TRES FAUX MORNING REPORT 7/25/12

Vital Statistics:
Last Change Percent
S&P Futures
1,338.43
+0.12
0.01%
Eurostoxx Index
2,164.28
+12.74
0.59%
Oil (WTI) 88.51 0.01 0.01%
LIBOR – 3 mo 0.45
US Dollar Index (DXY) 83.67 0.09 0.0%
10 Year Govt Bond Yield
     1.40 -.05%

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/72845f10-d4d2-11e1-bb88-00144feabdc0.html#axzz21e1DVBYn

I like Mallaby.  However, I am dubious about this scheme, which is rumored to be a possibility come the 8-1-12 FRB meeting.  The notion that pumping more cash and cash equivalents into the banking system will stimulate Main Street, yet again, seems incorrect to me.

65 Responses

  1. I can’t read the FT piece as my temporary pass has expired. I agree with your comment though Mark.

    Thanks again for another morning report.

    Here’s a little piece from the LA Times this morning that goes against the conventional media/pundit wisdom regarding our very own San Bernardino. BTW, I spent a lot of time in SB as a kid, my grandmother owned a Winchell’s donut franchise for many years at the base of the mountains. Also my son drove an ambulance there and was an EMT for three years in college. It’s a very depressed and depressing area but it wasn’t always so.

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  2. LMS – here, for you:

    Show some real audacity at the Fed
    By Sebastian Mallaby

    After the Lehman Brothers crisis, Ben Bernanke’s Federal Reserve demonstrated creativity and nerve. Unfortunately, that reputation is no longer justified. Today’s Fed confronts slowing growth, high unemployment and well-anchored inflation expectations. And yet it hesitates. Paradoxically, its image as a risk-taker inhibits its ability to be genuinely bold.

    Back in 2008-09, the Fed took real risks with its balance sheet – risks that private actors shunned. It bought portfolios of toxic securities. It lent to manufacturers. It backstopped money-market funds. But today the Fed’s supposedly audacious “unconventional policies” consist of buying Treasury securities. These are the safest possible instruments and there is no shortage of private actors lining up to buy them. Prices are screaming out this message. Interest rates on 10-year Treasuries are at a record low.

    Because of Mr Bernanke’s reputation for boldness, he is frequently accused of creating money wildly. When he appeared last week before Congress, he was rebuked by Republicans for his presumed recklessness, while Democrats appeared to feel he was pushing policy as far as he could. But there is nothing particularly wild about the Fed’s money printing. Its purpose is merely to effect a change in private balance sheets. Banks sell their Treasuries to the Fed in exchange for newly minted dollars (in the case of quantitative easing) or for shorter-term government securities (in the case of the current Operation Twist). Given that risk-free government securities are treated as cash equivalents by financial institutions, this is not radical.

    Most assessments of quantitative easing find that it has worked. In May, a paper by two Federal Reserve Board economists calculated that the Fed’s asset purchases had lowered 10-year Treasury rates by 1 percentage point. Last year the San Francisco Fed estimated, a bit heroically, that output might be 3 per cent higher at the end of 2012 than it would have been otherwise. But these positive verdicts conceal a less uplifting message. The first round of quantitative easing was most powerful – it was the largest, and its novelty inspired shock and awe. The second round, from November 2010 to June 2011, was less effective. The current Operation Twist is the limpest of all.

    Unless the Fed can rekindle the shock value of the first round, more quantitative easing is unlikely to work. Success depends on a whole range of actors deciding that the Fed is determined to accelerate recovery rather than repeat a tired trick that they have seen before. Banks, having sold Treasuries, must choose to reinvest the proceeds in riskier assets rather than just adding to their huge cash piles. Corporations, facing lower borrowing costs, must resolve that this is the moment to invest. Consumers, seeing rising stock and bond markets, must summon the confidence to spend. If the Fed won’t take the risk of going beyond what it has tried already, private actors won’t take risks either. Monetary policy is like faith healing. The patient must believe.

    Quantitative easing that fails to spark risk-taking could actually make things worse. A Fed that is both active and ineffectual is the worst thing for confidence, and indefinite purchases of Treasuries threaten to upset the way markets work. As the IMF’s Manmohan Singh argues, the Fed’s appetite for safe assets is draining the financial system of an essential lubricant. Traders use Treasuries as downpayments on derivatives positions; investment funds use them as collateral when they borrow. Because Treasuries circulate so rapidly through the financial system, Mr Singh suggests that $1m of them in private hands will stimulate more growth than $1m of cash.

