Bits & Pieces (Wednesday Night Open Mic)

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Kevin S. Willis

iPad textbooks won’t replace textbooks soon. Heck, I can’t even get an iPad 2 so I can do demonstrations to our school support staff. At least, not yet. 😉

Did a webinar for the new Filemaker features. Had to agree to an NDA, but the demonstration of new features was extremely weak tea compared to what I saw at FileMaker DevCon this year. Alas, with the school merger pending, we may never do another FileMaker upgrade. Still, there’s not a better integrated DB and interface builder around. What, Access you say? Pthpht!

Does money really buy elections? Freakonomics says no.

A primer on 3D printing from TED:

Thomas Dolby talks about, and then performs, One of Our Submarines from his Sole Inhabitant Tour.


I’m a big Thomas Dolby fan. Golden Age of Wireless is a near-perfect album.

Speaking of which, I’ve posted this before but I’m going to post it again, because I love the song. Thomas Dolby’s “Oceanea”.

For anyone with a Spotify account, here’s the link for Thomas Dolby’s “Cruel”, one of my favorite songs from him.

That’s it for tonight. Please talk amongst yourselves. —KW

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And a bleg — please vote in my poll if you haven’t already.  It looks to be very close between Newt and Mitt, though Mitt got a bit of a bounce from the debate Monday night.

— Mike

One more thing to spend time doing: Interactive map of Euro crisis

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FOMC Minutes

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Brent Nyitray

Statement

Economic Projections

Longer Run Policy Considerations

Big Picture:  The Fed is on hold until late 2014. Previously they anticipated low interest rates through mid-2013.   Inflation target is 2%.  The Fed will continue to re-roll its investments into mortgage backed debt.  Operation Twist will continue.

In this new age of transparency, the Fed is giving investors more of a look at their thinking.

More granular stuff:  The Fed has taken down its forecast for GDP growth in 2012 and 2013.  In November, they projected 2.5% – 2.9% GDP growth for 2012 and 3.0% to 3.5% for 2013.  They now expect 2.2% to 2.7% growth for 2012 and 2.8% to 3.2% for 2013.  So, while the general tenor of most observers seems to be more optimistic, the Fed is going in the opposite direction.

However, they took down their unemployment estimates from November, so that is a positive.  What is interesting is that they stated the “normal rate of unemployment” range was 5.2% to 6.0%.  Which means that once unemployment gets in the mid 5-s, the Fed will start tightening. At least that is how I interpret it.  Don’t expect to see long-term unemployment rates similar to the ones Clinton (5.19%) and Bush (5.27%) enjoyed.  6 is the new 5. The Fed is at least paying lip service to the idea of preventing future bubbles.

The Fed introduced an inflation target of 2%.  Note the 10 year is yielding 2%.  Get the message?  Nope, the 10 year rallied hard on the announcement.  Stocks also rallied.

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Morning Report

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Brent Nyitray

Vital Statistics:

Last Change Percent
S&P Futures 1307.6 -3.8 -0.29%
Eurostoxx Index 2412.5 -19.590 -0.81%
Oil (WTI) 98.35 -0.600 -0.61%
LIBOR 0.5566 -0.003 -0.45%
US Dollar Index (DXY) 80.226 0.428 0.54%
10 Year Govt Bond Yield 2.05% -0.01%

Markets are mixed this morning, with the broader indices lower following Europe, and the Nasdaq up on Apple’s earnings.  AAPL is up about 8% pre-market.  Conoco Philips also reported good earnings this morning.   United Rentals reports after the close, which should provide another data point as to the state of the construction industry.  Construction /  Housing has been the achilles heel of this recovery, and if that sector is turning around, the economy could finally be on its way.

I didn’t watch the SOTU last night (I always just read speeches), but it doesn’t sound like there was anything market-moving in it.  Natural Gas is up a little, presumably on the lack of a production target.  The US dollar is stronger this morning and bonds are up 1/3 of a point, presumably on Europe, not necessarily the SOTU.

Perhaps the timing of the robo-signing settlement was not a co-incidence. In the speech last night, Obama laid out a plan for refinancing underwater mortgages.  The fine print will not be available for some time, and it will require Congressional approval.  I have noted in the past that you have to get the originators on board with this plan, and put-back risk is the big hurdle.  Put back risk means the government can decide after the fact that a mortgage violated underwriting standards and can force the originator to buy it back.  Re-financing underwater homes will by definition violate underwriting standards.  The government can tell originators that it will allow underwriting violations for this program, but there is nothing preventing a future administration from changing the rules.  An originator makes exactly the same profit on a 80% LTV loan as they do on a 120% LTV loan.  So why would originators take the additional political risk when the returns are exactly the same?   They won’t.

The FOMC rate decision will be released this afternoon.  I don’t think anyone expects a change in policy, but people will be interested in seeing if the the Fed takes note of the early signs of a turnaround.

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Policing the policemen

Posted on January 25, 2012 by ScottC

So, now that this weekend’s brouhaha is largely past us and the postmortem recriminations have been played out, complete with after-the-fact play by play and color commentary, I thought I would add my own observations about something that has heretofore been unremarked upon, and that is how third parties react to a perceived instance of a breach in ATiM etiquette.

I for one am very reluctant to play moderator or referee in the midst of a heated conversation between two other people, particularly by calling someone out, and especially as a public matter.  (Ignore, for now, the fact that I am usually a participant and rarely a third party observer in such conversations.)  Both personal experience and observation suggests to me that it rarely ends up being helpful, and often makes things worse, embroiling yet more people in the heat rather than cooling things down as intended.  Perhaps a private e-mail, or brief “Come on, people” from a third party might be useful.  But if that doesn’t work, I think letting things play out and having a postmortem later is likely to be less damaging than trying to intervene by taking people to task on the board.

This is a self-moderated blog, and in the first instance it means exactly that- each of us is expected to moderate ourselves individually, according to the rules that we all know.  And I can say from personal experience that, having determined to one’s own satisfaction that one hasn’t done anything wrong, to see the repeated insinuation from third parties that one is out of bounds can be extremely grating, even if, in retrospect, there may be a point.  This simply dials up, rather than alleviates, the heat of the situation.

Letting an inflamed situation play out is not the end of the world.  What makes our discussion standards notable here is what we are striving to achieve, not the fact that we always and everywhere achieve it.  If, in a given instance, we fail, then we fail.  On to the next one and try again.  And an after-the-fact discussion about it may well prove more valuable, or at least less damaging, than a heat-of-the-battle attempt to stop it.  Active third-party moderation is not always, and perhaps not even often, the best approach.

My two cents.

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