Silver coin transactions are a self-limiting device. You have to have the silver coins to begin with. Very few people today have them. I have about $400 face value of silver coins with potential market price around $8000 if I sold them. Once they are exchanged or sold, they are gone.

This chart is a bit more illustrative of FB falling off a cliff and laying on rocks at the bottom knocked out.
[url]http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=FB+Interactive#symbol=fb;range=6m;compare=;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined;[/url]

As for the abrupt drop in unemployment, these are funny numbers again. A better number to watch is number of employment age Americans vs number of Americans with jobs. That number looks like a car with gas tank 1/4 full in California with service stations raising prices $1 per day. Note that gas in Alabama is currently $3.40 or thereabouts.

DarJones

In the wake of yesterday's "better than expected" headline unemployment numbers (which follow similar upside surprises in key manufacturing and consumer-sentiment indices), [url=http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2012/10/unbelievable-numbers-says-former-ge-ceo.html]charges of pre-election gaming[/url] are flying. I prefer to stick simply to hat is undeniable, that the numbers - especially their wacky composition - are outliers relative to the trend of the past few quarters:

[url=www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-06/rosenberg-unemployment-rate-if-its-too-good-be-true-then-it-probably]Rosenberg On The Unemployment Rate: "If It's Too Good To Be True, Then It Probably Is"[/url]
[quote]There is no doubt that the bullish crowd is doing high-fives and the White House cheering over what the unemployment rate did in September — falling to 7.8% from 8.1% in August and 8.3% in July. That the 7.8% jobless rate takes it to the level that prevailed when the President took office in January 2009 has raised many an eyebrow. I don't believe in conspiracy theories. But I don't believe in the Household Survey, either. This notoriously volatile indicator has become even more so in recent months. It showed a 195k slide in July and a 119k decline in August, to only then reveal a massive 873k surge in September. [u]So based on Household employment, the economy was in recession in July and August and then miraculously boomed at its strongest rate since January 1983[/u] (is Obama really the new Reagan)?
[b]
If it's too good to be true, then it probably is.
[/b]
But this is why the headline unemployment plunged, and that is what is very likely to make the front pages of the Saturday newspapers. Digging beneath the veneer, [u]the quality of these so-called Household jobs is called into question, seeing as part-time work for 'economic reasons' dominated with a 582k run-up in September[/u]. And upon closer inspection of the actual amount of slack in the labour market, the more inclusive U6 unemployment rate that does a much better job at capturing underemployment, remained stubbornly stuck at 14.7%.[/quote]
(Note the alleged surge in part-time workers is behind the 0.1% rise in the labor force participation rate, which is one of the less-fudgable indicators, hence one which I follow closely.)


[b]Friday Humor, Saturday Edition:[/b]

[url=www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-06/saturday-humor-weeks-top-headlines]This week's Top 10 Bloomberg headlines[/url]

[b]Sunday In-Depth: Gaping Fiscal Hole Facing the UK[/b]

The German [i]Die Welt[/i] - the articles I found in the UK papers (such as [url=http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2212549/West-Coast-Main-Line-Ministers-dodge-blame-emerges-rail-line-shambles-cost-100m.html]this one[/url] with its spastic page layout) were more scattershot, perhaps due to the "too close to the issue" effect resulting on an excessive emphasis on the personalities, backbiting and infighting - has a piece on the latest in a series of financial debacles for the UK leadership, the West Coast Main Railway Line. The monetary amount taken in isolation is not colossal - U.S. Ponzi nabob Ben Bernanke lights his quantitative easing cigars with such amounts - but taken as part of the bigger picture, the UK national finances are not looking at all good. And here they thought that simply promoting City of London as the unchallenged epicenter of global financial fraud was going to solve all their budgetary problems. (Translation is mine, but thanks for the laughs, Google Translate):

[url=http://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article109677906/Camerons-unglaubliche-Serie-von-Finanzdesastern.html]Cameron's incredible series of financial disasters[/url]: [i]At the Conservative party national conference there is real trouble in British Prime Minister David Cameron's house. His government has currently screwed up almost everything -. And is busily tearing new holes in the ailing state budget[/i]
[quote]British Prime Minister and party leader David Cameron could hardly have wished for a worse time for the Conservative Party conference. At the moment everything is going wrong for the Tories, who came to power two-and-a-half years ago with great promises.

