10 Thursday AM Reads

September 24, 2015 7:15am by

Welcome to Autumn! Start it right with our morning train reads:

• Is He Selling You a Stock? Or a Big Fat Lie? (Bloomberg)
• A Battle for the Stock Market’s Soul (Bloomberg View)
• The Most Expensive Place in the World to Live (Real Time Economics) see also Renters Will Continue to Struggle for the Next Decade, Harvard Study Says (Real Time Economics)
• The first reviews of the iPhone 6S are in — critics love it but say you should buy it only if you have an older iPhone (Business Insider) see also iPhone 6s’s Hands-Free Siri Is an Omen of the Future (NYT)
• Colbert bests Trump: Facing off with the razor-sharp comedian, a subdued front-runner grins and bears it. (Politico) see also Donald Trump: Fox News is persona non grata, will not be appearing for the ‘foreseeable future’ (EW)

Continues here

 

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

What's been said:

Discussions found on the web:
  1. RW commented on Sep 24

    It ain’t April 1 but shoot ….

    Chair Yellen invites Pope Francis to Federal Reserve to bless Phillips Curve

    Though the curve has historically provided the Fed guidance as to the relationship between unemployment and inflation, in recent years, it has demonstrably failed to do so, …

    “We’ve tried everything else–anchored models, moving coefficients–but we’re stuck,” said Fed chair Janet Yellen. “Why not see if his Holiness can give the Phillips Curve the blessing it needs to start working again?” …

    • rd commented on Sep 24

      All eyes appear to be on Yellen again about the timing of an interest rate hike. I am completely baffled. Not even the Fed has been able to predict when they will raise interest rates – they keep giving target dates but then don’t actually pull the trigger when that date comes. Doesn’t everybody get the fact that 0% interest rates indicate a pretty crappy global and US economy? Not raising interest rates at this point in an expansion should not be viewed as a good thing.

      http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2015/09/thursday-yellen-speech-new-home-sales.html

    • RW commented on Sep 24

      Most of the commentary about the Fed has glossed over what I suspect the real hangup is: risk asymmetry.

      If the Fed raises rates too late and inflation kicks in that is a relatively easy problem to solve and the monetary tools to do so are effective and well understood. Politically it may be a hot-button topic but macroeconomically being late is low risk.

      If the Fed raises rates too early and it stalls recovery or even initiates recession (à la 1937) that is something the Fed cannot counteract easily and its tools are not very effective particularly in the absence of corresponding fiscal policy. Being early is high risk.

      IMO the Fed is being conservative in the true sense of that word; not that it is usually recognized as such these days.

    • catclub commented on Sep 24

      “Politically it may be a hot-button topic but macroeconomically being late is low risk.”

      And yet the concern voiced( by Fed members) is about being late if you wait too long on inflation.
      Nevermind that 2% is not the target, it is the ceiling. It should be 3% as target.

      I hope that Yellen is using the longterm under-employed, and the large group that dropped out of the labor market, but may come back in, to hold off on raising rates too soon.

  2. rd commented on Sep 24

    It never crossed my mind that the stock market had a soul.

    • willid3 commented on Sep 24

      it doesnt. but it does Constitutional rights. just SCOTUS

  3. rd commented on Sep 24

    I assume that Trump refusing to go on Fox News means he will be making a concerted push to reach the Republican base by appearing on CNN.

    • Moe commented on Sep 24

      His “prezindential run” is him merely stroking his ego and auditioning for a new show…it will likely feature he and Palin in a remake of “Green Acres”.

    • VennData commented on Sep 24

      The GOP genuflectors believe whatever the GOP Media Machine dictates.

      The Scot Walker Legacy.

    • intlacct commented on Sep 24

      Honestly, who gives a sh*t if New York or Florida are under $100 feet of water?

      ~~~

      ADMIN: I do

    • DeDude commented on Sep 25

      Me too – I mean I am safe personally but I would hate to lose this blog when the server and editor drowns.

