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This documentary on the Financial Crisis premiered back in May, at just under 45 minutes it is impossible to cover all the issues. In places it oversimplifies, for example that the crisis began after 9/11 when Greenspan took rates down to 1% and Bush implored the population to be good Americans and spend, spend, [...] Both the Case Shiller 10 & 20 city Home Price Indices rose 1% in June on a non-seasonally adjusted basis. S&P cautions that their seasonal adjustments are probably being distorted by seasonal factors that’s why I prefer to look at the NSA numbers. 18 out of 20 Metro areas recorded price rises with [...] When you throw taxpayers money at people to buy houses this is what happens, you bring forward sales from the future and then when the susbsidy goes away, you are left with a yawning hole into which July existing home sales fell. From the NAR: Existing-home sales, which are completed transactions that include [...] I’ve seen former Fed Governor Frederic Mishkin on CNBC a number of times and something has always bothered me about him. He always seemed to give wish washy non-committal answers. He’s the type of guest you know that you can get up walk away from the TV and know you’re not going to miss [...] Initial Jobless Claims for the week ending August 14th came in at a seasonally adjusted 500,000, the highest level since November 2009. The 4 week moving average rose to a seasonally adjusted 482,500. Clearly initial claims are moving in the wrong direction, a number under 400,000 is commensurate with robust job growth, levels [...] Big Air (BGL) beat their previously upgraded guidance of $3.0m EBITDA posting FY10 EBITDA of $3.2m on a 17% increase in revenues. More importantly Net Profit After Tax increased 51% to $1.53m. Despite issuing some equity for a small acquisition the company managed to improve their return on equity to 27.9%. A summary of [...] I admit it, I’ve been watching too much financial TV of late. I know I shouldn’t but it does serve a purpose, it tells you things you need to be wary of. For instance the latest meme that seems to be doing the rounds is that the S&P500 is cheap based on forward Operating [...] For an accurate read on the June non-farm payroll report, you need look behind the headline numbers. The establishment survey showed that non-farm payrolls fell -125,000 in June however we need to exclude 225,000 census workers that dropped off the rolls and thus we have non-farm payroll growth of 100,000. If you want [...] Interesting debate, although the protagonists probably agree on more than they disagree. A couple of observations, Kroeber is a touch arrogant and overconfident, always a bad sign. More importantly though, Kroeber dismisses a lot of economic history with a version of the “this time it’s different” argument. Kroeber cites the volatility in Chinese [...] I’m glad this guy is back in the media. Such a simple message that so few in the mainstream seem to able to grasp. I love this quote in reference to the market meltdown of last week: “When a bridge collapses, you don’t look at the last truck that was on it, you look [...] |
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