The country is still mired in recession, debts are mounting and the failed parliamentary bills are piling up. Cameron may find it difficult to ensure a good atmosphere with his base at the conference, which runs through Wednesday.
[b]
Government has again made a shambles
[/b]
Just last week the government was hit by the latest catastrophe. "Another piece of chaotic incompetence," British Labour leader Ed Miliband opined smugly.

An abashed Transport Minister Patrick McLoughlin was forced to go before the media and admit that his government had once again made a muck of things. Inexplicable errors had occurred in the awarding of the franchise license for the West Coast Main railroad iine, the key railway line in the country connecting London with Edinburgh.

At the end of August, the government had awarded the contract for the next 13 years to the British transport company FirstGroup. Now, however, McLoughlin was forced to suspend the process. During their review of the bids, Ministry officials were found to have made errors in their calculations of passenger growth and inflation, as a result of which the British taxpayer would end up being liable for at least 40 million pounds (50 million euro).

That is the amount the government must pay the four bidders First Group, Virgin, Nederlandse Spoorwegen and the French consortium of Keolis and SNCF, which had participated in the 15-month tender process.

And the cost could rise even further if the gaffe affects the awarding of 18 still-outstanding railway licenses. McLoughlin also put three of those tenders on hold as a precautionary measure, awaiting the outcome of an investigation. "It will cost us a lot of money," admitted the minister candidly.
[b]
Predatory bids are forbidden by the rules
[/b]
The fiasco might have been avoided if the government had paid heed to Virgin founder Richard Branson. His company operated the lucrative railway line for over 15 years. FirstGroup had outbid Virgin in the recent offering by a massive 600 million pounds. Already in August Branson referred to the amount as "insanity".

According to its own tender criteria the Ministry of Transport must not accept the merely highest bid, but rather the one based on the most realistic growth forecasts. Too often it had happened in the past that railway consortia won bidding processes with unrealistic offer and subsequently could not fulfill the resulting contracts.
[b]
Losses the British state cannot afford
[/b]
According to experts, the expensive error could amount to up to 100 million pounds when all is said and done. Money which the British cannot easily afford to waste. Just at the end of September, U.S. investment bank Morgan Stanley shocked with a new study suggesting that the national deficit of the country relative to gross domestic product (GDP) next year might exceed that of Greece and Spain for the first time.

According to Morgan Stanley, in 2013 the UK will have to issue a total of 126 billion pounds of new debt. This would represent 7.8 percent of economic output. No other country in Europe has such a big hole in its accounts. For Spain, the economists at the investment bank predict a deficit of six per cent, whereas Greece is looking at a figure of 6.3 percent.[/quote]
7.8 percent of GDP - who do these guys think they are, Americans?

On the contrary, we're reasonably confident that we're Britons. There's a reasonably nasty recession on, the automatic stabilisers are applied and are not all that cheap, but while people are willing to buy 30-year bonds yielding 3% and 10-year bonds yielding 1.8%, we're more willing to sell bonds than to close hospitals.

I find the pervasive confusion between macroeconomic fundamentals and mild financial mistakes a sign of total lack of arithmetic competence among commentators, which is embarrassing to find in a corner of a maths forum; obviously you'd prefer the government not to make £100-million mistakes routinely, but that's not the direction you look in if you're talking about budget deficits.

The image I prefer contains four hospitals, three pensioners, two poor people and a soldier; each instance represents £100 million a day in spending for the UK government.

[QUOTE=Xyzzy;313733][URL]http://news.yahoo.com/prices-facebook-stock-since-long-awaited-ipo-212925363--finance.html[/URL]

The numbers are interesting, but we wonder if you can consider this an actual news article? Journalism is a dying art! (A chart or graph would have been more appropriate, too!)[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=ewmayer;313747]@xyzzy: W ... T ... F. Someone is in dire need of an introduction to data visualization.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE][B]Dawson[/B]: I'm glad to see the Ministry's continuing its tradition of recruiting the brightest and best, sir.
[/QUOTE]
[COLOR=lemonchiffon].[/COLOR]

[QUOTE=fivemack;313972]On the contrary, we're reasonably confident that we're Britons. There's a reasonably nasty recession on, the automatic stabilisers are applied and are not all that cheap, but while people are willing to buy 30-year bonds yielding 3% and 10-year bonds yielding 1.8%, we're more willing to sell bonds than to close hospitals.[/QUOTE]

"Automatic stabilisers" - I do so love Keynesian euphemisms for "spending money we don't have". Here in the U.S. there is a similar official smugness about the current low rates of interest, btw - before accusing others of innumeracy you might examine who is buying those bonds, and whether central bank manipulation of interest rates to near-zero [url=http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-08/zero-interest-rate-zero-retirement-how-fed-doomed-elderly-americans-endless-work]really is the free lunch[/url] its proponents make it out to be.

