Daily Reading – Friday, April 8, 2011
Macro Man: Spendor Australis
We have spent the last 3 days searching sector Alpha for the Ultimate Trade. Having taken damage from a surprise attack from the Aussieyen, USS-TMM has been repaired using its long Dilithium battery stocks and long equity core. We have now entered a spectacular binary star system in the Spendor Australis sector on a most critical mission of Australasian research. Our eminent professor, Dr Cpmppi, will attempt to study the decay of the consumer expelled at relativistic speeds from the massive stellar explosion in the commodities sector which will occur in a matter of weeks. Meanwhile our sensors are continuing to indicate a strong presence of the Borg who have locked on to the strong trend signals emanating from this system.
The Slope Of Hope: Google Has Gone Full ‘Tard
Well, if you didn’t think the Silicon Valley was in the midst of a bubble, I offer incontrovertible proof: this article reveals how two Google VPs were offered $100 million and $50 million not to leave the company for Twitter.
These are middle managers, people. We’re not talking about Steve Jobs here.
The Slope Of Hope: Oil Looks Ready to Run
China Financial Markets: Reforming the banks
During my meetings I noticed that much of the discussion, and many of the questions I was asked by both government officials and investors, focused on debt levels and reforms in the Chinese financial system. I have written a lot about rising debt in China and am glad that analysts and policymakers seem to be spending a lot more time thinking about balance sheet issues. Every case of rapid, investment-driven growth in the past century, as far as I can make out, has at some point reached a stage in which debt levels rose to unsustainable levels and precipitated either a debt crisis or a long grinding adjustment period.
The Big Picture: What is the Source of Record Earnings?
Hey, its earnings season! Let’s look at the overall profits recovery, and see if we can figure out where all this earnings goodness is coming from together.
The Big Picture: Mistakenly
I have this print by Hugh McLeod — Mistakenly — hanging in my office.
It was on my business card for several years (2005-08). Every time I would do a presentation on the dangers of the Credit bubble and housing boom, some manager would say: “But the market keeps going higher — why should we avoid banks or home builders?”
The Big Picture: The Money Network
Awesome graphic via the NYT’s Dealbook on Silicon Valley The Money Network…
The Big Picture: 10 Twitter Do’s and Don’t
I am not the mayor of Twitter, but I have been doing social media long enough to have some thoughts that might be worth sharing. Please take this as you will.
FT Alphaville: Cut out and keep – Portugal aid timetable
At pixel time Portugal’s government was busy announcing that it’ll formally request EU loans later on Thursday. Looks like they have ‘discovered’ they can negotiate without elections after all.
FT Alphaville: Europe stress test benchmarks and banks revealed [updated]
Ninety banks and an own-brand core equity requirement of five per cent of risk-weighted assets…
Calculated Risk: House Prices: Nominal, Real, Price-to-Rent
By request, here is an update to a few graphs including the CoreLogic HPI released this morning (the February report is an average of December, January and February prices).