The Big Picture |  |
- Oh The Jobs (Debt?) You’ll Create!
- First Look: Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010
- Apple iOS by the Numbers
- Trading View Charts: Auto Updating Real Time Charts
- Census: Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage: 2010
- Chris Whalen: Roubini Is WRONG About Karl Marx
- 10 Tuesday AM Reads
- QOTD: China Rescuing Italy?
- Where Politics and Money Intersect
- Depth Perception
| Oh The Jobs (Debt?) You’ll Create! Posted: 13 Sep 2011 01:30 PM PDT Hobbs is a fictional city whose mayor has a very real problem: How will he implement his scheme to bring in good clean health care jobs when every other American city is trying to do the same? How far will he go to nab those fabled ‘medical tourists?’ And what will this medical arms race do to our insurance premiums and taxes? At the crossroads of our big debate about job growth and our big debate about healthcare debt, the public radio show Marketplace brings this animated short inspired by Dr Suess and composed by senior health care reporter Gregory Warner. Learn how local politicians seeking job growth may encourage hospital over-expansion, driving up our insurance premiums and taxes and even creating a health care jobs bubble.
Oh The Jobs (Debt?) You’ll Create! from Marketplace on Vimeo.
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| First Look: Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010 Posted: 13 Sep 2011 01:00 PM PDT The Census Bureau released its annual report on Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage: 2010 (full PDF) this morning. Barry has posted the slide presentation that staff went through during the conference call over in the Think Tank (please have a look). The (very ugly) bullet points from the release can be found here, and the centerpiece graph is below. As time allows, I intend to do some work on the numbers in the updated report, but here are a few things that jumped out at me (straight from the summary):
More to come.
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| Posted: 13 Sep 2011 11:30 AM PDT |
| Trading View Charts: Auto Updating Real Time Charts Posted: 13 Sep 2011 08:30 AM PDT Very cool new tool from Trading View: Embeddable, auto-updating real time charts in HTML5. You can add all sorts of indicators and studies to these (MACD, RSI, Bollinger, etc.), as well as add your own lines or text annotations. What makes these so unusual is that I can embed a chart (below), and you can pull up that same chart months or years from now, and it will automatically update as of that date, with the current price and up-to-date chart. Oh, and its real time, not delayed quotes. They are still in beta, but the product as currently configured looks really slick. >
2 year chart S&P500 from barryritholtz on TradingView.
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| Census: Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage: 2010 Posted: 13 Sep 2011 07:38 AM PDT |
| Chris Whalen: Roubini Is WRONG About Karl Marx Posted: 13 Sep 2011 07:23 AM PDT My buddy Chris Whalen is on a tear. I don’t agree with everything he says (*especially the nuttier stuff) but I like some of the dialogue. ~~~ Source:
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| Posted: 13 Sep 2011 07:00 AM PDT Here is what caught my attention today:
What Are you reading?
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| Posted: 13 Sep 2011 06:30 AM PDT From the NYT:
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| Where Politics and Money Intersect Posted: 13 Sep 2011 05:30 AM PDT Andy Busch is the Global Currency and Public Policy Strategist for BMO Capital Markets. He appears every Friday on CNBC's new show, "Money in Motion: Currency Trading." His views appear daily in his newsletter, the Busch Update. ~~~ European Debt Crisis Global financial markets continue to be roiled by the newsflow surrounding the European debt crisis. This Hydra headed financial crisis is making the 2008 US financial crisis seem simple by comparison. The rumors were coming fast and furious Friday from Greece announcing a default or Greece releasing a list of private sector banks willing to take losses on their Greek debt to Greece announcing a pullout from the Euro zone. As of this writing, all appear to be untrue. As of this writing, all appear to have had a dramatic negative impact on the EUR, the Dax and the European banking system. On July 21st, European leaders approved not only a new bailout for Greece, but also a new structure for the Euro Zone’s bailout facility or EFSF (European Financial Stability Facility). Greece then agreed to follow the IMF/EU austerity program and approved the plan with a parliamentary vote. The major problem is that the Euro Zone member countries went on vacation in August and didn’t ratify the July 21st plan. This vacuum has been filled with foul smelling rumors, innuendo and speculation. Sadly, it has also been filled with facts that show a deteriorating Greek economy, expanding credit spreads for both sovereign and