First of all, if all that rocket fuel through the goose makes money worthless, you still have the goose -- and you can use that goose to pay for math work:
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approximation_property[/url]
[QUOTE]The construction of a Banach space without the approximation property earned Per Enflo a live goose in 1972, which had been promised by Stanislaw Mazur in 1936.[/QUOTE]
Of course if you had chicken, you could negotiate a health plan:
[URL="http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/apr/20/sue-lowden-draws-fire-repeating-health-care-barter/"]Sue Lowden stands by health care bartering plan[/URL]
Things would be easier if we just stayed down on the farm.

Stockton CA, Mammoth Lakes CA, and now San Bernardino CA.

[URL="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19089970"]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19089970[/URL]

Just pointing out that there is a slow moving train wreck taking place on the west coast.

[QUOTE]The city listed assets and debts of over $1bn, court documents show, and becomes the third in the state to go bust in just over one month.

Mayor Patrick Morris said San Bernardino filed for Chapter 9 to avoid legal action from creditors.[/QUOTE]

DarJones

Regarding California bankruptcies, Ernst, I thought of you when reading [url="http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/11/michael-lewis-201111"]this[/url].

[QUOTE=jasonp;306713]Regarding California bankruptcies, Ernst, I thought of you when reading [URL="http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/11/michael-lewis-201111"]this[/URL].[/QUOTE]I've intended to read Michael Lewis' writing ever since he wrote Liar's Poker. This looks like a style that I could enjoy. Since so much happening these days must endured, when reading about it, best if it is not dull reading.

This on Slashdot today:
[URL="http://developers.slashdot.org/story/12/08/02/165206/algorithmic-trading-glitch-costs-firm-440-million"]Algorithmic Trading Glitch Costs Firm $440 Million[/URL]
[QUOTE]alstor writes
"Yesterday an update to Knight Capital Group's algorithmic trading software caused >massive volume buys and sells, resulting in large price swings on the New York Stock Exchange. As a result, the NYSE canceled some of the trades, but today the loss to Knight has been calculated at $440 million. Ignoring adjustments for inflation, this makes the cost of this glitch almost as much as the $475 million charge Intel took for the Pentium FDIV Bug, which might warrant adding this bug to the list of worst bugs. In light of this loss and the May 6, 2010 Flash Crash, perhaps investors will demand changes from firms using algorithmic trading, since the SEC is apparently too antiquated to do anything about it (PDF)."[/QUOTE]

I've just been parsing that, too. NVS may have been one of those 140 stocks. (there was no business news reason for its -6% spike Wed morning.)

[QUOTE=ewmayer;306110]Not that I really give a rat's behind about the daily price noise ... mainly FB for me is the poster child for dotcom bubble 2.0, that's the only real interest for me.[/QUOTE]The noise is approaching ground state noise level. Today FB is trading at $20. The bubble may not be officially burst and we haven't seen a dead cat bounce but it looks bad. As for waking up and smelling the mochachino, [URL="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19093078"]Facebook has more than 83 million illegitimate accounts[/URL] and [URL="http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-facebook-ads-80-percent-bots-20120730,0,1602559.story"]Start-up says 80% of its Facebook ad clicks came from bots[/URL].

[url]http://www.oldtimecandy.com/bubblicious-bubble-gum.htm[/url][QUOTE]Bubblicious is a soft bubble gum that won't stick to your face. It's the "Ultimate Bubble."[/QUOTE]

JasonP, thanks for the link - good stuff.

[QUOTE=only_human;306734]I've intended to read Michael Lewis' writing ever since he wrote Liar's Poker. This looks like a style that I could enjoy. Since so much happening these days must endured, when reading about it, best if it is not dull reading.[/quote]
My sister got me [i]Liar's Poker[/i] and [i]The Big Short[/i] for my birthday this year, after I finally got round to putting them on my Amazon.com wish list. Alas, I decided to tackle Thomas Pynchon's [i]Gravity's Rainbow[/i] first, and it is mega-dense.

[quote]This on Slashdot today:
[URL="http://developers.slashdot.org/story/12/08/02/165206/algorithmic-trading-glitch-costs-firm-440-million"]Algorithmic Trading Glitch Costs Firm $440 Million[/URL][/QUOTE]
I actually considered a small pure-gambling bet on Knight shares late in the trading day yesterday, on the oh-so-predictable-snapback-rally scenario. (The call options looked way too pricy, so I was considering buying 1000 shares). Thankfully, the little inner voice reminded me of my post-2008 pledge to never ever ever ever ever again invest on the long side in any crooked Wall Street or generally big-financial firm ... good thing, too:

The Facebook bubble is part of California's budget projections

In three installments (.27, .24, 1.2) 1.7 billion insider shares of FB stock will be unlocked for trading by mid November. There are 2.14 billion shares outstanding now. California was counting on significant revenue from these additional shares as part of its budget:
[URL="http://www.sacbee.com/2012/08/02/4684138/facebook-investors-tax-revenue.html"]Facebook investors' tax revenue uncertain, California analyst says[/URL][QUOTE]The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office said Wednesday that [B]"if the company's stock price remains depressed, hundreds of millions of income tax dollars assumed in the 2012-13 state budget plan are at risk."[/B]

Gov. Jerry Brown and state lawmakers are counting on Facebook stock transactions to generate $1.9 billion in income tax revenue through June – or $1.5 billion if voters reject higher taxes on upper-income earners.

