rdan Worth a bit of time to listen.

The above table is from the National Academy of Social Insurance’s (NASI) Social Security Brief: Social Security Finances: Findings of the 2009 Trustees Report, a valuable summary from a group broadly supportive of traditional Social Security. If Social Security really was in a serious crisis you would expect the right hand column to show steady […]

rdan Brett Steenbarger at Trader Feed has an interesting take on rules of the market for the current decade of market of stocks. In the chart, I’m looking at a moving window of 60 days and counting the number of days within that window that either have 2/3 or more of stocks traded as advances […]

rdan Nearly all men can standadversity, but if you want totest a man’s character, givehim power.– Abraham Lincoln

This measure says the “Great Recession” is the worse since the Depression. The previous record was a 13% drop in 1958 and 1974. It is now down 13.6% this cycle.

I love this. The consensus expectations was for the core CPI to come in at 0.2% this month. It came in at 0.253%, was rounded up to 0.3%, and the market is selling off on this. Just remember, betting on monthly economic releases is a suckers game created by the bond and stock brokerage houses […]

rdan Steven Pearlstein in the WaPO suggests an alternative way at looking at the value of regional newspapers, as more of an opportunity and as less of a death we can ill afford for externalities sake. Updated link in WaPo, thanks MG. Update 2: I recommend moseying over to Naked Capitalism for this piece on […]

Chrysler eliminating about a quarter of its dealerships is getting a lot of press, but the press seems to be completely ignoring why Chrysler is doing this. All day CNBC has been talking to Chrysler dealers and not once have I heard them say a word about why Chrysler is doing this. The reason is […]

Meet the New Boss; Same as the Old Boss. Andrew Sullivan points out the obvious link from yesterday’s appointment to today’s “reversal“: It was a point of pride that the Red Cross would never be allowed in the door, Jeff says. This is important because it defied the Geneva Conventions, which require that the Red […]