    And so the Fed faces a dilemma. With inflation below target and unemployment far above the neutral rate, there is a clear case for stimulus. But the familiar tools of stimulus seem unlikely to work. So the markets expect next week’s Fed policy meeting to produce more equivocation. The better way forward would be to come up with new tools.
    One possible measure is to cancel interest on excess reserves. At present, the Fed pays 25 basis points to banks that deposit cash with it, a perverse reward for keeping money inert. Eliminating that incentive might steer cash into the real economy. But it would also drive cash into the money markets, where returns would soon fall to zero or lower. Money market funds would be hard-pressed to avoid breaking the buck again. Panic might follow.

    That leaves a second option: the Fed could couple more quantitative easing with a formal announcement of a higher inflation target. Some Fed leaders are open to this. Charles Evans, the Chicago Fed president, has floated the idea of a 3 per cent target, effective until unemployment falls below 7 per cent. A higher inflation target would lead markets to understand the Fed is committed to quantitative easing of game-changing magnitude, inducing the behavioural shifts needed to make the policy succeed. Financiers would embrace risk assets rather than safe ones with real returns that would be clearly negative. Companies, expecting more growth, would step up investments. Consumers, seeing the real value of their debts eroding, would probably spend more.

    The Bernanke Fed has been pilloried for pursuing wild quantitative easing at the risk of inflation. The truth is that it has pursued cautious quantitative easing without risking inflation. The time has come for some fresh thinking. A Fed that can escape the myth of its audacity might be able to do more.

    The writer is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an FT contributing editor

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  3. Thanks Mark, to my untrained perception this kind of makes sense to me. I’m not sure about the consumer spending part of it though.

    That leaves a second option: the Fed could couple more quantitative easing with a formal announcement of a higher inflation target. Some Fed leaders are open to this. Charles Evans, the Chicago Fed president, has floated the idea of a 3 per cent target, effective until unemployment falls below 7 per cent. A higher inflation target would lead markets to understand the Fed is committed to quantitative easing of game-changing magnitude, inducing the behavioural shifts needed to make the policy succeed. Financiers would embrace risk assets rather than safe ones with real returns that would be clearly negative. Companies, expecting more growth, would step up investments. Consumers, seeing the real value of their debts eroding, would probably spend more.

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  4. Wow, this is an amazing story of one of the survivors who was shot in the head. Apparently she had an unknown birth defect in her brain that allowed the bullet to travel a path that caused little to no brain damage. Amazing really.

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  5. Banned/John – Thought of you and your crusade against octogenarians in government when I read this:

    “HENRICO, Va. —

    After two decades as Henrico’s county manager, Virgil R. Hazelett is retiring.

    Hazelett, 67, announced at Tuesday night’s Henrico Board of Supervisors meeting that he will leave his post Jan. 16.

    He said he loves what he does, “and I could go on longer. But there comes a time when each of us must step aside to make way for the next generation of leaders who can take Henrico County to new and different heights.”

    http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/news/2012/jul/25/tdmain01-hazelett-to-retire-as-henricos-county-man-ar-2081520/

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  6. Tres OT:

    US women’s soccer team beat France in Olympic first-round play today.

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  7. Yes–two best teams in their group, and they played each other in the semi-finals of the World Cup last year (USA won). We’re favored for the gold in the Olympics, but it was a good match.

    Group play right now, and I can’t remember off the top of my head how the Olympics is structured.

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  8. Ross Douthat channels my libertarian perspective on why gun control doesn’t have resonance :

    “July 24, 2012, 11:11 pm
    The Gun Rights Tilt
    By ROSS DOUTHAT
    ..

    “A second factor driving declining support for gun control, meanwhile, is a trend in our politics, inherent to American life but particularly potent since the social revolutions of the 1960s, for rights-based arguments to carry the day over more communitarian appeals.

    This tendency cuts across the usual lines of left and right. We tend to associate gun control with social liberalism, but the same trends that have buoyed public support for gay marriage and marijuana legalization have also encouraged a more expansive reading of the Second Amendment.

    The common thread is our increasing individualism, and the triumph of rights-talk over other forms of moral and political argument. The gun-rights movement talks about the rights of “law-abiding citizens” the way the gay rights movement talks about the freedoms of “consenting adults,” and while the arguments play to different audiences they have a very American premise in common.

    In this sense, the gun control debate offers liberals a chance to experience something that social conservatives often feel: The mix of confusion and alienation that comes with sensing that your country has somehow slipped away from you, and that your convictions don’t have a place in the unfolding of the American idea.”

    http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/24/the-gun-rights-tilt/?ref=opinion

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  9. I am skeptical that there is much more the Fed can do. They are already telling you that you will lose money in the 10-year with its 1.45% yield and the Fed’s 2% inflation target. The events in Europe over the past 6 months have taken the yield of the 10-year down from 2.4% to 1.45%, which is a bigger move than the Fed could have hoped to engineer. Mortgage rates are at all-time lows.

