Abstract Badger

Job Numbers from the Bureau of Spurious Statistics

'Cetin Hakimoglu' translates to 'Jim Cramer's Turkish Posting Bot'.

New Construction Growth: What Are They Smoking?

Please. You had a good run. Get another job, preferrably without government manufactured demand. I hear there's some spots in farming opening up.


On Jul 17 11:25 AM Larry House wrote:

> Good points, Thad F: You keep doing what you know to do. I hope
> for you and all builders that things turn around before it is too
> late.

Smartphones: The Mobile Industry Is About to Get 'Blown Apart'

This is massively delusional - but I guess since the 'mobile industry' is so much 'fun', who cares?

The simple fact of the matter is that by far the majority of revenue generating content will be created with professional(read specialized), not amateur(read generalized) tools and will be consumed by professional and not amateur tools.

Ok, so nomadic high school and college students riding busses generate little revenue and spend little revenue using pirated and amateur content(and will do less in the future economy as mommy and daddy crack down on the budget) and won't buy DSLR's, game consoles where the MMI drives the devices, audio defined by the quality of the noise-cancelling headphones, phones with a voice recognition interface one can legally use in a vehicle, net/lap books/tops with a UI that allows efficient content creation, home theater systems, etc. etc. etc. These devices are quickly moving to toy status and will be cheap devices with limited service plans in line with the revenue generation and spending of their user.

Rooted workers driving vehicles that need to make money to spend money will be driven by specialization and will most of the time require multiple devices that are more than toys.

Bernanke's Fiscal Focus

Should the Fed go fiscal if you lose your wallet in the parking lot, dear? Crisis! Just because you can't shoulder the same level of pain Merkel can doesn't mean she's 'improper'.

The Seduction of America

This is a well written, but long-winded, explanation of something an ecologist would have summarized with a roll of the eyes as 'Scavenger(trader) and predator(consumer) population grows as prey(producer) population declines.' Reverse, with the required death and pain, and repeat. Please apply to various human sub-types as your model of humanity allows.

If you are not a believer that a stable macro-organism can be created on a closed-system earth with the current constituent life forms and their evolved behaviors, one must accept that organic life, including human life, on a closed system like earth is a ponzi scheme. A continually inflating and deflating bubble.

Welcome to reality, (eco)nomists. Sorry, I didn't need any charts.

If only the Borg were here to SAVE us.

How Much Is a Stimulus Job Worth?

That you actually wasted time to make up numbers, as well as Jake did, to support your ideologies is comical. How about Jake just saying "The have's see absolutely no value in using 'their' resources so the have-not's remain alive" and how about you saying "The have-not's see absolutely no value in not banding together and taking 'the have's' resources to stay alive". This would be called life on earth.

Why Our Financial System Cannot Simply Be Rebooted

Unfortunately for Keynes, the Blue Screen of Death has but one solution and it is unkind to the confidence men.

Smartphones Becoming a Necessity, Expect More Growth

Uh, Sam, have you ever worked for a corporation? A thoughtless Twit in 3.4 seconds means you're infantry, disposable.

Why 'Bing'? Why Not 'Sift'?

Umm, you're not trying very hard there honey. Perhaps you and Ballmer both belong to the non-creative side of life. How about, 'Bing! I found what I needed to make this decision right away rather than sorting through a google of crappy links.'

Why Credit Cards Can't Afford to Raise Fees

For people with cash and many alternate forms of electronic payment available, what the author says is obvious.

The core of the larger question is about 'credit insurance and immediacy'.

Issuers are implying that without a yearly 'insurance' fee they will have a difficult time existing and will be unable to insure this immediately available form of 'general credit'.

The consumers decision will revolve around the total cash they have available, other forms of specialized insurance they own, their best estimate for maximum general immediate credit they may need and the nature of the deal and yearly insurance fee the competing issuers are offering.

It's not so different from wireless carriers leveraging your cell plan for an extra $10 a month so you know you can make the 911 call.

Welcome to the '80's.

Don't Panic

There is no panic on 'main street'. The equation is simple as it was in the 1920's: The now very large percentage of have-not's have little to lose and the now very small percentage of have's have much to lose. The lesson of history is that populism only conquers capitalism during these extreme imbalances. Congress is getting the message that it is time to deflate, massively, and we'll work this out on the streets.

The Nationalization of AIG

It seems there can be only one way they will play this out. They pushed marking to market Fannie and Freddie's debt until the end of '09 and now they have pushed AIG's out until the end of '10. It's unpalatable and not in the plan to put FNM's/FRE's debt in the government budget and they will liquidate AIG and never exercise their option for 80% ownership(of the debt most importantly). They simply will have to print/inflate massively in all sections of the economy over the next 2(or n with extensions) years to trivialize this insurance debt with all the global economic consequences that could/will entail. Get in TIPS soon until of course they cancel the program as insolvent!

What's Changed on the Seeking Alpha Website?

So, is there an estimate on when an author/date sort will be available again?

What's Changed on the Seeking Alpha Website?

Hi David -

It seems the common theme running through the comments here are generalists versus specialists. Your previous blogroll appealed to generalists and these are the people making the comments here; I would keep an author/date organization with less-targeted ads for us generalists and the more highly-sorted organization for the specialists with the more lucrative, highly-targeted ads you desire. You win both ways.

What's Changed on the Seeking Alpha Website?

Certainly seems over-edited. All the categorization has a bit of value, but searching is still simpler than figuring out the editor's nomenclature. If you could, please provide the old blogroll format with opinions and analysis by date and author. Why is it everybody seems to be feeling the need to regress to over-edited pages these days?