As I noted, the absolute size of the "accounting error" in question is tiny relative to the current-account deficit, but a couple hundred million here, another half-billion there, still manage to add up. If we were talking about an entity which were required to to actually pay its bills, the tiny accounting error featured in the article would translate roughly to one decent-sized hospital having to be closed, to use your own example.

Speaking of incidental expenses, I hear the Greeks are [url=http://www.forbes.com/sites/chrissmith/2012/10/03/greece-learns-nothing-dumps-37-million-into-formula-one-racetrack/]spending a similar amount of money they don't have[/url] to begin building a brand new Formula 1 racetrack in some obscure location in hopes of being blessed by the appearance of His Holiness Mr. Bernie Ecclestone at some future date. 'Twill be money well spent, I'm sure.

[URL="http://economywatch.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/08/14296144-california-voters-only-have-themselves-to-blame-for-soaring-pump-prices?lite&ocid=msnhp"]California voters only have themselves to blame for soaring pump prices[/URL]

[quote]One reason is that state regulators insist refiners produce a specific blend of gas to meet tough state air quality standards. That means refiners and wholesalers can’t make up temporary shortages with gas that can be sold elsewhere in the U.S.
And while refiners in other states have gradually expanded output over the years to keep up with demand, no California politician would dream of campaigning on a platform of building new oil refineries. The result is that gasoline supplies in California have gradually tightened as refiners have been unable to win approval to expand production, according Tom Kloza, publisher of the Oil Price Information Service.
___________________________________

The supply pipeline started to dry up after an Aug. 6 a fire shut down Chevron Corp's 245,000 barrel-per-day plant in Richmond, Calif. Then Exxon Mobil Corp's 150,000 barrel-per-day Los Angeles-area refinery in Torrance, Calif., was hit with a power failure last week. An outage at a pipeline in the Central Valley only made matters worse.
___________________________________

Prices should also start falling fall following an order from Gov. Brown on Sunday that state smog regulators allow winter-blend gasoline to be sold earlier than the usual Nov. 1 start date. The order means refiners can begin to tap stockpiles of winter fuel to ease the latest shortages.[/quote]

He's making a list, and checking it twice...
 

[url=www.nytimes.com/2012/10/09/world/europe/greek-government-at-odds-over-list-of-names.html?ref=world]Debate Over Whereabouts of a List Highlight Greek Political Divide[/url]: [i]ATHENS — Can a memory stick bring down a political order? That is the question in Greece, where a tragicomic debate over what became of a list of nearly 2,000 Greeks with Swiss bank accounts is rapidly turning into a full-blown political crisis that is imperiling Greece’s fragile coalition government at a crucial time.[/i]
[quote] When the Greek finance minister and one of his predecessors said last month that the list was missing — and another former finance minister subsequently said he had belatedly handed it over to the authorities — the story was seen as an almost laughable caper. But amid other high-profile corruption investigations that have opened in recent weeks, the story quickly assumed a darker cast. On Thursday, a former deputy interior minister — who according to the Greek news media was under investigation for corruption himself — was found dead in what appears to have been a suicide.

As the coalition government of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras struggles to agree on a package of austerity measures to secure the foreign financing the country needs to stay afloat — and ahead of the first visit to Athens by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany since the debt crisis began, expected on Tuesday — the corruption investigations are seen less as a belated housekeeping effort than as a gloves-off fight, with politicians breaking allegiances in a destabilizing climate of suspicion and even blackmail.

“What we see unfolding in the political system is a tragedy with elements of low comedy,” said Pantelis Boukalas, a columnist for the newspaper Kathimerini.

Today, the same people singled out in the investigations are in the parties that form the pillars of Mr. Samaras’s government — a government blessed and supported by European leaders — and it remains to be seen how much self-examination, let alone how many criminal charges, it will take before the entire structure collapses.

As the investigations gain momentum, the relationship between the Socialists and New Democracy, Mr. Samaras’s party, “is that of the scorpion and the frog,” Mr. Boukalas said.

“It’s in their nature for one to sting the other until they sink together,” he said.

