Failed Economic Theory
by ilene - November 28th, 2008 4:36 pm
Here’s an article by Ben Bittrolff, the Financial Ninji, discussing the economic model upon which our economic policy is based. The theory, neo-classical economic theory, is based on premises which are simply wrong.
Policy Based on Failed Economic Theory: Just Stupid
Courtesy of Ben Bittrolff [ The Financial Ninja ]
I can’t stress how important it is to understand that economists are relying on hugely flawed theories and models when looking at the economy. Economic policy is being made off the neo-classical theory of economics. This is just a fancy way of describing current mainstream economic theory. This neo-classical theory of economics forms the basis for all the crap your politicians and their advisors keep trying. The greatest failed experiment of this theory is the practical implementation Keynesian and Neo-Keynesian economic policy. Today, right now you are witnessing the implementation of Keynesian theory to its absolute maximum limits with a policy of ZIRP and quantitative easing.
Of course this cannot work and it never has. Neo-classical economic theory is fatally flawed from its very first basic premises. They are:
1) People have rational preferences among outcomes that can be identified and associated with a value.
2) Individuals maximize utility and firms maximize profits.
3) People act independently on the basis of full and relevant information.
This entire theory and all the economic policy that is born of it hinges on these three basic premises. The first one is completely ridiculous and obvious to anybody that isn’t a socially inept, ivory tower, academic, economic nerd. (Clearly these guys have never interacted with the female species in person before. Hahaha.) The assumption is that individuals choose the best action according to stable preference functions and constraints facing them. Simply put, if you prefer beer over liquor you’ll consistently drink beer at parties. No flip flopping allowed. No randomizations allowed. No ‘living in the moment’ allowed. This brings me to premise number two. Individuals maximize utility and firms maximize profits. Basically you drink your beer to the point of being pleasantly buzzed and then you stop. You never get smashed because a massive hangover clearly does not maximize utility. The third premise states that you will act independently and have all the relevant information to make the best choices. This means that you happily drink your beer and won’t get persuaded to do a round of shots with your friends. You clearly know that one round leads to two and you’ve got to work tomorrow. When your drunken friend gives you a stock…
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Watching Gold
by ilene - November 28th, 2008 1:22 pm
Interesting Friday morning thoughts on gold, courtesy of Tim Iacono at The Mess That Greenspan Made.
Watching and waiting for gold
Precious metals markets have been quiet today, that is, up until the last few minutes when that little line on Kitco’s live gold chart went vertical for what amounted to about a $7 gain for gold.
It could be an interesting day … we’ll see.
Citigroup’s report the other day will certainly add some fuel to the fire when it comes to the debate over the future of gold prices. They figure the yellow metal could rocket as high as $2,000 an ounce sometime within the next two years, possibly before the end of next year, as all the government stimulus money works its way into the system.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard filed this report on the Citigroup paper and GATA has hosted the document that is full of charts, but, more importantly, ends with the following:
While we believe that Gold could very well head above $2,000 we do not think that is today, tomorrow next week or next month.
We do however believe that it will happen over time as this financial/economic backdrop heads to “the wings.”
What do we mean? The excesses of the last 10 to 25 years have come to fruition in the U.S. and across the World with severe repercussions for financial markets and the Global economy.
There is an increasing recognition of this at official levels and the monetary and fiscal floodgates are starting to open.
We doubt, as a consequence, that we are just going to muddle through here. Our bias is that when the dust settles on all this action the authorities will have been very successful or very unsuccessful.
In the very successful arena is the idea that “throwing the kitchen sink” at this has worked and we see signs that the Global economy is reflating/inflating. As a consequence debt will get devalued and the wash of money in the system would suggest a greater likelihood of an inflationary outlook, which will benefit Gold.
In the very unsuccessful area is that too much damage has been done to the patient and as a consequence we continue to have financial instability. This will breed further economic instability, which could lead to political instability in some nations and possibly even domestic / regional unrest or worse.
This deteriorating picture would also likely be a catalyst for Gold to perform well with a status of “safe haven.”
