Misery Economic Theater 2011

[Christenson]

The mood here just might be turning:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13637004
entitled "Goldman must explain behavior"

[ewmayer]

Couple of recent top headlines: I deliberately left out noise involving the congressional debt-ceiling Kabuki theater, articles with vaguely hopeful headlines like "Greece says talks with IMF proceeding hopefully", or the obligatory "Stocks set to rebound on optimism about Greece saying talks with IMF proceeding hopefully" kind of stock-casino-as-proxy-fdor-economy-throwaway-headline. These seemed to reflect most of the noteworthy actual *happenings* this past week:

Greece to present new austerity plan: Greece intends to present a fresh austerity plan on Friday, a government official said, after Moody's cut its credit rating deep into junk territory and said there was an even chance of eventual default


Private sector job growth slumps in May: Private-sector payroll growth slowed sharply in May, coming in far below expectations and falling to the lowest level in eight months, a report by a payrolls processor showed on Wednesday


Japan recovery takes hold, but debt downgrade looms: Japan's economy offered more signs of recovery from the deadly March earthquake on Tuesday, but Moody's ratings agency warned both growth and government action may fall short of what is necessary to bring Tokyo's ballooning debt back under control.


March home prices suffer double-dip setback: U.S. single-family home prices dropped in March, dipping below their 2009 low, as the housing market remained bogged down by inventory and weak demand, a closely watched survey said on Tuesday


On a Lighter Note

The mainstream media - especially highly-respected outlets like the NY Times - are sometime annoyingly un-creative in their choice of headlines. Consider the following story about NY representative Anthony Weiner, who claims his Twitter account was hacked to send a lewd photo of a man's bulging underpants to his Twitter "friends":

Lawmaker Denies Sending Suggestive Photo but Doesn’t Rule Out It’s of Him: Representative Anthony D. Weiner denied sending a suggestive image but said he could not be sure he was not the person in it.

WASHINGTON — Representative Anthony D. Weiner, trying to put to rest a bizarre episode that is overshadowing his role as liberal pugilist and threatening his dream of becoming New York’s mayor, emphatically denied on Wednesday that he had sent a suggestive photograph to a woman in Washington State but said he could not be sure that he is not the person in the image.

“This was essentially a hacked account that had a gag photo sent out on it,” Mr. Weiner, a Democrat, said during an interview in his office here. “I can’t say with certainty very much about where the photograph came from.”

My Comment: How about simply "Weiner: Not My Wiener (Though I can`t be 100% sure)" ?

And in the interesting-word-choice, um, vein, the article continues:

On Tuesday, Mr. Weiner presided over two testy news briefings...

[only_human]

Another interesting story over the weekend was the story of Goldman Sachs losing 98% of a 1.3 billion dollar Libyan investment in 2008. I think the WSJ broke the story. There was something about some executives making a panicked call for bodyguard protection after breaking this particular loss news. Eight months later the remaining 25.1 million dollars ended up being frozen when a lot of Libyan assets were again frozen.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by Fusion_power

IMO, Greece is no longer a matter of avoiding default. The only question now is when and how much and what spin will they use to make it sound palatable.

A hint of how it may be made palatable is given in the article to which you link:

European policymakers, led by Mr Juncker, have been pushing the idea of a voluntary postponement of repayments on Greece's shorter-term debts, to be agreed with lenders.
The hope is that because such a "soft restructuring" or "debt reprofiling" would be voluntary, it would not qualify as a default in the opinion of the rating agencies.
The European Central Bank (ECB) has previously opposed any kind of debt restructuring for Greece, but on Wednesday an ECB member was cited by the Reuters news agency as saying a voluntary arrangement might be acceptable.

Paul

[Fusion_power]

Ewmayer, we could title it:

The Woeful tale of Weiner's Pickled Weiner Pic.

or

How a Weiner Pic got Weiner in a Pickle

DarJones

[Fusion_power]

Greece again, and this time a bit more open stating just how bad the situation is. Greece can NOT borrow money anywhere else except from ECB/IMF. 25% interest rates are the best they can find elsewhere.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13637902

Many European banks have not yet recorded any losses on most of their lending to Greece, and could find their own solvency is put at risk if they are forced to do so.

It is likely that the restructuring would involve the postponement of debt repayments due in the next two years.

It would also have to be done with the agreement of Greece's private sector creditors.

But according to a former director of the IMF, Greece will eventually have to impose losses, or "haircuts", on its lenders - something that would definitely constitute a default.

Claudio Loser, who negotiated past IMF rescue loans for Argentina and Uruguay, said Greece's only other option was to abandon the euro, although he conceded this would be "more complicated".

DarJones

[Spherical Cow]

An interesting read- An Op-Ed piece by a Nobel prize winner in economics (primarily studied unemployment) whose nomination to be on the Federal Reserve Board is being blocked by politics.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/06/op...mond.html?_r=1

Norm

[R.D. Silverman]

Originally Posted by Spherical Cow

An interesting read- An Op-Ed piece by a Nobel prize winner in economics (primarily studied unemployment) whose nomination to be on the Federal Reserve Board is being blocked by politics.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/06/op...mond.html?_r=1

Norm

Regarding Nobel economists, think "Long Term Capital Management".....

3 of its founders were Nobel economists. Look at what a failure it was.....

[xilman]

According to the IMF, the UK economic policy isn't too bad, though "there are significant risks to inflation, growth and unemployment", which may need a policy response.

More details at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13668574

Paul

[Spherical Cow]

Originally Posted by R.D. Silverman

Regarding Nobel economists, think "Long Term Capital Management".....

3 of its founders were Nobel economists. Look at what a failure it was.....

Yep- completely agree with you on that one. But I can't help but think an academic background on unemployment/employment wouldn't be useful on the Fed board. The Long Term Capital Managment people were mostly Salomon Brothers professionals, I think.

Norm

[R.D. Silverman]

Originally Posted by Spherical Cow

Yep- completely agree with you on that one. But I can't help but think an academic background on unemployment/employment wouldn't be useful on the Fed board. The Long Term Capital Managment people were mostly Salomon Brothers professionals, I think.

Norm

My first job out of grad school was working for a company (now absorbed
by McGraw Hill into almost nothingness) named Data Resources.

It was founded/owned/run by Otto Eckstein. Otto was sharp.

The company provided on-line access to economic data (almost every
time-series imaginable) as well as analytical tools (EPS == Econometric
Programming System) for doing risk analysis, decision analysis, time series
analysis/forcasting etc. We had a global macro model of the economy
which we would run every month. The company provided newsletters
and other analytic reports. We were not an investment company. We
provided econometric services. EPS was an amazing piece of software.
It had symbolic capabilities similar to that of Maple/Mathematica, as well
as customized tools for doing econometrics. 2+ million lines of Burroughs
Algol.

The programmers used to tell jokes about the economists.

One of the favorites was "If you laid all of the economists in the world
end-to-end, they still wouldn't reach a conclusion".

Another was: What do you have with a room full of 10 economists?
Ans: 20 different opinions about how the economy will behave in the next
6 months.