullany National Historic Site. 2. Support the goals and ideals of Better Hearing and Speech Month. 3. Recognize the Ellis Island Medal of Honor. 4. Name a courthouse after Thurgood Marshall. 5. Name a courthouse after James L. Watson. 6. Name a post office after Jonn A. O'Shea. 7. Designate Aug. 7, 2003, as National Purple Heart Recognition Day. 8. Support the goals and ideals of National Purple Heart Recognition Day. 9. Honor the life and legacy of Alexander Hamilton on the bicen...

I have to laugh when I read a story like this . Basically, a journalist has realized that driving while talking on a hands-free cellphone is equally as distracting as driving with a normal cell phone (which the rest of the intelligent world already knew). Moreover, there is a suspicion that people will be less attentive when talking on a hands-free, because it's supposed to be safer. What's funny is that having an involved conversation on a hands-free is worse for driving performance than driving drunk; but hands-free is encouraged, and drunk driving is very much discouraged. Just goes to show how dumb politicians make dumb laws. Side note: the "right" solution, imo, is to make neither one illegal on its face, but make fines and penalties multiplicatively worse if you're doing something illegal or dangerous while in any enumerated "distracted driving" state. So if you're driving like a moron, it's an 'x' dollar fine; if you're drunk o...

Sometimes it's useful to take a step back, and try to see the big picture. In this case, the musing is about the Fed's response to the housing credit "crisis", what we can reasonably expect in the near future, and who is most benefited/hurt long-term. So start, I read this , which has an interesting section on Benny's analysis of the Bank of Japan's handling of their recession in the early 90's. His specific recommendations for what they should have done differently early in the correction were: 1. Devaluation of the Yen: If the BOJ devalued the Yen enough, import prices would start rising and consumers would be encouraged to start spending today for fear of higher prices down the road. Also demand for cheaper Japanese goods would rise, creating higher profits for Japanese companies. In Bernanke’s words, “a significant Yen depreciation would go a long way toward jump-starting the reflationary process in Japan.” 2. A “Helicopter Drop” of Money: This is wher...

This is a very insightful statement, imho (from here ): "There is increasing concern among some on the (Fed) that freewheeling rate cuts are creating a significant problem with the Fed's goal of anchoring inflation expectations," said Scott Anderson, senior economist at Wells Fargo Economics. If people, companies and investors believe inflation will pick up, they will act in ways that can make inflation worse. "It is important that inflation expectations remain stable. If those expectations become unhinged, they could rapidly fuel inflation," Plosser said in February. "Moreover, as we learned from the experience of the 1970s, once the public loses confidence in the Fed's commitment to price stability, it is very costly to the economy for the Fed to regain that confidence." Basically, the Fed's job with respect to inflation is to manage inflation expectations , and if people expect higher inflation they tend to take actions with compound economi...

I thought today instead of ranting about the latest thefts perpetrated by Wall Street insiders in collusion with their insider buddies (read: the Fed), I'd write an educational piece for legislators who want to contribute positively to society. You see, it's good for society for people to own homes, but legislators don't always understand how to accomplish that noble goal. So, I will provide some insight. In order for people to own homes, they need to be affordable. Now, contrary to what Greenspan might have said in flimsy defense of his flimsy oversight, that doesn't mean exotic 100 year 5/95 fixed to adjustable loans with ridiculously low intro rate, balloon payments, and pre-pay penalties. It means houses need to be priced where people can afford them, over the long run, at the current [real, documented, not made-up] salaries. Now, we're a ways from there, but you can help get there. You know how? I bet you can figure it out if you think about it, but... I might ...

From: http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/03/liquidity-traps-myth-and-reality.html Throwing money at the problem simply encourages more overcapacity, weakens the currency, and causes prices of necessities like oil to rise while not doing a thing for wages. If dropping money out of helicopters worked, Zimbabwe would be the greatest economic force on the planet. Unfortunately, the Fed seems to be of the mindset that causing real, massive inflation is the way to stimulate the economy.

So, there's an interview from today with a guy who claims that fair market accounting (FAS 157) is largely to blame for the meltdown in the financial markets. See: http://www.housingwire.com/2008/03/17/quote-of-the-day/ What's awesome about the interview is the audacity to say that it's so unfair and disruptive to force financial institutions to value to assets to market, because all the banks and IB's with their current assets would be insolvent when assets bubbles collapsed if they had to do so. Yet, and let me emphasize this, that's the entire g-damn point!!! Banks should not be holding their fractional reserves in leveraged derivatives to inflate their profits; it was true when Buffet said it several years ago, it's still true today, and it'll be true long after all the taxpayer-expense inflation-fueled bailouts are done. If a decrease in one asset market could cause you to become insolvent as a bank, you should not be allowed to hold people's money...

