Archive for October, 2009

  • Madoff Gets in Prison Fight
    , October 13th, 2009 at 12:10 pm

    And it was over stocks!

    Bernie “The Bruiser” Madoff got into a prison-yard tussle with a fellow inmate over — of all things — the stock market, eyewitnesses told The Post.
    And, by inmates’ accounts, the 71-year-old Ponzi schemer came out the winner.
    Madoff, serving 150 years at the Butner, NC, federal prison, was heard last week getting into a heated debate over the state of the market with another senior-citizen jailbird.
    The shouting match got so heated that the inmate pushed Madoff, who shoved back harder with both hands, causing his attacker to stumble.
    As the attacker tried to stand up straight, Madoff hovered over him red-faced and glaring, eyewitnesses said.
    The stunned attacker went chicken and took off — allowing Madoff to collect some “cred” among his fellow prisoners.
    “I didn’t think Bernie had it in him. He got the best of him; he was really aggressive, and the other guy was in shock that he fought back,” an inmate said.
    The shoving match occurred near a ball field at the lockup in front of about 20 inmates during a rare time when prison guards weren’t watching.
    An inmate said the two got lucky because if guards had seen the fight, Madoff and his pushing partner “would have went in the ‘hole,’ ” solitary confinement.
    The next day, Madoff and his attacker, described by inmates as a white male over 60 years old, made up and were spotted hanging out together.
    Prisoners interviewed by The Post said this was the first known physical altercation at the slammer for Madoff — who paid a consultant for a crash course in prison culture and survival tips before he was locked up.

  • The Microcredit Myth
    , October 12th, 2009 at 9:20 pm

    Three years ago, Mohammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in micro-finance. This was the idea that you could help the world’s poor, not by large aid projects, but by small loans to poor people in the Third World. The idea is extremely popular.
    There’s just one problem—it doesn’t work:

    But two new research papers suggest that microcredit is not nearly the powerful tool it has been made out to be. The papers, by leading development economists affiliated with MIT’s Jameel Poverty Action Lab, have not yet been published, but they are already being called the most thorough, careful studies yet done on the topic. What they find is that, by most measures, microcredit does not offer a way out of poverty. It helps a few of the more entrepreneurial poor to start up businesses, and at the margins it may boost the profits of existing microenterprises, but that doesn’t translate into gains for the borrowers, as measured by indicators like income, spending, health, or education. In fact, most microcredit clients actually spend their borrowed money not on a business, but on household expenses, on paying off other debts or on a relatively big-ticket item like a TV or a daughter’s wedding. And while microcredit champions point to microloans as a tool for empowering women, the studies see no impact on gender roles, and find evidence that if any one group benefits more, it’s male entrepreneurs with existing businesses.

  • Stocks Soar, VIX Plunges
    , October 12th, 2009 at 11:47 am

    The S&P 500 (^GSPC) broke out to a new 52-week high today. We’re now up to 1078. If you’re into the number stuff, that’s almost exactly the Golden Ratio times the March intra-day low (666.79 * 1.618 = 1078.89). Spooky!
    The VIX is below 23 again. The low point today was 22.67. During 2009, we’ve been lower intra-day, but not on a closing basis. If this holds up, the VIX will close at its lowest level since last September, just before Lehman went under.

  • Econ Nobel Goes to Two Americans
    , October 12th, 2009 at 11:05 am

    Congratulations to Elinor Ostrom and Oliver E. Williamson.

    The prize committee cited Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University “for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons,” and Oliver E. Williamson of the University of California, Berkeley, “for his analysis of economic governance, especially the boundaries of the firm.”
    Ms. Ostrom becomes the first woman to win the prize for economics. Her background is in political science, not economics.
    “It is part of the merging of the social sciences,” Robert Shiller, an economist at Yale, said of Monday’s awards. “Economics has been too isolated and these awards today are a sign of the greater enlightenment going around. We were too stuck on efficient markets and it was derailing our thinking.”
    The prize committee, in making the awards, seemed to be influenced by the credit crisis and the severe recession that in the minds of many mainstream economists has highlighted the shortcomings of a unregulated marketplace, in which “economic actors,” left to their own devices, will act in their own self-interests and in doing so, will enhance everyone’s well-being.
    The committee, in effect, said that theory was too simplistic and ignored the unstated relationships and behaviors that develop among companies that are competitors but find ways to resolve common problems. “Both scholars have greatly enhanced our understanding of non-market institutions” other than government, the committee said.
    “Basically there is a common understanding that develops even among competitors when they are dealing with each other,” Mr. Shiller said, adding “when people make business contact, even competitors, they can’t anticipate everything, so an element of trust comes in.”
    That is what the Nobel committee recognized, he said, in citing Mr. Williamson and Ms. Ostrom.

  • The Market Is Not Overvalued
    , October 9th, 2009 at 10:45 am

    Joe Weisenthal notes David Rosenberg’s comments that the stock market is overvalued. I’m sorry, I just don’t see how you can argue against this market on a valuation basis. Could there be a double-dip? Sure, that’s a risk and I can’t say how large. But the idea that the market is not only high, but dangerously high, makes no sense to me.
    Rosenberg writes:

    While we will not belabour the point, when all the write-downs are included, the trailing P/E on “reported” earnings just widened to its highest levels in recorded history of nearly 140x (see chart below), which is three times the levels prevailing during the height of the tech bubble.