State fiscal officials are anxiously awaiting where Facebook will trade in November, when another round of insiders will have stock transactions that result in an income tax bill. The Analyst's Office says California still will reap a sizable amount of tax dollars from Facebook, but possibly not as much as had been assumed.

The state Department of Finance had based its May forecast on a $35 per share Facebook stock price in November. In a more aggressive projection, the Analyst's Office had assumed in May that the price would reach $42 in November and generate $2.1 billion for the state budget.[/QUOTE]

A Facebook [STRIKE]investor[/STRIKE] share owner:

:lalalalala:

Hey Mike, any chance you could repurpose or alias the "facepalm" emoticon code to colon-facebook-colon?

--------------------------

Speaking of crooked Wall Street firms, check out this gem of an "investment", for which I feel obligated to remedy some of the NYT's obligatory "give Wall Street the benefit of the doubt, even when there is no doubt" spin:

[URL="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/03/business/a-wells-fargo-security-goes-wrong-for-investors.html?ref=business"]A ‘Nice’ Security Goes Bad for Investors[/URL]: [I]The bank that put together the unusual security did well. The customers who bought it suffered large losses. No one — at least no one who traded the security — seems to have understood the risks that were hidden deep in the prospectus.[/I]

Au contraire, Floyd - I'm sure the peddlers of this shiny turd had at least some idea that its "too good to be true" prospectus-headlining claims were just that. But on to the details - if ever there was a "run screaming in the opposite direction" investment name, this is it, just based on the name:
[quote] The security in question was extraordinarily complex in its name and its details, but simple in its selling points. It was marketed in $25 units, a popular price point for debtlike securities sold to individual investors, and it promised monthly interest payments for as long as 30 years, at which point the investor would get the $25 back. Those interest payments would fluctuate with interest rates on Treasury bills, but could not go below 3 percent a year or above 8 percent.

Wells Fargo, the bank behind the security, now says that anyone who had read the prospectus should have understood that disaster was looming in June, when news related to the security was disclosed. But that disclosure — I’ll get to the details in a minute — had the opposite effect on the market. In New York Stock Exchange trading, the price leapt higher, on heavy volume, and stayed there for weeks.

The price per share was $24.88 on July 12, when trading was halted as investors learned they would get just $14.69 a share. Trading never resumed.

The difference between market expectations and realities boiled down to one fact: Wells Fargo concluded it was entitled to a payment of $10.69 a share to compensate it for the profits it would have made over the next 23 years had the security not been redeemed.

The security had a mouthful of a name: [U]Floating Rate Structured Repackaged Asset-Backed Trust Securities Certificates, Series 2005-2[/U]. It was created and sold in 2005 by Wachovia Securities, then part of Wachovia Bank, which was renamed Wells Fargo Advisors after Wells Fargo acquired Wachovia. The bank called the securities Strats, a quasi-acronym.[/quote]From a marketing perspective, I would have gone with a slightly different acronym than Wells Fargo chose:
[I]
[B]Floating[/B] Rate Struc[B]tur[/B]e[B]d[/B] Repackaged Asset-Backed Trust Securities Certificates
[/I]
--------------------------

Jared Diamoind (author of [I]Guns, Germs and Steel[/I] and [I]Collapse[/I]) has an op-ed in the NYT today - underlines mine:

[URL="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/02/opinion/mitt-romneys-search-for-simple-answers.html?ref=opinion"]Romney Hasn’t Done His Homework[/URL]: [I]Mitt Romney misunderstands why some countries are rich and powerful, while others are poor and weak.[/I]
[quote]MITT ROMNEY’S latest controversial remark, about the role of culture in explaining why some countries are rich and powerful while others are poor and weak, has attracted much comment. I was especially interested in his remark because he misrepresented my views and, in contrasting them with another scholar’s arguments, oversimplified the issue.

It is not true that my book “Guns, Germs and Steel,” as Mr. Romney [URL="http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/07/romney-israel-palestine-gdp-culture.php"]described it[/URL] in a speech in Jerusalem, “basically says the physical characteristics of the land account for the differences in the success of the people that live there. There is iron ore on the land and so forth.”