“They might be forced allies now, but each other’s value is based on the devaluation of the other,” he added. “However, if the Socialists completely fall apart, there goes the government; New Democracy and Democratic Left alone cannot hold it together,” referring to a smaller third party in the coalition. [/quote]
This having all the elements of the prototypical political-farcical Greek tragicomedy, the closing of the piece is fittingly ironic:
[quote]Mr. Boukalas, the political columnist, said that Greek politicians accused of corruption used to stay out of the public eye for a time before re-emerging, wagging their fingers at others as a way to “regain their virginity.” With the old leadership in disarray, that strategy no longer worked, he said.
[b]
“There is this lake in Argos where Hera would take a swim after every copulation session with Zeus, so she would always be a virgin,” Mr. Boukalas said. “Our politicians are out of luck because this lake doesn’t exist anymore. It was dried up in a public works project.”[/b][/quote]

Angela Merkel got a [url=http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/world/europe/angela-merkel-greece-visit.html?ref=business]predictably warm welcome in Athens today[/url] ... one wonders what she was hoping to accomplish with her visit. (The official story is some silliness about "showing solidarity.")

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

The NYT is running [i]Me, Myself and Math[/i], a six-part series by mathematician Steven Strogatz, looking at the world and human existence through the lens of math. The latest installment examines predictions of catastrophe theory as applied to real-world phenomena such as sleep/wake cycles and the economic business cycle. Somewhat disappointingly, Strogatz fails to address whether any of the "elegant models" he discusses predicted such historic economic catastophes such as occurred in 2008. Still a nice read, though:

[url=opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/dangerous-intersection/?ref=opinion]Dangerous Intersection[/url]
[quote]I don’t know much about camels, having ridden one only once (and that was enough). But from what I’ve been told, you can usually add another piece of straw to a camel’s burden without ill effect.

Except, of course, when it’s the [i]last[/i] straw.[/quote]

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

[url=http://www.smh.com.au/business/growth-the-false-god-of-economics-20121009-27a0b.html]Sydney Morning Herald | Growth: the false god of economics[/url]
[quote]From the self-development books of Oprah and Tony Robbins to the world records in the Olympic Games, the act of standing still, or of tomorrow not being better than yesterday, is the ultimate sin. From computer processing speeds, to pixels on phone cameras to waistlines queuing for the food buffet, everything must be faster, better or bigger. Achievement and victory, inculcated since school – themselves ranked against each other for parental selection – are the ultimate virtues.

Nowhere is this obsession more apparent than in finance and economics. Governments are obsessed with GDP growth, even if that means unsustainable debt, imbalances or environmental destruction. Businesses are obsessed with profit growth. Regardless of growth's long-term merits, the chief executive of any publicly-listed company will be sacked quicker than you can say "board meeting" if he says otherwise. Investors, more to the point, are obsessed with beating inflation and each other. And of course they are, they're investors.
...
Yet economics beyond growth is exactly what we need if some kind of equilibrium is to be restored in the domestic and global economy. Forgetting for the moment Malthusian arguments about resource scarcity, or indeed the science of climate change, for the insidious political economy of a highly unequal world to subside and for the backbone of democracy – a middle class where most are in the middle – to reassert, we essentially need a no-growth environment.[/quote]
I think the author makes some good points, but rather carelessly conflates the resource-consumption and value-add parts of the macroeconomic equation. Computer chips are in fact a great example of "value growth" being possible with ever-decreasing resource inputs needed per unit processing capability. The result is a persistent and powerful deflationary trend in cost for a given amount of data processing. Not all economic activities permit for that degree of value-add scaling: for instance the most basic economic activity of all, growing food, has advanced in efficiency-per-hectare in all of human history by perhaps the amount computer chips do each decade - but most economic activities do in fact permit increasing efficiencies to increase the value-add over time. Healthcare is a puzzlement to me in this regard: while in many aspects we are obtaining vastly improved care, on a per-money basis the opposite is often true. For example, a routine uncomplicated hospital-setting childbirth costs roughly 10x more than it did 50 years ago, even after accounting for inflation. Is that reflective of the fact that more-advanced technologies are available if needed and simply "having high tech on standby" adds a cost, or is it legal-malpractice-added costs and cost-inflating legal loopholes engineered by Big Pharma and the for-profit hospital industry? (In the specific case of childbirth, perhaps it's the cost of [url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085959/quotes]machine that goes "ping"[/url]).

ZeroHedge [url=http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-11/cashin-remembers-germanys-hyperinflation-birthday]today has a nice piece[/url] by UBS market analyst and historian Art Cashin commemorating the 90th anniversary of the start of the terminal phase of the catastrophic German Weimar-era hyperinflation. I have some overprinted-with-many-zeros postage stamps from that era - pure insanity.

