In today’s Outside the Box the redoubtable James Montier of GMO lifts his lance to prick the underbelly of the Mighty SVM. (That’s Shareholder Value Maximization, for you newbies.) “The world’s dumbest idea” (among many candidates in the world of finance), says James, citing none other than “Neutron Jack” Welch in support. After noting that…
Source: Wikimedia Dear Diary, A faint breeze blew through the US stock exchanges yesterday. A few leaves fluttered. But Diary readers want to know: When is the next hurricane coming? Alas, we get the newspaper no earlier than anyone else. It always has yesterday’s news… not tomorrow’s. That leaves us wondering and guessing and trying to figure out…
This isn’t all that much of a surprise if you’ve been following the temp help index and some of the other indicators… they have been forecasting accelerating employment since for some time.. From early Nov From August “Davidson” submits: The media says “We are off to the races!” with this morning’s employment reports. As usual the focus is on…
The national debt of the United States officially surpassed $18 trillion this past week. The news has been making the rounds of every media outlet, with many economists reminding us of the very shaky footing of the U.S. economy. However, there are other analysts who play down this outrageously irresponsible amount of debt. In his…
Well, although there are mixed opinions about our friends in Gainesville, one thing they’ve gotten absolutely right is US dollar strength. Prechter’s contention for a bull market in the dollar has been well-documented. It’s remarkable to me that a country over $18 trillion in debt can be seen as the Hercules of the fiscal world,…
The decline in energy prices has increasingly become important for consumers, investors, and policy makers. Here are nine essays I have written in recent weeks that analyze what is going on; integrating political and economic analysis, geopolitics and game theory. These series of essays also illustrate how my thinking has evolved through the analysis and subsequent…
US Census says manufacturing new orders declined. Our analysis agrees. The data has been soft for three months in a row. Consider that this data is noisy – but the rolling averages (which include transport) are decelerating. 3 Month Rolling Average – Unadjusted Manufacturing New Orders (blue line), Inflation Adjusted New Orders from the Unadjusted…
My recent articles on security here at TalkMarkets have been designed to warn investors about the growing cyber security threat. I continue to illuminate the issue because I know the potential for not doing so can lead to a lot of market pain for companies and individuals alike. So we press on with the latest…
As we enter the final month of the year, the markets advance got me thinking about something known as the “Unstoppable Force Paradox.” While you may not be familiar with the name, you will certainly know the definition which questions “What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?” Even Frank Sinatra sang about it in “Something’s Gotta…
Note from dshort: I’ve updated this analysis to include today’s release of the November Employment Report. Official recession calls are the responsibility of the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee, which is understandably vague about the specific indicators on which they base their decisions. This committee statement is about as close as they get to identifying their method. There…
