A couple of house-keeping items: At the end of last year, I asked readers for suggestions for the site. Quite a few of you responded.
• To use the Search function, type whatever words or phrase you want AFTER the phrase that’s already in the google box (site:bigpicture.typepad.com);
• If you want to see what the site traffic is, click the Site meter button at bottom. (Or just click here)
• The books I am either reading (or have queued up) have been updated (Worth Perusing), as have the most recent tunes (MP3s Spinning);
• I’ve been posting very long comments in two parts;
• You may have noticed more international coverage and references (by popular demand);
• PNG has become the chart/graphic format of choice — lite, fast loading, little color loss;
• I played with the idea of full-text feeds, but after extensive research (I spoke with 2 other bloggers), the conclusion was that the comments would suffer;
• Lots of new categories added (Wages & Income, Consumer Spending, Data Analysis, etc.);
• Temporary fix for the printing: Highlight only what you want, then click the radio button "PRINT SELECTION "
Things I am working on for the next upgrade:
• I cannot seem to get updates to the Blog Roll to work; (I’m working on it);
• Trying to figure out how to make graphs/charts larger than the 600 pixel limit;
• Coming soon: an email article function; If you want to forward a link or full article to someone else (making sure spammers don’t abuse it is the problem);
• Making articles easier to print is another goal — but I’m getting nowhere with it. Any ideas?
I’ve been missing the regular Tuesday music postings.
PNGs – ugh. My browser doesn’t handle them. I know
I’m behind there, but the upgrade process is going to
be awkward, if not painful.
big B! I was one of those who commented. I asked if you would ever discuss specific stocks.
I know you have conflict of interest issues because of your firm, but if you could find a loophole and bless us with your savvy, we’d all be better off.
I’d love to see you do what you normally do — give us astute macro analysis — but then tie in a stock or 2 that you think could benefit from a particular macro-phenomenon/shock/datum.
This working feedback function is so smart. Confirmation of intelligence that I so badly need; that is so often lacking; that is so often refuted by us bloggers. You know what I mean?
Hello?
Re: printing articles
You could create a separate style sheet for printing, and code it so the things you don’t want printed (sidebar, etc.) won’t display.
Then add the following line in the HTML header:
<LINK rel=stylesheet type=”text/css” media=”print” href=”xyzprint.css”>
where xyzprint.css is the filename of your print style sheet.
Barry, could you comment on the recent article on realmoney regarding why the recent “negative savings headline” is misleading.
Michael Brush says:
“The definition of “income” excludes capital gains… Any part of those gains that they shell out, however, is counted as spending. So assuming nothing else changes, if they spend any of their capital gains, their savings as a portion of income goes down, according to the government.”
I bring this up because you do a good job on posting why certain data is misleading.
Mike,
Do you have a link?
Should have included it. Sorry & thanks in advance…
http://www.thestreet.com/p/rmoney/retail/10267249.html
Barry: I know it’s a pain, but keeping your links up to date would be nice. In addition to the Thomson Real Time that I mentioned to you before, I get “cannot be found” messages for Lipper Toolbox, Technical Analysis from A to Z, Stock Smart and Wired Index
Brush makes a very misleading argument. I don’t know him personally, so I cannot tell you if its willfully misleading, or its simply a case of innumeracy/mathematical ignorance.
According to an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the richest 1% of households owned 57.5% of all income from capital gains, dividends, interest and rents in 2003. That was up from 38.7% in 1991.
In other words, the “excluded” income doesn’t fall to the vast majority of population. The argument is spurious.
Incidentally, if you are in the top 1% of all earners, your wages/income is incomes in the top 1 percent of households ranged from $237,000 to several billion dollars. (Not too shabby)
Back to the non wage income: Consider the math on that: 1% of the country’s population garnered over half of all that non-wage income. I don’t have the stat handy, but I recall less than 10% of US population garners over 90% of all non wage income.
Brush seems to have fallen prey to the error of confusing median versus mean. In a case where a small percentage of the sample is disproportionately weighted (As is non wage income distribution), you end up with a mean and a median wildly diverging.
Source: Rich getting richer faster
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/invest/extra/P143548.asp
Excellent, excellent counter to that article. I had a hard time finding a problem with his analysis myself as I am sure why it “sounds” so convincing.
I would email Brush but I see you posted your comment to RM as well. It will be interesting to see if/when he responds.
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts, Barry!
One comment in his defense. He does refer to home equity which may have more of an impact on the overall population than 90% of the gains on 10% of the population.
I would think that virtually every home owner has accumulated home equity, of course the rich have accumulated more $ wise.
I could be dead wrong as you clearly state that 90% of the gains on 10% of the population is non-wage income. But to me it may seem true regarding stocks, but not homes.
Too late at night for me to think any deeper!…
Mike,
People have owned home’s for centuries — yet up until recently, they still earned more than they spent.
Why should this measure suddenly change now?
Borrowing money against an asset is not income — its called debt.
I do not understand why anyone would say otherwise, unless their agenda was to obscure the truth.