Alan Young

An animated game show (video, 2:10) featuring some very discouraged workers helps show why the headline unemployment figures are always a little sunnier than reality. (via)

Nice little video; tells the story as it is.

@Hyper: you "well known fact" is complete nonsense. By your definition, there was no poverty before 1917, when Socialism first became a real political factor. A 3-year-old has better reasoning power than this.

Understanding the Dollar's Reversal: Who Will Feel the Pain?

One day spike, and you're talking about reversing a year-long trend? That's a bit premature.

Reappointing Bernanke

I agree, especially with the last sentence <shudder>.

Reserve Currency: There Can Be Only One

1929 doesn't tell us much. Now banking all over the world is instantaneous, so currency behaves a bit differently.

Still, I think it could be very instructive to ignore the (inapt) headline here, and contemplate possible ways for world finance to function with ambiguity. There's no absolute value, anyway; if everything is relative, why only one reserve?

The Betting Line on Bernanke

No bet. An unknown candidate would have to be vetted, which would be tedious and politically risky. Of the known competitors, no one has Ben's placid telegenic appearance, which is so reassuring in times of crisis.

Besides, mastery of "Great Depression avoidance strategies" is about the best qualification you could ask for these days. Other than actually giving a damn about what happens to America outside a small circle of plutocrats, and you can hardly expect to find that quality in anyone who can talk Banking convincingly with millionaire Senators.

Bunning vs. Bernanke

Bernanke works only for the too-rich-to-care class, of which 95% of the Senate are either members or indentured servants. He also has the advantage of looking good on TV (unlike Geithner, for example). There's nothing that could threaten his job.

The Right Reform for the Fed

Is the problem that the Fed is not "independent" of political interests, or that it has conflicts of interest? Being free from congressional influence doesn't help, if it acts as if its mission is to protect Vampire Squid et al.

Bernanke's job is secure, neither because he does it so well, nor because he's a political toady, but because he has such an outstanding TV presence and calming demeanor. If Geithner or Summers had his job, they would drive us crazy with worry.

China Provides a Tailwind for Wind Energy ETFs

Funny "tailwind" that shows a 10-week downtrend. If you'd posted this article 6 months ago, it would have been useful.

Is a Deficit-Neutral Stimulus Possible?

A deficit-neutral stimulus would take funds away from programs that low stimulus value and reallocate them.

War has low stimulus value, since most of the spending is on materials and overseas support services, not on domestic goods and labor. So, with the escalation in Afghanistan, Obama is now moving in exactly the wrong direction.

Can the Federal Budget Be Balanced?

Imagine my surprise: there are actually some very good ideas here. I especially agree with the cuts in the military and agriculture subsidies.

Entitlement programs are more difficult. Social Security is based on the premise that everyone pays and everyone benefits; you are supposed to be collecting on your own investment, not supporting other people. That's how the program was sold by FDR. Repackaging it as a wealth-redistribution plan would be politically problematical: even if it passed, there would then be an influential constituency opposed to funding it at all.

Other discretionary programs do not necessarily become more efficient when they are less-funded. Regulation of industries and crime control, for example, cannot be done efficiently unless you have resources at least equal to those of your targets.

Finally, why not add taxes? Bush cut taxes on the rich, and most of that money went into buying more assets, driving up prices and making them richer without a corresponding social benefit.

Consumer-Driven Deflation? Not Even Close

The author says he is terrified, and we should be too.
No one makes their best investment decisions when they are terrified, so he is asking us to join him in making bad decisions.
He's waiting for "private, gold-backed currency." Aside from this being unlikely: If you think GLD is risky because you can't verify the gold backing the asset, how the h3ll are you going to trust private currency?

In short, one doesn't even need to know anything about economics to see that this author is peddling pure folly. I'm not buying.

Mutual Fund Charts of the Day

So this was presented as an argument for index-fund investing? But when has an index fund ever outperformed the market? There's no there there. Stick to ETFs.

Cutting Back on Blackstone, Shorting EWJ

Agree with previous comments. I have already shorted Japan on chart weakness, but with QE this looks like a losing bet. However, QE also means currency weakness, so that could mitigate the damage.

Emerging Europe ETFs Head-To-Head: ESR vs. GUR

No fault of Mr. Dutram's. This is a perfectly good report about an utterly useless product. I can only imagine that iShares wants a complete set, like a stamp collector, to cover the globe with ETFs whether anyone needs them or not.

But my reason for concluding this is entirely different from Pelican Pete's. If a fund is 75% in one country, and that country has its own ETF (RSX), you haven't improved on it by tossing in a token amount of something else.

The reason Turkey has been left out of this fund is that iShares already has TUR. And now that Poland also has its own ETF, no one could possibly need yet another way to invest in this region.

Five Worst Performing Country ETFs: A Golden Investment Opportunity?

Darn right you're not picking a bottom!! This trade is 8-10 months old, and has been obvious to everyone else in the world for at least the last 6. Did you just wake up from a long nap? They are now momentum picks, not value picks (although Russia still has some value elements).

The only country that has not rallied far enough to get out the "despised assets" zone is Japan.