Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktVital Statistics:
| Last | Change | Percent | |
| S&P Futures | 1366.0 | -0.8 | -0.06% |
| Eurostoxx Index | 2507.1 | -8.9 | -0.35% |
| Oil (WTI) | 106.09 | -1.3 | -1.22% |
| LIBOR | 0.4736 | 0.000 | 0.00% |
| US Dollar Index (DXY) | 79.976 | -0.065 | -0.08% |
| 10 Year Govt Bond Yield | 2.00% | -0.03% |
Markets are weaker this morning on the back of a disappointing report on Chinese exports and lower commodity prices. Oil is down a buck and a half, while bonds and mortgage backed securities are a touch higher.
Euro credit default swaps are higher this morning after ISDA declared the Greek exchange offer a “credit event.” The next event in Greece will be the auction on Mar 19, which will set the payout price for the bonds. Since most holders tendered their bonds, it will be a low volume event which opens the door for manipulation.
With the Greece resolution in place, market participants will begin to focus on the next problem child, widely believed to be Portugal. Portuguese yields are 13.7%. That said, EURIBOR / OIS (a measure of stress in the banking system) has been tightening steadily since the beginning of the year, and is trading at 54 basis points after peaking at 100 basis points in Dec.
Pacific Capital Bancorp is being bought by Mitsubishi UFJ Financial, which is the first bank deal in what seems like forever.
The king of data miners, Thomas (Flathead) Friedman has a column discussing the negative relationship between test scores and the percentage of GDP a country earns from natural resource extraction. In other words, if you don’t have a lot of natural resources (Taiwan, Japan), your students tend to do well, as opposed to, say, Saudi Arabia or Kuwait. Columns like this always remind me of those “Vegas killer” betting systems you see advertised in fantasy football magazines in the late summer (always take the dog on Monday night, when the game is on artificial turf, and the NFC team won the Sunday night game…). Correlation does not imply causation. Will our test scores go up if we stopped oil production in the US? Of course not.
Filed under: Morning Report |
All Things in Moderation 
I cited Friedman’s column yesterday without criticism. I did not read it to express or imply causation. He cited Canada, Australia, and Norway as nations that do both, but he should have explicitly cited the USA, as well.
I took his two points to be that nations that rely on bananas alone become banana republics, and that the only truly renewable resource is human innovation, hence investment in education is good.
LikeLike
Public school administrators browbeat 12-year-old girl into disclosing her Facebook password. bring along deputy sheriff for good measure.
http://articles.cnn.com/2012-03-10/us/us_minnesota-student-privacy_1_school-counselor-school-house-gate-facebook?_s=PM:US
LikeLike
Friedman didn’t say that correlation=causation. I’m curious about whether theres a correlation between economic stability & a population’s education. Here in MN, for example, we have a high level of education, a diverse economy & haven’t been hit as hard by the recession. I suspect the former affects the latter.
LikeLike
“He should have explicitly cited the USA, as well.”
The us is an interesting case because different areas have different policies & different outcomes.
LikeLike
Worth a read:
“Student loans seen as potential ‘next debt bomb’ for U.S. economy
By Eric Pianin,
Published: March 10
Bankruptcy lawyers have a frightening message for America: They’re seeing the telltale signs of a student loan debt bubble that is placing increased financial pressure on families struggling with their children’s mounting debt. According to a recent survey by the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys, more than 80 percent of bankruptcy lawyers have seen a substantial increase in the number of clients seeking relief from student loans in recent years.
In most cases, those clients could not meet the federal hardship standards that are necessary to discharge a student loan through bankruptcy proceedings. Instead, many of these parents or guardians who co-signed the student loans face the prospect of losing their life savings, cars or homes to collection agencies for aggressive private lenders.”
…
“The amount of student borrowing skyrocketed from $100 billion in 2010 to $867 billion last year — or more than the $704 billion in outstanding U.S. credit card debt, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Of the 37 million borrowers who have outstanding student loan balances as of third-quarter 2011, 14.4 percent have at least one past-due student loan account. Together, these balances come to $85 billion, or roughly 10 percent of the total outstanding student loan balance.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/student-loans-seen-as-potential-next-debt-bomb-for-us-economy/2012/03/05/gIQAM0iF4R_story.html
An 800 % increase in two years is impressive.
LikeLike