Considered opinion is that…
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Citigroup and automakers flourish in thin post-holiday trading
by Andrew Wilkinson - November 28th, 2008 1:03 pm
Today’s tickers: C, GM, F, CHK, GE, CSCO & AEM
C – Citigroup Inc. – There appears to be greater sense of confidence these days about the survival of Citigroup now that the government has ring-fenced more than $300 billion of its toxic mortgage debt. Shares jumped 11.4% to $7.82 and option traders kept it the most active equity option contract in light trading on Friday. December call option buyers favored both 7.5 and 10.0 strikes. Meanwhile trading in the January 7.5 strike puts was initiated far more from keen buyers than sellers at prices between 1.25 and 1.52.
GM – General Motors – The Detroit Free Press reports that in a time-crunched bid to come up with a plan for lawmakers by next Tuesday, GM is considering ditching brands to include Hummer, Pontiac and Saab. Unconfirmed reports also suggest that GM’s corporate jet might have been grounded in a request to cut costs. Shares are 10% better today at $5.30 as prospects for a bailout apparently are on the increase. The December 5.0 and 6.0 strike calls were most heavily traded but we did note that around half of the volume at the 5.0 strike was sold where premiums ranged between 88 cents and 1.21.
F – Ford Motor Co. – Option volume at Ford surged on similar optimism over an industry bailout. Shares jumped more than 20% on the session to $2.62. Meanwhile call options traded almost 10-times as frequently as put options where trading was concentrated at the December 3.0 strike and January 2.5. With option implied volatility running at 201% on the company’s options, the premium paid to obtain buying rights at the December 3.0 strike is 30 cents. Volume there was 9,400 contracts.
CHK – Chesapeake Energy Corp. – Gas and oil producer, Chesapeake upset investors when it filed a replacement shelf document reserving the ability to raise up to $2 billion through offering more stock. The proceeds would be used for core operations but also acquisitions. The news has sent shares in the company sharply lower falling around 20% to $16.35. The potential worry for investors might be rooted in the decline in the price of crude oil since the company is in the process of developing shale sand projects in West Pennsylvania, Arkansas and Oklahoma. Such projects aimed at retrieving marginal or difficult to reach natural oil and gas became prominent when oil prices were on the ascent. Today other producers…
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Black Friday?
by Phil - November 28th, 2008 9:06 am
![[walmart+wacky+bfa.jpg]](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KyZyw83tsOU/R0MqBIg2qdI/AAAAAAAAAO8/t4wmYQmSgkk/s1600/walmart%2Bwacky%2Bbfa.jpg)
Black Friday for retailers is the day that sales traditionally put retailers in the black for the year (not going to happen this year of course).
It is often, but not always, the busiest shopping day of the year and, at 6am this morning, WMT’s server crashed from the traffic so we’re off to a good start as shoppers, no matter how depressed, start thinking about Christmas shopping - often spurred on by a list handed to them by a nephew or niece or grandchild at Thanksgiving dinner last night. Giving the market a positive spin last week was key as it allowed the media to focus on the holiday sales, rather than the market meltdown they would have focused on had we finished Wednesday below 8,000 so let’s hear is for the Plunge Protection Team!
We’ll see how real this week’s 20% rally was - but not today. Today is a meaningless low-volume day where we hope to hold the 8,600 mark on the Dow and nothing more so let’s say we are looking for pullbacks of less than 1.25% across the board to maintain our slightly better than neutral stance. We took advantage of Wednesday’s rally to press our short bets by rolling up our index puts and that is key to managing this market as tight downside protection, which allows us to hold off on covering the longs we are most fond of (or cover the bull side a little lighter than we would otherwise).
The market has had simply spectacular performance since last Friday with wild double-digit gains in all of the US indices and the entire MSCI World Index tacking on 13.7%, now down "only" 44.8% for the year:
I will remind you, as we discussed in yesterday’s post, that the US alone has spent/committed $7.8Tn to keep the markets over that 50% off line while the rest of the world is in for about 5 or 6 Trillion Dollars as well (it’s hard to quantify the real cost of bank guarantees until it’s over) so how could we NOT get a small boost to the global economy. The problem is, the boost is being applied on the famous trickle down theory as bailing out the banks is somehow supposed to eventually help the people they lend to. What has not occurred to our mindless leaders is: What happens if that cycle is broken? What happens if the US consumer (including the corporate consumer) is no longer willing to borrow…
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Gov’t on Hook for $8T+
by ilene - November 27th, 2008 10:39 pm
Mark at Fund My Mutual Fund summarizes the government’s quickly amassing obligations, and has reached a conclusion - similar to Phil’s - that it would be more efficient and more fair for the government to have simply paid off a percentage of mortgages. "[G]ive everyone with a mortgage a 50% payoff and all these toxic instruments in the system become "paid off" or a much smaller risk," and give government an equity interest in the homes and the taxpayer is even better off on this deal.
