Archive - Apr 23, 2010 - Blog entry

I am getting to the point where I don't trust anything. Even Jon Hiselrath at the WSJ.

Yet ANOTHER reason the TBTFs should be broken up ...

Derivatives might be useful, but when 5 American banks have most of 'em - and are insisting they not be made transparent - recipe for disaster ...

A chart explaining the six primary strategies of buy-side short-term algorithmic traders.

When I make a mistake I will admit it.

In my analysis of consumer spending I asserted that the sources of increases in spending were (1) a draw-down of savings and (2) the redirection of defaulted mortgage payments to spending. I was half-right which another way of saying I was half-wrong.

I missed one the basic laws of economics, Bastiat's "Broken Window Fallacy." Ouch!

Unemployment (real unemployment that is) is still rampant. The federal government is effectively funding and financing deficit state unemployment rolls (see below for more detail). With record bankruptcies, deleveraging consumers, and rampant unemployment combined with drastic drops in consumer expenditures, guess what retail stocks are doing??? Yep, you guessed it. Now, what happens when reality reasserts itself???

The Japanese currency is falling in a choppy, volatile fashion that has become a day trader’s paradise. One of the largest short positions in the futures in history has appeared practically overnight. Has the central bank yen unwind only just begun?

Bondholders to be re-paid with unicorn rainbows; EU objects, claiming withdrawal requires ratification by two-thirds of European Parliament or 10% of European populace.