That is so different from what my book actually says that I have to doubt whether Mr. Romney read it. My focus was mostly on biological features, like plant and animal species, and among physical characteristics, the ones I mentioned were continents’ sizes and shapes and relative isolation. I said nothing about iron ore, which is so widespread that its distribution has had little effect on the different successes of different peoples. (As I learned this week, Mr. Romney also [URL="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/07/mitt-romneys-2-favorite-books-that-explain-america-and-the-world/260519/"]mischaracterized[/URL] my book in his memoir, “No Apology: Believe in America.”)

That’s not the worst part. Even scholars who emphasize social rather than geographic explanations — like the Harvard economist David S. Landes, whose book “The Wealth and Poverty of Nations” was mentioned favorably by Mr. Romney — would find Mr. Romney’s statement that “culture makes all the difference” dangerously out of date. In fact, Mr. Landes analyzed multiple factors (including climate) in explaining why the industrial revolution first occurred in Europe and not elsewhere.

Just as a happy marriage depends on many different factors, so do national wealth and power. That is not to deny culture’s significance. Some countries have political institutions and cultural practices — [U]honest government, rule of law[/U], opportunities to accumulate money — that reward hard work. Others don’t. Familiar examples are the contrasts between neighboring countries sharing similar environments but with very different institutions. (Think of South Korea versus North Korea, or Haiti versus the Dominican Republic.) Rich, powerful countries tend to have good institutions that reward hard work. But institutions and culture aren’t the whole answer, because some countries notorious for bad institutions (like Italy and Argentina) are rich, while some virtuous countries (like Tanzania and Bhutan) are poor.[/quote]For all his well-targeted valid criticisms of Mittens, Diamond alas fails to comment how the U.S. is doing on the whole "honest government, rule of law" thing when discussing the nation's long-term prospects. Perhaps that is merely because he was being polite; or perhaps because the erosion of those two pillars of national prosperity has been a thoroughly bipartisan affair.

[QUOTE=jasonp;306713]Regarding California bankruptcies, Ernst, I thought of you when reading [url="http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/11/michael-lewis-201111"]this[/url].[/QUOTE]

Read the rest late yesterday - on a lighter note, the Arnold/Franco stuff is priceless. My favorite snip is this one:
[quote][Schwarzenegger has] got to be one of the world’s most recognizable people, but he doesn’t appear to worry that anyone will recognize him, and no one does. It may be that people who get out of bed at dawn to jog and Rollerblade and racewalk are too interested in what they are doing to break their trance. Or it may be that he’s taking them by surprise. He has no entourage, not even a bodyguard. His former economic adviser, David Crane, and his media adviser, Adam Mendelsohn, who came along for the ride just because it sounded fun, are now somewhere far behind him. Anyone paying attention would think, That guy might look like Arnold, but it can’t possibly be Arnold, because Arnold would never be out alone on a bike at seven in the morning, trying to commit suicide. It isn’t until he is forced to stop at a red light that he makes meaningful contact with the public. A woman pushing a baby stroller and talking on a cell phone crosses the street right in front of him and does a double take. “Oh . . . my . . . God,” she gasps into her phone. “It’s Bill Clinton!”[/quote]
The parable of the pheasant is also classic - Perhaps our UK readers have already heard that one on their local news.

--------------------------

"Just another manic Friday" in the riverboat gambling casino, as BLS seasonal-adjustments create enough 100Ks of [url=http://www.zerohedge.com/news/seasonal-and-birth-death-adjustments-add-429000-statistical-jobs]imaginary jobs[/url] to "restore confidence in the recovery", blah, blah. It's like watching a bunch of crack addicts acting as ballboys-and-girls at a tennis match, after having convinced them that the ball is filled with freshly-cooked, delicious rocks of their favorite food. Underlying real-jobs-related numbers paint a consistent picture, of an ongoing stealth depression. And speaking of short-lived manias, a certain recently-bankrupted "liquidity provider" showed up this afternoon holding a dead cat strapped to a basketball, and then attempting to dribble the thing. And you though "The Dark Knight Rises" was just a movie?

[b]Friday Funnies:[/b]

Unwittingly amusing headline of the day is courtesy of Reuters:

[url=http://links.reuters.com/r/04S1Z/P4KMS/8ZOB9A/XUYWA/PFYPOA/YT/h?a=http://links.reuters.com/r/04S1Z/P4KMS/8ZOB9A/XUYWA/62B7M2/YT/h]Air Force trainer gets 30 days in jail in sex scandal[/url]: [i]SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) - A U.S. Air Force basic training instructor was sentenced to 30 days in jail on Thursday and had his rank reduced [u]after being convicted of improper sexual misconduct[/u] at a court martial, one of seven cases in the worst military sex scandal since 1996.[/i]

That is as opposed to "proper sexual misconduct", apparently.