Bailouts are becoming more public and less behind-the-scenes... expect much more to follow at taxpayer expense. Today the Fed agreed to allow JP Morgan to purchase treasury notes in exchange for basically toilet paper coated in crap from Bear Sterns. In simpler terms, it's equivalent to taxpayers directly giving money to jobless people with terrible credit for no-doc loans on million dollar mansions, because you would do that right now with your money, right? So full of hate for all these bailouts at taxpayer expense. When did we become the United States of corruption, collusion, theft, and abusing normal people to protect corporate executives? Who's job is it to throw the Fed officers in jail for stealing our money? PS: Note to any politician who wants to take a bold, innovative, productive, and revolutionary step to prevent all this crap in the future: Push the idea that the federal government will not bail out the Federal Reserve Bank if they become insolvent due to intentio...

From the "how could these people manage running to the bathroom, much less the country" comes this gem: Another Brilliant Idea From Congress Basically, give money to bribe people to buy houses, and thusly help prevent the prices from correcting themselves back to sane levels. This would make housing less affordable, prop up the real-estate industry, create inflation, increase the national debt, and encourage people to overextend themselves financially, again , when the country can least afford it, all in one monumental tribute to patron saint of drooling retard please-for-the-love-of-god-don't-breed brain-dead morons. Is it too much to ask to appoint people with one brain cell to Congress? Is our country that far down the proverbial drain? PS: This brain-dead individual ( Senator Johnny Isakson , from GA) is a Republican, for everyone who thinks I get hate on liberals. Although liberals are the typical purveyors of brain-dead idiocy, in my experience, I'm actually an ...

Not that this should be news to anyone, but I guess the real story should be about how little people seem to care. If I was running the government and this was happening, the Fed would be gone, today, abolished, and it's executives on trail for treason. In case it helps for google rankings or whatever, I'll like to a couple of the places other people talk about it: Fed Giving Away Your Money To Banks Moody's, S&P Defer Cuts on AAA Subprime, Hiding Loss Note to CNN/others: How about a front page story about this, instead of the usual meaningless garbage? Or, to put it another way, which is more likely to affect your average readers personally: a politician getting laid, or the Fed stealing $200 billion (which, BTW, makes Enron seem like a round-off error)?

I think this is good news; kinda like a corporate merger. I imagine they could perhaps cut costs by eliminating redundancy between their organizations, thus streamlining their business and increasing profits for their shareholders. "This merger makes a lot of sense," says this analyst, "it brings together old-school brick-and-morter religion with new age religion. The global warming religion will benefit from the years of experience at fear-mongering and guilting that long-established religions bring to the table, while the established religions can benefit from increased market exposure and more mainstream unfounded beliefs than the typical religious dogma. It will be a win-win for the shareholders." It was unknown if there would be any response from rational thought, or if independent thinkers were considering any moves to strengthen their position in the mindshare space in response to this merger.

From The New Yorker : If McCain really wants to have it all—to refurbish his maverick image without having to flip-flop on the panderings that have tarnished it; to galvanize the attention of the press, the nation, and the world; to make a bold play for the center without seriously alienating “the base”—then he can avail himself of a highly interesting option: Condoleezza Rice. I couldn't agree more; I think Condi would be a pretty ideal VP candidate in every conceivable way. In addition to everything else which was said in the original article, it would be a clear statement that you could elect someone black and female to a powerful position, without having to choose between an empty-rhetoric panderer or a socialist moron.

This chart is too awesome not to link: (from http://piggington.com/this_just_in_san_diego_homes_are_overpriced ) Just... spot on.

You know it's pretty radical when I label it a wacked idea, as opposed to all my other ideas that everyone else thinks are wacked but I think are pretty reasonable. I'm not even sure it's a good idea, but it's a thought, and since I write thoughts here... I was thinking that votes should be weighted by both education (in lieu of intelligence, which is hard to objectively quantify) and experience. Not so much as, say, the super-delegates compared to the normal delegates in the democratic party, where one special person's vote is worth 100,000 normal people's votes. More like something on the order of 5-1, for a 60 year old with 40 years of work experience and a college degree vs an 18 year old high school dropout on welfare who barely speaks English. Sure, this would have problems, like the arbitrariness of the qualifications and the inevitable politicizing of the criteria. But the whole equal vote thing just strikes me as doing a fundamental disservice to the co...

So, uncle Benny, in his most recent spew of "wisdom", suggested banks should consider forgiving some principle on bad loans given to people who couldn't possibly pay them back for homes they couldn't possibly afford. Now normally, I think the Fed is generally bad for the country, bad at their job (controlling inflation, in case anyone forgot what that was), and bad in their advice. However, in this case, I think it's not actually that bad (regardless of how bad it sounds). I'll explain (in a shameless copy of a post made on The Mess That Greenspan Made )... Banks and other lenders have a problem with all their bad loans which is going to get worse. As people figure out they can walk away from underwater loans with various levels of downside (from a simple defaulted "everybody did it then" debt to "many people did it then" bankruptcy), lenders will be left holding a lot of properties they can't unload. As states try to combat urban bligh...