  7. howardoark commented on Sep 24

    I was working in 1980 – inflation is easy to fix since all you need to do to fix it is create a deep recession with 12% unemployment. Is that really what you want though?

    • VennData commented on Sep 24

      Reagan! Cowboy Grandpa Hero!

    • Moe commented on Sep 24

      Ole Lizardneck!

    • DeDude commented on Sep 24

      What was the inflation numbers that required such a deep recession to be fixed?

      I mean maybe this time we could react before the inflation numbers gets into the mid teens?

    • VennData commented on Sep 24

      Quite a change from Netanyahu’s full-throated demand Americans send more troops to die in the sands of the Middle East rather than compromise one Iota.

      Likud has a lot to learn from the Pope.

  9. Jojo commented on Sep 24

    Bad Astronomy
    The entire universe in blog form
    Sept. 24 2015 9:30 AM
    Ben Carson: Evolution Is Satanic and the Big Bang Is a Fairy Tale

    At one point in time, GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson may have been best known as an excellent, even groundbreaking, neurosurgeon. In recent years, though, he’s done everything he can to throw that reputation away.
    Phil Plait

    It won’t surprise regular readers to know I disagree with him on, well, almost everything. But recently he’s starting to get more heat about his religious views. He’s an outspoken creationist.

    http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/09/24/ben_carson_anti_science.html

    • rd commented on Sep 24

      It sounds like his neuro-surgery was interfering with God’s Will. May not go well for him in the afterlife.

    • VennData commented on Sep 24

      Can you imagine the ISIS guys going up to Moscow and blowing themselves up? It’ll give Putin even more reason to tighten his grip.

  12. rd commented on Sep 24

    Conservative house GOP members may stage a coup against Boehner because he insists on not being a complete idiot.
    http://www.politicususa.com/2015/09/23/house-democrats-revenge-telling-boehner-coup.html

    The US is probably not in recession now, but the House GOP may try to ensure that it enters one going into a Presidential election year. However, they can’t even get the WSJ Editorial Board to back them.

    http://www.wsj.com/articles/government-shutdown-as-self-promotion-1443049427

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/09/22/why-republicans-probably-arent-afraid-of-another-government-shutdown/

    • willid3 commented on Sep 24

      not a good sign for them. will make it harder to blame the other guy. not that they want try to

  13. BTUR commented on Sep 24

    So the company that’s been charging people for the right to happy birthday over a copyright that’s been deemed illegal…they’re going to have to give their profits back, right? ….right? No? I think I just came up with a new business idea.

    • rd commented on Sep 24

      I am sure that there is a copyright form lying around somewhere for that poem by Francis Scott Keyes. Could make a fortune based on baseball games alone.

    • intlacct commented on Sep 24

      In geologic terms it has been much warmer in the past and life certainly thrived then. At one point it was practically a tropical jungle everywhere. So, the real issue isn’t if we can survive a warm earth, but change. People just are afraid of change.

    • DeDude commented on Sep 25

      It is less than 1000 years ago that humans began making infrastructure that constituted a society. Before then we could simply take all our stuff and move 100m higher up the mountain. A 7 billion strong human population with a society has never experiences anything like a global tropical jungle. Nobody questions whether life as such can handle what we are doing to earth, but as a human it does concern me if we destroy society and end up with a pre-society global population of less than a million naked monkeys. Because the transition would be a bitch.

  15. willid3 commented on Sep 24

    remember the last time we gave corporations a tax break to bring over seas money home?

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/23/carly-fiorina-s-4-billion-job-scam.html

    guess who one of the biggest cheerleaders was?

    HP

    guess what they did with the money?
    if you said hire people, or invest in R&D, or grow their business?

    you would be wrong.
    they did none of that, they fired
    14,000 workers, and bought back stock. big time investment there huh?

    guess who was CEO at the time?
    Fiorina

    yes that one, the one running for president
    and she still is saying she was a great CEO

    and oddly enough even the Bush administration saw no good from the bill that created

Posted Under