TheSnail

Was Yesterday's ISM an Early Warning for More Inflation Down the Road?

Wholly crap Batman the y/y CPI could soon hit zero!!!!!!

Payments Shocks Boost Alt-A, Subprime RMBS Delinquencies

Your a little late to the party. People have been covering this issue for over six months on this sight.

Homebuyer Tax Credit: Update

Are you sure you understand the basics of our financial system?

It is called the VELOCITY of MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why Losing the Homebuyer Tax Credit Is a Good Thing

I hope I didn't sign up to follow this crap.

Does Valuation Mean Anything?

No Mark, but thanks for asking.

Max Keiser on the U.S. Economy

Yo, Doc. That crook Dick Chaney is no longer in the government.

Economic Recovery, or Merely an Interlude?

I am the greatest financial wizard of all time.

Bow down to me, for I am BERT!!!!!!

Economic Recovery, or Merely an Interlude?

Now that I'm a big-wig on Seeking Alpha with 8 followers, its time to toot my own horn.

My predictions are always 100% correct (pat myself on the back, heh, heh, heh).

I can just see the dollars pouring in from all dem mugwumps buying my book.

Economic Recovery, or Merely an Interlude?

"especially with the current disastrous policies coming out Washington"

Why must you constantly rehash the Bush (mis-)adminstration?

12 Cheap Growth Companies

Run a stock screen and then throw your money at stock's you have no history of following.

Get back to me after you followed these stocks for a year.

Until then I will be playing the game of darts, not throwing golden darts at the market.

Chart of the Week: Following the Rallies

Me no see no chart. Yoda help me.

Yet Another Finger of Instability

John,

Happy Birthday. And thank you for sharing your newsletter for free. I am still amazed I was able to read your insights for no charge over the past two years.

To fully appreciate what you are saying in this article, the reader needs to distinguish between "a tipping point " - corresponding to the onset of a sand avalanche in your sand pile, or one of any number of external forces that would cause a perfectly balanced tetter-totter to tilt one way or the other - and the constraints imposed on the system, which alter the conditions under which the tipping point occurs.

Using your sandpile example, there is a significant difference between a sandpile resting on a flat surface, which has no external constraints on it, and a sandpile formed within a ring. For a properly sized ring the onset of a significantly sized sand avalanche will be delayed, relative to the number of sand grains that have fallen, due to the external constraint imposed on the system.

If we now let the ring be comprised of bricks, then each brick represents an external constraint that aids in preventing undesirable sand avalanches (or a financial system collapse). In this analogy, some of the bricks represent the laws needed to provide the proper checks and balances in a financial system. Some of the bricks represent sound monetary policies by the Fed. And so on.

As such the discussion of causes of the financial crises corresponds to the removal of bricks or constraints that provide the "guide rails" under which the system operates smoothly.

And thus I would argue that the key underlying causes of the financial crises are identifiable (i.e., which bricks are missing). And the particular grain of sand or butterfly that initiated the avalanche is of secondary importance. (Very interesting, of course, but of secondary importance.)

Fellow scientist/engineers will recognize that I am simply pointing out the importance of boundary conditions on any system. A porous boundary will hold no water. And clearly our financial system had plenty of holes in at the time the butterfly initiated the tipping point.

Regards,
Richard Geist

Will Windows 7 Resurrect IT Spending?

What?

Netbooks are great. With their tiny keyboards I can now make 3 times as many errors in the same amount of time as a regular keyboard.

Netbook not for me. (But my demographic is irrelevant.)

Worst Law of the Decade May Have Ramifications Beyond New York

Worst Law of the Decade?

Oh that's right the Bush administration didn't bother with laws, they just wrote executive order exempting them from laws.

The Leading Economic Indicator Is Not Indicating the Real Recovery

"perverted Keynesian logic is that a seed of growth will multiply"


As opposed to conservative tickle-down economics (sorry, I mean the more accurate description of voodoo-economics).