A couple of minor technical problems called “business” and “life” have now intruded on my increasingly bogged down publication schedule that, in the interest...
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MarketWatchJP Morgan LostTown HallI recently read the headlines in the local newspaper about the JP Morgan debacle: “Few grasp JP Morgan's strategies.” I've also been listening intently to the mainstream media as they continue to rationaliz...
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Wall Street Journal (blog)Accounting For The JP Morgan Whale TradesForbesAm I shocked that no mainstream media outlet has yet sought to explain in accounting terms the stunning announcement made by Jamie Dimon a week ago last Thursday of a $2 billion l...
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Despite all of its best hopes, Wall Street will never escape what's happening in the Eurozone. The 1 trillion euro ($1.3 trillion) slush fund created to keep the chaos at bay is not big enough. And it never was.
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There’s been lots of conomic data over the past couple of days. I covered the NAHB builder survey yesterday. Regardless of the fact that the housing market is at pathetic levels historically, the builder data showed the rebound off the lows to be on track. Today, the government released data on housing starts to...
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The dark and dirty job of pointing out that the NAHB Housing Market Index present conditions index is up 11 points versus last April and traffic is up 5 points falls to me, I guess. The mainstream media and the NAHB itself has already widely reported only the bad news that April was down versus...
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The mainstream media today reported an increase in initial jobless claims this week to 380,000, an increase of 13,000. This was another huge miss for the consensus of conomists, where the central tendency of expectations was for 359,000 initial claims. The conomic establishment continues to prove its worth week in and week out. The...
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Actual, not seasonally adjusted, initial unemployment claims totaled 319,349 last week, according to the Department of Labor tabulation of weekly data submitted to it by the 50 state employment departments. This number was virtually unchanged from the prior week total of 319,382. As always, the media reported only the seasonally manipulated numbers showing a...
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Durable goods orders rose 8.7% In February versus January on a nominal, not seasonally adjusted basis. The mainstream media reported only the 2.2% seasonally massaged increase, which missed the consensus expectation of 2.9%. The actual, unadjusted increase was the best February gain since February 2004, so the actual data could hardly be read as...
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Contracts for the sale of existing homes rose 15.1% month to month in February, according to data reported today by the real estate brokers lobbying organization. Sales were 14% above the level of February 2011, continuing the rebound in housing market sales. To keep this in perspective the number remains down 37% from the...
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While the media was touting a miss on consensus expectations, and Bloomberg posted an outright lie on Twitter, the actual unadjusted data did show a big improvement over the year ago performance.
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The feedback of failure, loss and defeat is our most helpful teacher.
I want to praise horrendously costly lessons, as those are the only ones we really learn from. We hype the value of "book learning" and give lip-service to "learning fr...
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As was typical of this morning’s reporting on the Commerce Department’s advance retail sales release for February, Marketwatch (Dow Jones) reported that the 1.1% gain (seasonally massaged) was the fastest in 5 months. It missed their consensus expectations, but only by a tenth of a percent. Bloomberg also touted the gain as the biggest...
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Why can't the American public nominate their own candidate for president? It turns out we can, and are doing so for the first time in American history.
If the last 12 years have revealed anything, they have shown beyond reasonable doubt that both S...
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US debt going is parabolic, as is record high political polarization. The polarization shown on the chart really amounts to squat in terms of the bottom line. Presidente Zero throws his latest campaign piece of meat (a “budget”) out for the Republican to go into a dizzle fit over. Great theater for mainstream media talking heads,...
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The mainstream media proclaimed an unexpected “beat” of the first time unemployment claims number today. The fake, seasonally fudged number dropped to 358,000 in the week ended February 4. According to Bloomberg, the consensus of economists’ expectations was for 370,000. Aside from the fact that whether economists get a forecast right or not seems...
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The Case Shiller housing price index was released this morning and, as usual, it’s getting lots of media attention. I have no problem with that, except for one minor detail. It is a worthless and misleading indicator of current housing market conditions. Back in 2010 I wrote a public article called The Trouble With...
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Tomorrow is a big day, with the FOMC announcement and the Fed revealing what it wants you to think about what it thinks it’s going to think it wants you to think. Or something like that. This Fed “tranparency” thing has been covered to death in the mainstream media. I think it’s another utter...
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Sickcare, the fast-food/packaged food industries, the entertainment industry and the Marketing/Mainstream Media complex are all facets of one system.
In America, the implicit belief system promoted by marketing is that you can eat anything you wan...
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The Corporate Media in the U.S. is a handmaiden to the Financial and Political Elites, issuing simulacra of "news" and "analysis" in service of the Status Quo.
If there is any America "industry" ripe for widespread discrediting, it is the U.S. Cor...
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While economists and the mainstream media tried hard to get everyone excited by today's "better-than-expected" employment report (which included an unusually large and likely-to-be-reversed spike in hiring in the "Couriers & Messengers" category), t...
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President Obama's signal accomplishments could easily have been signed into law by a moderate Republican.
The corporate Mainstream Media depends on ideological differences to generate "news" and advertising revenues, and the Status Quo depend...
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There's been no material change in the counts from as far back as last year (always wanted to say that). The market remains balanced at a short term pivot point, and there's literally been no change at all since the updat...
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A Fog of Mendacity
Those frightening sounds, sights, and odors on the wind this foreboding snowless winter - like emanations from some back ward of a global psychiatric hospital - are the signs of a nation going completely mad. The traumatic rise of oil prices above the $100 level is one irritant, prompting a range of people-who-oughta-know-better to...
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