Financial topics

[aedens]

An old woman having lost the use of her eyes, called in a Physician to heal them, and made this bargain with him in the presence of witnesses: that if he should cure her blindness, he should receive from her a sum of money; but if her infirmity remained, she should give him nothing. This agreement being made, the Physician, time after time, applied his salve to her eyes, and on every visit took something away, stealing all her property little by little. And when he had got all she had, he healed her and demanded the promised payment. The Old Woman, when she recovered her sight and saw none of her goods in her house, would give him nothing. The Physician insisted on his claim, and as she still refused, summoned her before the Judge. The Old Woman, standing up in the Court, argued: This man here speaks the truth in what he says; for I did promise to give him a sum of money if I should recover my sight: but if I continued blind, I was to give him nothing. Now he declares that I am healed. I on the contrary affirm that I am still blind; for when I lost the use of my eyes, I saw in my house various chattels and valuable goods: but now, though he swears I am cured of my blindness, I am not able to see a single thing in it.

Aesop

In 2011, the relative value of $1.00 from 1913 ranges from $17.40 to $386.00.
http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare ... evalue.php

[John]

What kind of salve cures blindness?

[Higgenbotham]

WASHINGTON (AP) — (The) Leader of the nation's major defense contractors warned on Wednesday of job layoffs and disruptions in manufacturing if Congress fails to agree on an alternative to automatic budget cuts.

Robert J. Stevens, chairman and chief executive officer of Lockheed Martin Corp., said the across-the-board reductions could result in layoffs of 10,000 employees from his company of 120,000 workers. Executives from United Technologies Corp.'s Pratt and Whitney unit, EADS North America, and Williams-Pyro also sounded the alarm about the $110 billion in cuts slated to hit defense and domestic programs on Jan. 2.

Republicans and Democrats are trying to undo the cuts they voted for last summer when they agreed to a deficit-cutting budget, but partisan divisions stand as a major obstacle to any solution. Democrats argue that any alternative must include tax hikes on high wage earners. Republicans are resisting any tax increases as the economy slowly recovers.

Politically, Republicans are trying to use the issue against President Barack Obama, contending that the commander in chief is willing to undermine the nation's military with deep defense cuts. In fact, Republicans and Democrats backed the legislation that called for $487 billion in defense cuts over 10 years, plus the automatic cuts of about $492 billion in projected spending if a congressional bipartisan committee failed to come up with $1.2 trillion in savings. The panel was unsuccessful.

In another political wrinkle, the officials from some of the defense firms said they would send out notices warning of possible layoffs 60 days before the cuts — which would fall just days before the November elections.

http://news.yahoo.com/defense-firms-war ... tml?_esi=1

[aedens]

What kind of salve cures blindness?
Good thought to allude to as to the group dynamics, or to say unbiased as in GD to challenge since belief presents an immense cognitive dissonance and they must find reinforcing thoughts to counter the view, and so become more fanatical. In this interpretation I may garner the increased group fanaticism is the result of increased individual fanaticism of the three views. Since the context was financial, the remaining discussion will be between the extreme fanatics on one end and the slightly less extreme fanatics on the other end. I will pick Dr. Krugman since a tax increase solves all realities and the art of his ways is ignore the simpsons paradox of data in his conveyance to the layman on the Texas to Wisconsin educational system of tax structures. The flat statement intent to theft of by inflation along the way, i.e the cruel theft as Aesop correctly drew allegory to since the natural law salves the eyes over time as it enforces the intent and consequences once opened. Half truths hurt more along the way since the price was already stated, thus are we not under the impression to pay the dues as we go than by deception of a so called citizen who tarried not in the field to sieze it? Since the poor will always be with us and theft is the order of the day and basically that sound you hear is you being adulterated out of the poor above the 15% in there lifetime unseen, and even more seen for some right off the top now ruled tax to cure. The older books have more relevance than the wise we have today.
http://www.aier.org/article/7685-anna-j ... -1915-2012

[Reality Check]

WASHINGTON (AP) — (The) Leader of the nation's major defense contractors warned on Wednesday of job layoffs and disruptions in manufacturing if Congress fails to agree on an alternative to automatic budget cuts.
...
Republicans and Democrats are trying to undo the cuts they voted for last summer when they agreed to a deficit-cutting budget, but partisan divisions stand as a major obstacle to any solution. Democrats argue that any alternative must include tax hikes on high wage earners. Republicans are resisting any tax increases as the economy slowly recovers.

...

The politicians still have plenty of time to kick the can down the road after the election.

Lame duck sessions are when politicians do the things they hope the voters will forget about before the next election.

[aedens]

Older context: They focus on the predictability of high frequency weekly returns and they use a less exible model than proposed in this paper. As a result, their model does not track the low frequency data and especially, does not generate the typical pattern of negative autocorrelations of stock returns over longer horizons (say one year). The next section will discuss their model in details. http://www.federalreserve.gov/PUBS/FEDS ... 604pap.pdf
For the sake of comparison, I just report some relevant summary statistics the first-order auto-correlations of stock returns over various horizons.
Similar results can also be obtained for value-weighted returns. However, value-weighted returns are generally less predictable than equal-weighted
returns. The findings of this article may have interesting implications for Intertemporal CAPM, asset allocation, and even option pricing because they depend on expected returns and risks.

context: http://generationaldynamics.com/forum/v ... gate#p8877
musings: http://generationaldynamics.com/forum/v ... gate#p8879
Sticky wages are topical and read a few heading on intent. Just backdrafting a few thoughts tonight.
We are at another vetting I assume for more.
Still catching up as always. Enforcement of the sanction is no longer unpopular.
Today: http://www.markiteconomics.com/MarkitFi ... px?ID=9823

http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi ... b#e080427b
Actually, there's every reason to believe the opposite:
As I keep saying, the global financial crisis is far from over, because the same banksters are in the same jobs finding new ways to defraud people. These people graduated with masters degrees in "financial engineering" in the 1990s, and became world experts in creating highly complex synthetic financial instruments with which to commit fraud.
I cannot see how red or blue can even look in mirror any more.