Bloomberg: U.S. Government Now on Hook for $8 Trillion+
The Federal Reserve is now Atlas…. let’s just hope they do not shrug….
During the war of the TITANS, ATLAS stormed Olympus and threatened the Gods. And as punishment for this war crime, ZEUS sentenced him to hold up the heavens and bear their weight on his shoulders forever
I was going to post this story a few days ago when the U.S. Government was ONLY on the hook for $7.7 Trillion but with yesterday’s additional $800 Billion, the entry needs to be edited (by the day it seems) The bill now could reach $8.3+ Trillion. This is staggering folks - just staggering; I don’t think people can even wrap their minds about this sort of data. It is our typical American kick the can down the road - we’ll worry about the implications of it all once we get out of this current mess - this is the U.S. mode of operation for multiple decades now. I do believe from what I am seeing lately that the Federal Reserve is now of mind of "print at all costs" - the money supply data is simply in "hockey stick" formation and they’ll deal with the ramifications of their actions at a later date. For now, they are going to print like there is no tomorrow. (and let me be clear about the headline - technically the Federal Reserve is not part of the US Government)
This is an entry to print and hand to your friends who think we are "only" giving $700B of TARP money - if they’re steaming mad about that, well that is now less than 10% of what we have exposure to. The scary thing? If we marked to market the whole banking system collapses so for all the problems we have morally with this, it might just be NECESSARY to flood the system with this many pesos if we don’t want the end of the entire US financial…
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Chesapeake Energy
by ilene - November 27th, 2008 10:06 pm
Mish reports on Chesapeake Energy, Petrobras, and OPEC. Courtesy of Mish, at Global Economic Trend Analysis. 
Chesapeake Energy, Largest US Natural Gas Producer, Runs Out Of Cash
YahooFinance is reporting Chesapeake Energy may sell $1.8B stock to get cash.
Chesapeake Energy Corp., the nation’s largest producer of natural gas, seeks to raise up to $1.8 billion through common stock sales in an effort to fund its drilling and exploration activities and mitigate the impact of lower natural gas prices on cash flow.
In two filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission late Wednesday, the company said it will issue shares worth as much as $1 billion before fees and also registered 50 million shares worth at most $791 million for potential sale.
Oklahoma City, Okla.-based Chesapeake said it will use proceeds from the $1 billion offering for general corporate purposes, including fund exploration, development and other capital expenditures.
The move would dilute holdings of shareholders, who already suffered through a substantial decline in Chesapeake’s stock price this year. Shares closed at $20.24 on Wednesday, off 73 percent from the stock’s $74 52-week high set this summer.
But the company said cash flow, borrowings and cash on hand have not been enough to pay for capital expenditures.
Chesapeake has used up the remaining financing available under its $3.5 billion bank credit facility and only $251 million is left of another $460 million credit line. Credit markets remain tight with financial institutions under duress.
CHK Daily Chart
click on chart for sharper image
This is the same silliness we saw with banks and financials. The companies kept paying unsustainable dividends and buying back shares at ridiculous prices. They did not raise money when they could but rather when they were forced to.
Can anyone ever get this right?
Petrobras Cash Shortage
In Brazil, Petrobras Cash Shortage Led to Tax Loan.
Petroleo Brasileiro SA was forced to borrow 2 billion reais ($881 million) from Brazilian state-owned discount bank Caixa Economica Federal as it faced “momentary difficulty” paying taxes, Energy Minister Edison Lobao said.
Petrobras, as the state-controlled oil company is known, said record profit in the third quarter resulted in a 11.4 billion-real tax bill in October, about 5 percent more than the 10.8 billion reais of cash it had on hand at the end of September, the Rio de Janeiro-based company said in a note on the Brazilian security regulator’s Web site.
