joes

How Bloomberg Fabricates U.S. Housing Numbers

Where did you get that Nielson's info, every study that I've seen has the numbers ranging from 250-350 million, we can't know exactly because of the strange culture around guns.

I obviously don't enjoy guns as they make young kids into killers and old men into fools.

Everyone likes to search for the facts that meet our objectives, but that isn't a reflection on the field of statistics, it is a statement about the way that our brains work.

The


On Nov 02 10:35 AM Buckoux wrote:

> Yawn!
>
> After Nielson's exaggerated comment about America's "Billion Guns",
> I've become immune to most statistics, real or imagined. I just always
> assume that the MSM, Bloomberg and Neilson are ALWAYs wrong and search
> for the facts on my own.
>
> Hmm. A "Billion" guns divided by the population of the USA at 300+M
> ='s 3.33 firearms for every man, woman and child in America. Does
> the average family of four poses 13 guns? (note, I wrote, "average").
>
>
> Disclosure: I obviously enjoy firearm sports and even I don't have
> 13 firearms as an individual. I also don't invest in any of Nielson's
> hustles.

Cognitive Dissonance on Wall Street

The main cognitive dissonance that I see at the moment is pundits continued rants that the past predicts the future.

How this can be the case when almost every document that they sign or create in the deceptively named Financial Advisory business has a disclaimer removing the consideration of past performance when considering future results is beyond me.

That there is a structural change in motion is not in question, technology, most specifically at this point the IT/Internet, soon to be followed by nanotechnologies, are changing the game for many business models.

History provides no value at this time, just as it didn't in 1870, 1900, 1916, 1929, 1933, etc...

There are new markets and new companies that are going to make some investors very wealthy, while making our lives much cheaper and pleasant. Presidents come and go, congresses reshuffle and the beat goes on.

As the concepts of globalizations, reductions of hunger in disease and environmental considerations as we start to stress food chains and water systems, become the focus of groups like the G-20 there will be a very different looking world on the other side of this dislocation.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

The naive government bashing is useless, we elected these people, each of us voted for the last guy or this guy, and the reality is that government policies make small differences in the long run. History shows as long as they are trying "something", it helps to relieve some tension and markets to operate.

In the long run it is earnings that matter, and it is clear that business needs to provide those. But when you have a group of CEO's that come begging to DC, then the first order of the day is to can them and move on to the next set of blue suits.

White collar crime needs to be policed, maybe by retraining the guys chasing potheads, they have never caused the pain and suffering that the Paulsons' and Greenspans have wrought.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

Another step down the ladder by the newspaper business, as an individual that spent the 80's in the newspaper biz and the 90's as an owner in an Internet development company it is with a mixed bag of emotions to watch the printed newspaper business collapse.

In with the new however, journalism is what matters to democracy, not publishing.

The Escalator of Life Is Going Down (Part 2)

Your perspective is so short that any analysis that you draw from it is useless. Ever since Reagan we have been going up? How about the growth since 1950, you are using charts to show a small period of time as being an unprecedented situation.

Well all situations are unprecedented when you have more than a few moving parts, and despite the deep wisdom of Bon Jovi I'm going to pass on this useless collection of misinformation.

AIG Bonuses Are Just the Tip of the Iceberg

I think people do care about fairness, even thought it is never really achieved it becomes the symbol of the greed and incompetence. Merrill has not escaped yet, the best anyone with a bonus can hope for is that the focus of our ever smaller and less effective financial press loses interest and moves on to GM or some other failing segment of the economy.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

The ratio of highest to lowest paid in an organization is a logical way to evaluate company culture and appears to be a leading indicator of manipulation.

I think they should be able to pay what the BOD approves, with each member's vote being known and the pay ratio compared with peer for investor evaluation.

The 'Stress Test' Challenge: Transparency and Intellectual Integrity

The "stress test" approach seems to be a simple way of creating a standard for evaluating the banks businesses, a major step up from the Bush-Paulson approach of doing weekend deals that resulted emergency actions, increasing panic.

If I was cynical I would say that the GOP purposely drove panic as they were getting thrown out of town, they never stop campaigning, which explains why they never had time to govern.

Cramer's Stop Trading! Will the Banks Be Nationalized? (1/15/09)

The argument between socialism and capitalism is invalid as there is clearly a hybrid combination of the two philosophies in the US and most other countries. Reagan was the leader of the obviously flawed theory that free markets self correct, Freidmann and Greenspan were put in charge of creating the largest ponzi scheme allowing bank managers to get paid as laws created more automatic payments through 401K's and pension funds.

No body forced people to give loans, no one removed the fiscal responsibilities of the lenders, the lack of regulation unleased the dogs and now they have picked our bones.