Archive - May 10, 2014

Relax everyone...Be douche

It's been a while since we looked at Japan's debt situation. Here is the dire update.

The structure behind the childhood pastime of rock, paper, scissors holds to modern game theory remarkably well for something so common to hungry college students contesting a final slice of 3 am pizza. As ConvergEx's Nick Colas explains, the optimal play choice is random, but human beings have real trouble fulfilling that mandate, as in the real world, life and human biases get in the way. And that, Colas notes, makes RPS a great tool for assessing how we make decisions in the real world – randomness is essentially impossible for humans, after all.

As the nation shivered through February and March and saw it's gross domestic product collapse as humans hibernated, President Obama sought sunnier climes to ensure US supremacy on the world-leader's golf handicap rankings. As The Washington Times reports, however, Obama’s trips this year to the golfing playgrounds of Palm Springs and Key Largo cost taxpayers nearly $3 million for flight expenses alone on Air Force One.

For the second time in a few short months, the Paramus Mall at Garden State Plaza is being evacuated. There are no reports that an active shooter is present but shots were heard fired. There is also a car fire (which some are noting could have been responsible for the 'popping sounds'). Police are on scene and shoppers are being evacuated as the anxiety is (as one would imagine) high. There are currently no reports of injuries.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) Index is the only stock market index that covers both the second and the third industrial revolution. Calculating share indexes such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average and showing this index in a historical graph is a useful way to show which phase the industrial revolution is in. Changes in the DJIA shares basket, changes in the formula and stock splits during the take-off phase and acceleration phase of industrial revolutions are perfect transition-indicators. The similarities of these indicators during the last two revolutions are fascinating, but also a reason for concern. In fact the graph of the DJIA is a classic example of fictional truth, a hoax.

Sometimes you just have to wonder what they are really thinking... rigged? rigged!!

One can’t help but look at the situations transpiring around the globe and hope: things are different this time. The problem is being different puts it right back in line with that other caveat: history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. And so lies the most troubling aspect facing not only the U.S. economy, but quite possibly the world as whole. For if things rhyme anything inline with past events in history: We’re all in a dung heap of QE based minutia, with Geo-political ramifications the “intellectual” crowd never contemplated as possible – let alone probable.

What is happening in the luxury US housing segment has spilled over beyond the simply bizarre and has now openly entered surreal territory...

A few short hours ago, a Russian delegation which contained the deputy premier of Russia Dimitry Rogozin was flying back from Moldova's capital Chisinau following his visit to Tiraspol as part of May 9 celebrations, when Ukraine scrambled fighter jets to intercept the Yak-42 carrying the Russian vice premier and forced it to promptly land back in Moldova.

There's more than one oil price around the world and as the following comprehensive (but brief) overview from Morgan Stanley's Global Energy Teach In shows, crude oil pricing across the world is dynamic and multi-factorial - from fundamental factors (such as simple supply and demand and seasonality) to macro factors (such as USD strength, macro sentiment, and "burden") and risk premia (e.g. geopolitics), the following provides everything you wanted to know about global crude oil fundamentals, but were afraid to ask...

As Putin warned earlier in the week, they do not see the effectiveness of sanctions; but it seems he had something else in mind. By rolling back informal limits on Chinese investment, Putin has opened the door for significant capital inflows from his new best friend... and China has already agree to increase investment. While Putin is careful to note that the Chinese will not be allowed to invest in gold or diamond mining, or hi-tech projects, Russia hopes to lure cash from the world’s second-biggest economy into industries from housing and infrastructure construction to natural resources. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet in Shanghai May 20/21 and Chinese officials have already confirmed bilateral cooperation in the areas of investment and finance has made major progress as local currency settlement in two-way trade increases. Forget sanctions, just remove the US from the world trade equation...

During this week’s Senate hearings, Janet Yellen was asked by Senator Bernie Sanders if the U.S. was a capitalist democracy or has morphed into an oligarchy. While readers of this site already know the answer to this question, which was recently proved empirically by a Princeton and Northwestern academic study, it was still stunning to note her unwillingness to answer the question...

As the San Fran Fed recently explained, when it looked at the upside of a college education, it found that the average college graduate earns over "$800,000 more than the average high school graduate by retirement age." What was ignored is the offsetting cost to this upside in terms of hundreds of thousands of college loans bearing compounding interest that are just as sticky and in increasingly more cases also remain with the graduate until retirement. But what about business schools? For those professionals who have already picked a career in finance or business, and who are willing to spending even more ridiculous amounts of money for a piece of paper and a rolodex, which business schools offer the best bank for the buck?