“There were taxes that Petrobras had to pay that they really shouldn’t have had to pay…
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Clues to Aging in Red Wine
by ilene - November 27th, 2008 6:30 pm
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!
Red wine with your turkey dinner?… This article discusses the protein sirtuin (subject to a post yesterday explaining how loss of regulation leads to chaos) which is activated by resveratrol, an ingredient of red wine.
Scientists Find Clues to Aging in a Red Wine Ingredient’s Role in Activating a Protein 
Excerpt:
A new insight into the reason for aging has been gained by scientists trying to understand how resveratrol, a minor ingredient of red wine, improves the health and lifespan of laboratory mice. They believe that the integrity of chromosomes is compromised as people age, and that resveratrol works by activating a protein known as sirtuin that restores the chromosomes to health.
The finding, published online Wednesday in the journal Cell, is from a group led by David Sinclair of the Harvard Medical School. It is part of a growing effort by biologists to understand the sirtuins and other powerful agents that control the settings on the living cell’s metabolism, like its handling of fats and response to insulin...
Sirtris, a company Dr. Sinclair helped found, has developed a number of chemicals that mimic resveratrol and are potentially more suitable as drugs since they activate sirtuin at much lower doses than resveratrol. This month, one of these chemicals was reported in the journal Cell Metabolism to protect mice on fatty diets from getting obese and to enhance their endurance in treadmills, just as resveratrol does.
Though the sirtuin field holds considerable promise, the dust has far from settled. Resveratrol is a powerful agent with many different effects, only some of which are exerted through sirtuin. So drugs that activate sirtuin may not be as splendid a tonic for people as resveratrol certainly seems to be for mice…
Sirtuin’s normal role is to help gag all the genes that a cell needs to keep suppressed. It does so by keeping the chromatin, the stuff that wraps around the DNA, packed so tightly that the cell cannot get access to the underlying genes.
But sirtuin has another critical role, one that is triggered by emergencies like a break in both DNA strands of a chromosome. After a double strand break, sirtuin rushes to the site to help knit the two parts of the chromosome back together. But in this salvage operation, it leaves its post, and the genes it was repressing are liable to come back into action, causing mayhem...
It would be nice…
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Happy Thanksgiving
by Phil - November 27th, 2008 8:36 am
Just a quick note for the day as I’m off with family.
Yesterday was great and we ended up 60:40 bullish as we held our levels (surprising all of us) and we have more evidence that the rally is real as international markets are up across the board despite a terrible terrorist attack in India (that market is closed today for the emergency) that has left 100 people dead and hundreds more injured. It’s been a while since terror was our top concern but it’s a stark reminder that, even at the best of times, we need some disaster protection in our portfolio.
The VIX came down hard, breaking below the 50 dma and that’s what we like to see accompanying an up move in the markets. We still have a long way to go to get to "normal" volatility levels, around half of where we are now but we can certainly be thankful for this week’s market move, which seems to have done a lot to restore investor confidence. Whether this is a real bottom or simply a bear market bounce remains to be seen but we just had a 20% up move in the S&P off Friday’s low - that is close to 3 normal years worth of growth! Of course that is small comfort to people who’s portfolios were ravaged by the downturn but we need to keep things in perspective and manage our expectations.
My expectations were that you can’t spend $7.8 Trillion (that’s $7,800,000,000,000) without somewhat stimulating a $13Tn economy and here’s a great chart that shows how your tax dollars (and it’s over $70,000 per taxpayer) are being spent. To be fair, it’s not really "spent," just committed, as the government is:
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Insuring $3.1Tn in bank debt (like C’s $306Bn of loans and securities), money market funds, FDIC accounts and up to $200Bn of FRE/FNM losses.
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Lending $1.7Tn under the TAF program (low interest, short-term loans) and TALF (aimed at business investors) as well as through the discount window.
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Investing $3Tn, half of which is in the commercial paper market plus the infamous TARP with "only" $600Bn used to buy mortgage-backed securities. This is, of course, the stuff NOBODY wants and the government is buying the dregs of the dregs.
It is kind of amazing when you consider that there are less than $20Tn in total mortgages in the United States and the sum of all those mortgage payments is $1.5Tn per year and…
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Case Shiller and CAR Analysis
by ilene - November 27th, 2008 1:14 am
Housing prices — overview of declines in various cities. These numbers do not include the latest, which would reflect worsening of conditions in October and November. 