Notice the interesting dynamic - Despite the crushing burden of war reparations, so long as citizens and the bond markets had confidence that Germany would be able to both service its debts and mount an economic recovery, the government was able to issue new bonds at reasonable rates of interest. It was when that confidence finally evaporated that the tipping point was reached, and the self-reinforcing hyperinflationary currency collapse commenced. Not that any of this ancient history is of any relevance in the modern world, mind you - who needs wheelbarrows to cart around their grocery money when it's all printed electronically? And the fact that electronic Bernanke bucks (Draghi-ros, on the eastern side of the Atlantic) have no utility as heating fuel will ensure things stay in check this time around. This time is different, it's a completely new paradigm, etc.

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

The century-old [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine]first-sale doctrine[/url] is facing a crucial test in the U.S. Supreme Court this fall:

[url=www.marketwatch.com/story/your-right-to-resell-your-own-stuff-is-in-peril-2012-10-04?link=MW_story_popular]Your right to resell your own stuff is in peril[/url]: [i]CHICAGO (MarketWatch) — Tucked into the U.S. Supreme Court’s agenda this fall is a little-known case that could upend your ability to resell everything from your grandmother’s antique furniture to your iPhone 4.[/i]
[quote]At issue in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons is the first-sale doctrine in copyright law, which allows you to buy and then sell things like electronics, books, artwork and furniture, as well as CDs and DVDs, without getting permission from the copyright holder of those products.

Under the doctrine, which the Supreme Court has recognized since 1908, you can resell your stuff without worry because the copyright holder only had control over the first sale.

Put simply, though Apple Inc. has the copyright on the iPhone and Mark Owen has it on the book “No Easy Day,” you can still sell your copies to whomever you please whenever you want without retribution.

That’s being challenged now for products that are made abroad, and if the Supreme Court upholds an appellate court ruling, it would mean that the copyright holders of anything you own that has been made in China, Japan or Europe, for example, would have to give you permission to sell it.

“It means that it’s harder for consumers to buy used products and harder for them to sell them,” said Jonathan Band, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center, who filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of the American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries and the Association for Research Libraries. “This has huge consumer impact on all consumer groups.”

Another likely result is that it would hit you financially because the copyright holder would now want a piece of that sale.

It could be your personal electronic devices or the family jewels that have been passed down from your great-grandparents who immigrated from Spain. It could be a book that was written by an American writer but printed and bound overseas, or an Italian painter’s artwork.

There are implications for a variety of wide-ranging U.S. entities, including libraries, musicians, museums and even resale juggernauts eBay Inc. and Craigslist. U.S. libraries, for example, carry some 200 million books from foreign publishers.

“It would be absurd to say anything manufactured abroad can’t be bought or sold here,” said Marvin Ammori, a First Amendment lawyer and Schwartz Fellow at the New American Foundation who specializes in technology issues.[/quote]

[QUOTE=ewmayer;313347]In longer-hit news, Mish today features a well-written op-ed in today's [i]Telegraph[/i] which addresses the European devolvement into a bailout union:

[url=http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2012/09/what-if-i-am-wrong-about-europe.html]Can Politics Triumph Over Math and History?[/url][/QUOTE]
The MEP (Birmingham) Daniel Hannan featured in the above gave an interview yesterday on RT.com. Good stuff. I have been unable to find a video clip of yesterday's interview, but [url=http://rt.com/news/euro-project-bureaucrats-hannan-423/]here is one he gave the same channel in December 2011[/url], which covers most of the same themes.

(I find it interesting that despite the obvious anti-west bias of [i]Russia Today[/i], their financial/economic reporting is quite good, likely because in that arena, skepticism of politicians, bankers and their lapdog media is highly warranted).

Hannan's scathing indictment of the ever-worsening anti-democratic tendencies of the EU and the Big-Financial cabal it represents leads us to this week's

[b]Friday Humor:[/b]

[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/13/world/nobel-peace-prize.html?ref=world]2012 Nobel Peace Prize Award to European Union[/url] - That's an even bigger joke than when the Norskies awarded the 2008 prize to then-candidate and "I have 0 background as a peace activist, but I will prove to be a pretty good neocon" Obama. Apparently this year's decision [url=http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/13/world/europe/some-norwegians-dismayed-over-nobel-prize-for-european-union.html?ref=world]even has some Norskies upset[/url].

(Hannan makes much the same "this could not have been funnier if it had been meant as joke" point today at his [url=http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/author/danielhannan/]blog on the [i]Telegraph[/i] website[/url]).