rdan No friends in high places for these small to medium sized banks. (hat tip Calculated Risk)

rdan Middle aged men and pensions in the industries. Much wealth has vanished…I notice a lot of apathy among employees such as teachers whose state plans have not declared losses yet except generally. The MA plan declared a 29% “loss” in value, but I have yet to see a clear statement about what the “loss” […]

Ken Houghton notes the plural in the title, which was written not by me rather by the FRB Atlanta, which sponsored a conference of that name, hosted by David Altig of Macroblog fame (and now an SVP at the Atlanta Fed). Here is the page for presentation links.

post by Bruce Webb data by Dale Coberly For those following along. Recent numbers from CBO and now from Social Security show that the DI (Disability Insurance) component of Social Security is officially broken, it failed the test for Short Term Actuarial Balance last year. And when combined with the OAS component brought Trust Fund […]

rdan Undercover in Burmaby Michael Perelman My former student, Ryan Libre, snuck into Burma to meet with the Kachin Independence Army. He is one of my favorite students, even though he has a long-standing incomplete in one of my classes. Our local weekly has a short story about his work. http://www.newsreview.com/chico/content?oid=980928 I had to simply […]

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