[aedens]

Uncomfirmed: The city of Fort Lauderdale is going to borrow $300Million and invest this sum in the stock market in order to cover a shortfall in their pension obligations. Oh yea its coming....

The Association of Brazilian Exporters (AEB) has reviewed recently its projections for the country’s trade balance in 2012. By the entity’s accounts, if the economy remains at its current pace, the Brazilian foreign trade surplus may end 2012 down 76% if compared with last year.

Transitioning to the ‘new’ model will likely take time: The ‘new’ growth model requires that EM economies take a step back from Ricardian comparative advantage and generate sustainable domestic demand at home. This new model cannot be created overnight.

However, a more sustainable growth model over the medium term is required to ‘finance’ these socio-economic improvements. How policy-makers react over the next 6-12 months will give us strong clues about the progress towards a ‘new’ growth model.

President Cristina Fernandez slapped new controls on foreign currency purchases just after winning re-election in October, requiring the tax agency approve each individual transaction. But starting in May, the government sharply limited those approvals, permitting people to buy foreign currency only if they could show they would be traveling abroad. This sent the black-market rate for dollars soaring. Argentines now pay about 5.95 pesos per dollar on the black market while the official rate is 4.53.

We can see the trend hang on...

[Higgenbotham]

The politicians still have plenty of time to kick the can down the road after the election.

Lame duck sessions are when politicians do the things they hope the voters will forget about before the next election.

If they do go ahead with another $1.5 trillion in deficit spending and give these defense contractors what they want, then I'll agree with Vince that we will get hyperinflation, probably before the end of 2014. I didn't think they would be as reckless as they have in the past 2 years or that the citizens would ignore it, so nothing would surprise me.

[aedens]

The politicians still have plenty of time to kick the can down the road after the election.
I think not. This wave is coming if they like it or not. If they do not have the sense now to act they deserve whatever happens.
China parked there PMI nuetral and I have not checked the ruble today. Alot of these indices are captured in the forums.
To busy to update. Good luck because that will not be enough to cut it. More are at level three now to prepare.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/investors ... -half-2012

[Reality Check]

WASHINGTON (AP) — (The) Leader of the nation's major defense contractors warned on Wednesday of job layoffs and disruptions in manufacturing if Congress fails to agree on an alternative to automatic budget cuts.
...
Republicans and Democrats are trying to undo the cuts they voted for last summer when they agreed to a deficit-cutting budget, but partisan divisions stand as a major obstacle to any solution. Democrats argue that any alternative must include tax hikes on high wage earners. Republicans are resisting any tax increases as the economy slowly recovers.

...

The politicians still have plenty of time to kick the can down the road after the election.

Lame duck sessions are when politicians do the things they hope the voters will forget about before the next election.

The politicians still have plenty of time to kick the can down the road after the election.

Lame duck sessions are when politicians do the things they hope the voters will forget about before the next election.

If they do go ahead with another $1.5 trillion in deficit spending and give these defense contractors what they want, then I'll agree with Vince that we will get hyperinflation, probably before the end of 2014. I didn't think they would be as reckless as they have in the past 2 years or that the citizens would ignore it, so nothing would surprise me.

The politicians still have plenty of time to kick the can down the road after the election.

I think not. This wave is coming if they like it or not. If they do not have the sense now to act they deserve whatever happens.

Lots of great answers above, to a lot of great questions, that are implied, not expressed.

Let me add one more quote from this forum, that I can not attribute properly, but I can paraphrase:

When something can not continue, it will stop

The questions being answered above include:

1. Will the U.S. Congress attempt to kick the can down the road again rather than solve the twin problems of a $1,500 Billion dollar per year deficit, and minor ( compared to the long term deficit problem ) automatic 10 year spending cuts which are set to automatically kick in at the end of the year?

2. If they will attempt to kick the can down the road, will they do it before the election, or after the election, or both?

3. Does anyone believe the U.S. Congress, regardless of which major party is in control, will ever do anything other than attempt to kick the can down the road, until after another "Great Depression" or another existential crisis war occurs?

4. Is the $1,500 Billion dollar per year deficits one of those things that "eventually can not continue"?

5. Is the current United States economy one of those things that "eventually can not continue", if the automatic cuts go into place at the end of the year?

6. Is the current United States economy one of those things that "eventually can not continue", if 1,000s of Billions of dollars in new taxes over the next 10 years are implemented?

7. When will the "eventually arrive" in each of the cases:

7a. ( 3 is true )

7b. ( 4is true )

7c. ( 5 is true )

7d. ( 6 is true )

8. Will the next attempt to kick the can down the road being delayed until after the election change the answers to the above questions?

9. If, and when, the "eventual" arrives will there be hyperinflation, or will assets decrease in value, or both?

10. Does anyone believe the U.S. Congress can do anything to avoid another "Great Depression" or avoid another existential crisis war?

For purposes of the above questions let us assume the "U.S. economy can not continue" means the United States enters a prolonged economic depression, similar to the great Depression that started at the very end of the 1920s and did not end until the 1940s.