Posted by: Tom Keene on February 10, 2012
"Krugman has staked out a rather crude Keynesian position and unrelentingly so," Sachs said today, referring to John Maynard Keynes, the British economist who advocated government spending to spur economic growth during the Great Depression. Krugman "knows one thing, which is stimulus, stimulus, stimulus and expand deficit spending," Sachs said in a television interview on "Bloomberg Surveillance" with Ken Prewitt and Tom Keene.
--By Alex Kowalski and Tom Keene, 9 Feb 2012, 3:14 PM ET
Oops, it was a radio interview and hear it at Bloomberg Radio+.
Sachs is Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia; Krugman is Paul Krugman of Princeton. This was a most amazing and rewarding interview. I urge you to dive into it, soonest.
Professor Sachs's comments were in good cheer and said with respect for the laureate from The New York Times.
Which is the point. Our discourse is first and foremost always "rather crude." Reading the above in no way captures the richness and nuance of what Sachs, Krugman, Taylor, Spence, Coronado, Glassman, and Zentner give us.
I respect immensely the We-Don't-Have-Someone-Playing-For-The-Knicks-Chair professor's study of Hicks, Hansen and a "rather crude Keynesian position." IS-LM and AS-AD at the zero bound is therapy for the economicsmacro (with non-microeconomic foundations) blathered by Washington.
Yet, I yearn for the middle ground staked out by the Planet Earth professor of Morningside Heights. A stance that begs policy change and not senseless confrontation.
Move away from the one-off media quoteathon. Move towards longer interviews and nuanced debate, that leads to compare & contrast distinctions, even if rather crude. Discuss.
Posted by: Tom Keene on February 8, 2012
WJB Capital, which was based in New York and employed about 100 people, halted its brokerage operations following a year of slower trading, a shortage of capital and interest rates of 25 percent on some debts. MF Global, the New York-based firm previously run by former New Jersey governor and ex-Goldman Sachs Group Inc. co-chairman Jon Corzine, shuttered after revealing a $6.3 billion bet on the bonds of some of Europe's most-indebted nations.
--Joshua Fineman & Laura Marcinek, Bloomberg, Ticonderoga Securities Said to Close After Effort to Bolster Capital Fails, 24 January 2012.
Volume. Or, a lack thereof.
The vogue is cash flow, the belt-and-suspenders tradition is to look at the bottom of the income statement. Hipsters may migrate up to operating income. Those scandalous can add a bit of balance sheet, knead for five minutes. Voila! EBITDA.
The "need" in this early-2012 is far, far away as described by first-look Q4 2011 nominal GDP of 3.2 percent and further described by "a year of slower trading."
Travel to the tippy-top of the income statement and consider the P and the Q of revenue. Price (further south) may be a topic for later this year.
Quantity is the issue right now (in spades on Global Wall Street and in selected other industries.)
Mind your Ps; and now...really, really mind your Qs. Discuss.
Posted by: Tom Keene on February 7, 2012
Ahmad Bradshaw's six-yard touchdown "run" was accidental and insane and just perfect. It was sort of the athletic equivalent of putting opposite magnets next to each other. It looked like he had just been tased.
Will Leitch, New York Magazine, 5 February 2012, 10:18 pm.
Everyone has a magnet in Europe. Everyone has a magnet per the not-so-great American Housing Crisis. Then, there is the magnet of years of competition that "drew" Mr. Bradshaw into the end zone.
(To review briefly, near the end of this super, Super Bowl, the team in white (Mr. Bradshaw's team) did not want to score even though they could score. The team in blue wanted to let the team in white score even though their job was to not let them score. Bradshaw failed and scored and was in the time-out chair until the leader of Team Blue could not resurrect Saint Flutie. Confused? Consider Athens.)
I digress. Read up on the mystery that is Bradshawian magnetism. Get out your Gilbert Chem Set and some iron filings. Gaze at the Northern Lights. Are there Southern Lights?
Europe should kill for a very-American Super Bowl ending to their chronic crisis. All of Europe needs to be accidental and insane and just perfect. Discuss.
Posted by: Tom Keene on February 3, 2012
Maintain Buy -- While we sure don't like the fact that PG is losing market share in a bunch of big categories and big markets, we aren't ready to say that PG is a broken story or broken stock. These market share losses are relatively recent, and we think they can be fixed with sharper pricing, more marketing and more innovation.
--Wendy Nicholson, Citi Investment Research, 02 Feb 2012.
Proctor & Gamble is not Facebook.
It's a "real" business without some "We are the World" in the S-1 and a 2,000-word (tweet that!) love letter from the Chief Executive Codewriter.
I will passeth judgement on FB after reading a sell-side analysis of the dilution of the lower income statement from sundry RSUs.
In the meantime, all involved, Facebook (Market Cap. $75 Billion?), P&G (Market Cap. $174 Billion) and the marginal and nascent, Davosian tech-tool (Market Cap. $1.298), will seek "more innovation."
We shall see. I respectfully suggest that Planet FB is doing and will do all possible to avoid being a "broken story, broken stock." Discuss.
Posted by: Tom Keene on February 1, 2012
We think the world's information infrastructure should resemble the social graph -- a network built from the bottom up or peer-to-peer, rather than the monolithic, top-down structure that has existed to date.
--Letter from Mark Zuckerberg, 01 Feb 2012
Unfavorable media coverage could negatively affect our business.
--Facebook S-1, page 17, paragraph 1, 01 Feb 2012
I sweat.
Let me explain this as best I can. There are 150+ pages. Bonus! A F-1 Consolidated...whatever.
FB launches with the same earnestness of GOOG with most likely the same outcome. Higher.
I guarantee their market cap will be greater than the Eastman Kodak & Company.
I guarantee the plug-and-chug plug-ins will be of the same value as an analysis of Acme Widget, Inc. of Peoria, Illinois, 61614.
I use FB, 94025, each and every day. Many sundry (mostly females I know) use it much more.
I have zero clue. I turn to Paul Sweeney's (Bloomberg Industries) and @PKEDROSKY 's view of the FB world.
Their view is FB is a slam-dunk, yet...FB is not a layup. Discuss.