banks and disintegrating cohesion amongst the European policy makers over the path forward. At its heart, Europe’s issue is a political one. Specifically, the structure created was a financial union that lacked a political mechanism to oust members who didn’t meet the accord’s rules. Remember, the European constitution does not have a mechanism to toss out members who break the rules. Subsequently, almost all member nations broke the rules of agreement, but the periphery did it in grand style with debt-to-GDP exploding as growth rates fell. This created conditions for a debt death spiral that was fulfilled when Greece, Ireland and Portugal all required bailouts. Yet, the bailouts didn’t resolve the issue fully as those nations had to agree to, enact and follow the austerity programs that came with the bailouts. The declining GDP levels meant declining tax revenues and declining capability of servicing their increasing debt loads. And the debt spiral accelerated. With the acceleration, member nations not requiring bailouts began to be circumspect over the prospects of bailed out nations fulfilling the terms of the agreement. Simultaneously, bond investors reflected their concerns by selling the debt and raising the costs of refunding for bailed out nations and thereby delaying their return to the capital markets for funding. In turn, the markets began to assess the linkages between the sovereign periphery and domestic banks. What did the banks have on their balance sheets and could they absorb a dramatic write-down in value of those portfolios? A key component from the Greek bailout was for a haircut to private investors who owned Greek debt. This meant that other balied out nations may impose haircuts or losses for private investors. And the debt spiral accelerated. The spiral was eventually enlarged to include core countries of Italy and Spain. The 10 year yields for Italian and Spanish debt rose rapidly to levels perilously close to levels reached by periphery countries just before they had to be bailed out. As most noted, Italy had a larger debt load at E1.8 trillion than the entire periphery combined and would greatly exceed the current EFSF fund. This led to more pressure on politicians of these nations to enact austerity measures and for the European Central Bank to re-start its SMP or sovereign bond buying program to stabilize rates. Initially, this was successful as 10 year rates dropped to 5.0% for both Spain and Italy. However, Italy backed away from initial austerity plans and spooked investors. Although the Italian parliament has subsequently passed a strengthened plan, the damage was done and rates rose again. This prompted another round of SMP, but with a casualty: ECB member Stark resigned in protest. As of this writing, credit spread indicators are rising rapidly for Europe and reflect fear of what may happen. During the 2008 US financial crisis, we watched the spread between 3 month US LIBOR and 3 month overnight index swaps (an instrument that reflects markets expectations for Federal Reserve overnight rates) explode from 11 basis points to 365 basis points. The European equivalent is Euribor-OIS of 15 basis points on May 1st to 83 basis points today. Over the last three weeks, cash holdings at the European Central Bank have risen from around E24 billion on July 1st to E166 billion on September 8th . Credit default swaps for Italy and Spain are now above 400 and reflect bond market fears over rising default risks. The Bloomberg European Banks and Financial Services Index has fallen thirty percent over the same time frame. The path forward is complicated due to the constitutional constraints mandating member votes on the new bailout facility. Now, we will be subject to not one TARP-like vote, but numerous votes all with the potential to shut it down and re-start the process. Remember, TARP was voted down the first time it was brought up in the US House of Representatives leading to a massive drop in US stocks. The best news is that France has passed the plan through their Senate. Finland, Netherlands and Germany must all hold votes shortly and the outcome will drive the financial market values from stocks to bonds to currencies. The markets are likely to sell risk upon the announcement of when a vote will be taken and buy risk should the outcome be positive. Finland, Netherlands and Germany are the key three to monitor for issues. The Dutch are expected to vote next week with the Germans voting September 29-20th and the Finns following in October. Watch to see if votes begin to be delayed beyond September and October as that would clearly indicate two critical points. First, there is a serious problem with the member country passing the program. Two, there is a growing possibility that both the Greek bailout plan won’t be approved, that Greece will be forced to default and Greece will be forced out of the union. Source:
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| Posted: 13 Sep 2011 05:00 AM PDT |
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