Case Shiller and CAR Analysis November 2008 Release
Courtesy of Mish.
California Association of Realtors C.A.R. Data
The following chart is from my friend "TC" who has been monitoring California Association of Realtors (C.A.R.) and DQNews data. C.A.R. data contains resale single family residences and new homes. DQNews data contains resale single family residences and new homes. (Click on charts for sharper images.)
Median nominal prices in CA are now down 47% according to CAR and 42% according to DQNews - and those declines are in less than 18 months!
Case-Shiller is a more accurate way of looking at home prices than median prices. Case-Shiller data follows.
Case Shiller November Release
Inquiring minds are considering the Case Shiller Home Price Release for November 2008.
New York, October 28, 2008 – Data through August 2008, released today by Standard & Poor’s for its S&P/Case-Shiller1 Home Price Indices, the leading measure of U.S. home prices, shows continued broad based declines in the prices of existing single family homes across the United States, a trend that prevailed throughout the first half of 2008 and has continued into the second half.
The chart below depicts the annual returns of the U.S. National, the 10-City Composite and the 20-City Composite Home Price Indices. The decline in the S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index – which covers all nine U.S. census divisions – remained in double digits, posting a record 16.6% decline in the third quarter of 2008 versus the third quarter of 2007. This has increased from the annual declines of 15.1% and 14.0%, reported for the 2nd and 1st quarters of the year, respectively. The 10-City and 20-City Composites continue to set new records, with annual declines of 18.6% and 17.4%, respectively.
click on chart for sharper image
Case-Shiller Declines Since Peak
The following charts were produced by my friend "TC" who has been monitoring Case-Shiller Data. Although individual cities topped at varying times, the top-10 and top-20 city composites peaked in a June-July 2006 timeframe.
Case-Shiller Declines Since Peak Current Data
click on chart for sharper image
Case-Shiller Declines Since Peak Futures Data
click on chart for sharper image
"TC" writes:
The housing numbers are as grim as expected. The CAR housing numbers reflect Oct 2008 which are actual sales in late August and September (read pre-market meltdown). The price declines range from 30% to 60% with median price…
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Aging Process & Financial Mess
by ilene - November 26th, 2008 8:04 pm
Interesting analogy between the aging process and the meltdown of the global economy - the common denominator being loss of regulation. 
The Aging Process and the Current Financial Mess
Courtesy of Stormy, at Angry Bear.
I just could not resist posting this latest tidbit about the aging process:
Like our current financial crisis, the aging process might also be a product excessive deregulation.
Nearly a decade ago, Sinclair and colleagues in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology lab of Leonard Guarente found that a particular sirtuin in yeast affected the aging process in two specific ways—it helped regulate gene activity in cells and repair breaks in DNA. As DNA damage accumulated over time, however, the sirtuin became too distracted to properly regulate gene activity, and as a result, characteristics of aging set in.
"Too distracted" is clearly too anthropomorphic a phrase, but in a curious way, it fits the present crisis. But wait.
The researchers have added an "enlightening" twist to the idea of "distraction":
The problem for the cell, however, is that the sirtuin has another important job. When DNA is damaged by UV light or free radicals, sirtuins act as volunteer emergency responders. They leave their genomic guardian posts and aid the DNA repair mechanism at the site of damage.
"Distraction" is now operationally defined.
The marvelous genetic aging metaphor is ready for completion. All we have to do is to define what is presently keeping the overseers of our economic system from paying attention to the real problem.
Once we thought of the world in mechanical terms; now the world of genetics is opening a new way of looking at the world.
ScienceDaily — Researchers have uncovered what may be a universal cause of aging, one that applies to both single cell organisms such as yeast and multicellular organisms, including mammals. This is the first time that such an evolutionarily conserved aging mechanism has been identified between such diverse organisms.
The mechanism probably dates back more than one billion years. The study shows how DNA damage eventually leads to a breakdown in the cell’s ability to properly regulate which genes are switched on and off in particular settings.
Like our current financial crisis, the aging process might also be a product excessive deregulation.
Researchers have discovered that DNA damage decreases a cell’s ability to regulate which genes are turned on and off in particular settings. This mechanism, which applies both to fungus and to us,…
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
(