baji kimran

Wal-Mart Does Not Save Families $3,100 a Year

I don't know the real numbers in this argument, I suspect that one must accurately pin down what is being measured and being compared. (I always cringe when I read or hear anything with a percentage without being told what is being changed and compared, which after all, is what a percentage measures. All news organizations should be rigorous in this). Incomplete information sadly is standard fare in advertising and PR battles.

At a 33,000 foot level, I don't think it can be argued that more efficiency (which I think Walmart embodies) does not benefit the entire society. If Walmart has had an significant impact on consumer prices over the years, one must consider all the implications from that. Just think, a smaller CPI means that interest rates can be lower because inflation is lower and lower interest rates have a huge impact on the whole economy.

Yes some jobs are dislocated and lost, but other jobs are created and gained. A manufacturing job is lost in the U.S., but it is gained elsewhere and plus it increases jobs in shipping and transportation. It really is amazing that imports from China are able to compete here in the U.S. given the transportation costs (which are also driven by efficiency).

When considering all this, one is reminded of the saying "You can't stop progress" and this leads to technological determinism, Tom Friedman, etc, which is probably a debate best saved for another day.

Citi Finally Sells Phibro

Small point here:

The calculation of pre-tax earnings should account for all salary and bonuses paid.. If this is true, the calculation for Andrew Hall's percentage of earnings should be = 100 / (100+371) = 21.2%. Suspiciously close to the 2:20 charges typical for hedge funds.

A bigger mystery from the initial news reports is the dirt cheap price. I would love to buy a company that generates $371 million/year pre-tax for $250 million. Something is inconsistent here, either the $250 million price is wrong or there is much more to this story (possibly Philbro is currently racking up large losses this year?)

How Much Is Twitter Worth to High-Frequency Traders?

Yikes!

The last time I remember the term "firehose" being used was by some executives at AOL around the time of the Time-Warner merger.

Why U.S. Government Should Cut Federal Workers' Lavish Compensation

Your math is correct.

Assuming all the numbers in the article are correct, I think we can see maybe the major point of the article. The graph shows a total compensation of approx. 120,000/year, yet the actual money paid out in Dec. shows, assuming it is just salary, only a rate of 63,000/year.

I suppose the gap betweeen the 2 rates shows that the fed gov. employee, although the relative salary maybe less than the private sector, gets a lot more compensation in benefits.


On Sep 09 10:02 AM giyakker wrote:

> The numbers quoted above by David Hunkar, 2,730,050 federal workers
> receiving $14,426,625,181, amounts to $5284 per worker assuming my
> math is correct. This doesn't seem like much to me even if it doesn't
> include benefits.

Bailout 'Profit' Is Taxpayers Loss

In the news business, it seems as if headline writers, such as the one that wrote the NYT's headline “As big banks repay bailout, U.S. sees profit”, are less interested in specificity and accuracy than getting people to read the story. A more accurate headline would have substituted the word TARP for bailout.

I have seen the same phenomena on Seeking Alpha. A writer's article can become quickly assailed because of a poorly written headline. Rolfe's article above correctly takes headline writers to task.

Big Banks: Still in Charge

1) It is not entirely clear to me that "Too Big to Fail" is the correct term to use for the problem of the "big US banks". I have seen some people describe the problem as Too Interconnected to Fail.

2) One cannot just unilaterally limit the size of US banks. It is interesting that Seeking Alpha has recently published this article:

seekingalpha.com/artic...

(There appears to be some discrepanies with the numbers listed in the article, but none-the-less the article does illustrate that the bigness of banks is not only in the US)

Banking is global. If big banks are a problem, then a global solution is required. All the banks on the list are too big for the individual home countries to "resolve".

3) The impact of the graph in the article rests soley on the assertion that BofA,Citi,Wachovia, should have failed. If the data from that assertion was not included in the graph, the graph, in my opinion, would have prompted a "so-what, is that all", response.

Also one can argue that BofA really was not in that bad of shape if it had not been for the Merril Lynch acquisition, and Wachovia in fact did not fail, it was bought for approx. $6/share, implying that the FDIC would not have had to cough up any money to resolve Wachovia so it should not be considered a "failed" bank.

Why Does WSJ.com Charge For Content?

I don't understand what the problem here is. I start from the premise that most people, like me, absolutely detest unwanted advertising. DVRs initial selling point was one could eliminate unwanted advertising. (I believe the advertising world is still adjusting to the fact that the "spray and pray" is not the most efficient way to reach costumers and in many times counterproductive.)

I pay for the WSJ online. I believe good information and analysis, whether it is in the news business, or just business in general, can command people paying for it. I think advertising on WSJ online is minimal, if it significantly increased and became intrusive, I would not be willing to pay so much or perhaps even cancel.

I would pay for an online subscription to the NYTimes, I really don't understand why it is still free.

For that matter, I would even pay a small fee for access to articles by Felix Solomon.

Number of U.S. Homes With Negative Equity Is Stunning

I assume that the chart is from

www.nytimes.com/2008/1...

Keep in mind the percentage is calculated as: number of homes with mortgages with negative equity/number of homeowners with mortgages.

For example there are approx. 11 million people in Ohio. The number of households in Ohio is 4.4 million, the homeownership rate is 69.1%. Those the number of homes in Ohio is approx. 3.2 million.. This is from

quickfacts.census.gov/...

The chart for Ohio says 419,000 homes with negative equity, also given is the 22% with negative equity. Using all homeowners the percent of negative equity is 420,000/3,200,000 = 13.125%, which makes sense since a lot of homeowners (between one third and one half) have no mortgage.

Wells Fargo's Preferred Offering: Bill Gross Take is Incorrect

Interesting, this morning on CNBC, Pimco's Paul Mcculley said Pimco was well positioned for the move by the U.S. Treasury over the weekend.

Perhaps Bill Gross should have fully disclosed his interests when he made his comments.

The Worst Is Over ... Again ... And Again ...

Just doing some back of the envelope calculations here.

2 million subprime loans at an average of 300,000 / loan yields a total of 600 billion dollars at risk. (Maybe 2 million is a little low given a annual housing sale rate of 5 to 6 million.)

For estimating purposes here say the mortgage holders suffer a 33% drop in the value of property. Mortgage holders forced to sell the property at 200,000. Total loss = 200 billion dollars. Even if there were 4 million subprime loans (which could be reasonable) the total loss = 400 billion dollars.

However, the only way I can stretch to 1 trillion dollars is to take into consideration all mortgages, not just subprime. So to say that the subprime mortgage crisis will cause 1 trillion in losses is a wild overestimation.

However I could see that the housing bubble (not just subprime mortgages) could cause a loss of 1 trillion. Not catastrophic given there are 100 million households.