    Yes, but that’s extremely depressed trailing earnings. When the economy tanks like that, these metrics lose some of their usefulness. Also, whenever the stock market initially spikes, it’s common for the P/E Ratio to rise since stocks are going up while earnings are still going down.
    Rosenberg notes this criticism and compares today’s valuations to previous depressed earnings environments. Still, outside the great depression, the historic comparisons aren’t in the ballpark. Once we get Q4 2008 off our backs, then things will start to look like normal and we can again use traditional metrics again.
    Another fact that the valuation argument must address is the low interest rates. As interest rates go down, valuations tend to rise in order to be competitive so I would expect higher multiples.
    Rosenberg rightly notes that relying on future earnings is tricky since these are rarely correct. That’s true, but this is a crucial point and it goes back to my disagreements with Nassim Taleb. The forecasts and models don’t need to be perfect. They simply need to be reasonable.
    In making a valuation judgment we need to make reasonable assumptions. For example, I recently said that corporate profits are likely to grow faster than the economy for the next few quarters (say three year).
    Here’s a look at corporate profits’ share of GDP.
    image861.png
    As you can see, it looks to be below trend. Note that I’m not predicting exactly where it will go, but based on past info, I’m making an assumption that profits will take up a larger share of the economy in near future.
    This is why I believe the Street estimates of $92 earnings for the S&P 500 in 2011 are reasonable, which makes the market well priced, if not a little on the cheap side.

  • Mortgage Rates in U.S. Fall to 4.87%
    , October 9th, 2009 at 10:19 am

    Wow!

    Mortgage rates for 30-year fixed U.S. home loans fell for the second consecutive week, pushing borrowing costs to near record lows.
    The average U.S. 30-year rate dropped to 4.87 percent from 4.94 percent last week. The 15-year rate was 4.33 percent, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac of McLean, Virginia, said today in a statement.
    Falling rates helped boost home-loan applications last week to the highest level since May. The Mortgage Bankers Association’s index of applications to purchase a home or refinance rose 16 percent. Rates around 5 percent, slumping home prices and a government tax credit for first-time homebuyers are bolstering demand for housing.

  • Obama Wins Nobel Peace
    , October 9th, 2009 at 9:25 am

    Congratulations to President Obama on winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Strangely, this comes on the same day that we bombed the Moon.
    My guess is that he won’t win the prize in economics. (By the way, here are the odds for that.)

  • Economics Fail: Forbes Edition
    , October 8th, 2009 at 7:37 am

    Congratulations Forbes, you’re today’s winner of our economic illiteracy prize! Boy, this one is a doozy. They ran a remarkably silly article titled Countries Billionaires Could Buy. Here’s a typical brain-hurting passage:

    Castles in France. Islands in the Caribbean. Private jets. With a collective $1.27 trillion at their disposal, the members of The Forbes 400 could buy almost anything.
    How about a country? A quick glance at the CIA Fact Book suggests the individual fortunes of many Forbes 400 members are as big as some of the world’s economies.
    Bill Gates, America’s richest man with a net worth of $50 billion, has a personal balance sheet larger than the gross domestic product (GDP) of 140 countries, including Costa Rica, El Salvador, Bolivia and Uruguay. The Microsoft visionary’s nest egg is just short of the GDP of Tanzania and Burma.

    Yes, they’re confusing net worth with GDP.
    Ok class, turn to page 208 of N. Gregory Mankiw’s Principle of Macroeconomics for a definition of gross domestic product:

    Gross domestic product (GDP) is the market value of all final goods and services produced within a country in a given period of time.

    In other words, net worth = stuff you have; GDP = stuff you make. It’s like confusing the price of the stock with its earnings.
    The net worth of a country is far larger than what it produces in a single year. Not only is Costa Rica wealthier than Bill Gates, it’s a lot wealthier. Furthermore, the comparison between a western billionaire to a developing country is heavily skewed due to the Penn Effect.

  • Stocks Vs. Bonds—Another Look
    , October 7th, 2009 at 1:58 pm

    One very simple way of looking at the stock market’s valuation is to compare it with how well long-term bonds have been doing. Over the long haul, stocks have outperformed bonds by a bit but that fact has been thrown into disarray this decade. Since the market peaked in March 2000, bonds have pummeled stocks. In fact, bonds have beaten stocks so badly that they’ve erased the entire lead accumulated over the past 40 years.
    Here’s the fact that surprised me. While stocks have rallied since March, the rally when compared with bonds was dramatic but short. Stocks only beat bonds from March 5 to May 8 (I’m using VFINX for my stock proxy and VWESX for my long-term corporate bond proxy). Since May 8, bonds have slightly beaten stocks plus they’re far less volatile.
    image860.png

  • Ken Lewis Resigns
    , October 7th, 2009 at 11:45 am

    The Onion takes a closer look:

    Once heralded as a shrewd innovator, embattled CEO Ken Lewis is now leaving Bank Of America. Here are some key missteps from the past 18 months that have cast a pall over his tenure:
    * Thought bank had so much more money than it actually did
    * Accidentally set the Canton, OH branch on fire during a visit
    * Mailed out millions of checks that incorrectly read “Bank of Armenia”
    * Problems involving banks, America
    * Caught placing cameras in Bank of America’s women’s locker room
    * Bank of America cash registers consistently $10 short on his shift
    * Idea to have ATMs beep incessantly has driven away tens of thousands of irritated customers
    * Worldwide economic collapse