    The author also neglects to mention that a lot of the “Treasury-hoarding” by banks is due to Basel III, which demands big increases in the amount and quality of capital. Banks are loath to raise capital through a rights issue, so they will do it by re-investing their maturing loans into Treasuries.

    The #1 thing we need to turn things around is a bottom in housing. I think we are there. That is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a meaningful recovery.

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    • Brent, is it merely ironic that Sanford Weill is the latest to call for returning to Glass-Steagall?

      http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/07/25/weill-calls-for-splitting-up-big-banks/?nl=business&emc=edit_dlbkpm_20120725

      You have persuaded me that no individual event that caused harm was a result of its repeal, but I continue to think it created more slush for funding the selling and reselling of, and betting on the performance of, mortgage backed securities, and was thus a part of the perfect storm. I also have understood your solution to “too big to fail” to be that more capital be required of the institutions, which makes utterly good sense. Still, once we have the FDIC guaranteeing the commercial lenders it seems they should be separate from the investment houses.

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  10. This is so stinkin’ cute. My grandson called me this morning before he went to the library with his mom and told me all about the research he was doing. He’s only 6 and just finished kindergarten.

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  11. Mark and Brent, wouldn’t the 3% inflation rate change the dynamics though. If it’s true we’ve hit bottom in housing maybe that would be just the kick start needed. It’s just wishful thinking maybe but it makes some sort of intuitive sense to me.

    Will do Mark, he also checked out a book on UFO’s so I’m sure we’ll have a lot to talk about soon. He’s spending the weekend with us in a week and a half and we’re working on a book he’s writing and illustrating. He also just finished his book of jokes. I’d forgotten how much fun 5 to 8 year olds can be.

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    • Do you think consumer debt will bubble up as we buy stuff b/c of a target inflation rate of 3%?

      Despite what some would have you believe, LMS and I know it is a demand driven economy and somehow consumers have to buy more stuff to prime the pump. Further, as Don/banned would be quick to say, we have to buy more significantly American stuff. The fact we don’t make TVs here any more, or cell phones, means typical stuff buying stimulates Asia as much as it does the USA.

      Mallaby may be thinking somebody will buy stuff for their biz on credit, knowing that the pay back dollar will be cheaper than the borrowed one. But we buy stuff for our biz when we foresee consumers coming, not b/c we get a credit bargain.

      I don’t see it.

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  12. We have to complete the debt deleveraging cycle. The choices in 2009 were the short way or the long way. We chose the long way.

    http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-second-great-contraction

    http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/austerity-and-debt-realism

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  13. Well, I’m sure you guys are right but it sure is damned depressing. We know so many people who are just barely hanging on still four years out. It’s too bad we didn’t do the right thing the first go around.

    I’ve also been thinking about the costs of imported goods lately. As an importer of about 15% or 20% of our product line we’ve seen the costs increase substantially in the last few years so maybe it’s beginning to level out. Our wages have gone down, theirs have gone up, and material costs are about the same everywhere now and regardless of what John says freight from importing adds a chunk to the bill.

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  14. Mark, if you look over at ShadowStats.com., the actual inflation rate is about 5%.

    http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts

    He’s figuring inflation the way it used to be done before the early 90’s.

    And if you scroll down, the rate, based on how it was done in 1980, would be about 8%. This is what people are feeling now.

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    • george – very interesting!

      iknow we have changed methodology and I recall thinking one change made sense. But it would be useful to have a summary of the changes in methodology to know which seems a more accurate number.

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  15. anecdotal report on the mortgage front — our refi kind of fell through. we were looking to consolidate 2 loans into a 15-year fixed. but the because of the consolidation, it’s a cash out. and that requires a LTV of 75% — not the 80% that our lender was working on. and, if you’re credit isn’t as good, a LTV of 60% or maybe even less.

    he offered an FHA cash out refi, which could work b/c you can have a LTV of up to 85% — but that upfront mortgage insurance is a killer. conventional, our payments would have gone up a few hundred. FHA, it’s up a least a thousand.

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  16. Anecdotal, one of the companies that we distribute a product for moved their manufacturing to Mexico about 3 years ago and it has been a disaster for quality control. Several of our customers have quit carrying their products because of it. We’re not that big of a company but we have a few big manufacturers we distribute for and it’s been really challenging at times with many of them who manufacture overseas.

    One of the products we manufacture here in CA competes globally with copies that are manufactured in Taiwan and comes out on top both price wise and quality wise. Our problem is the tooling is starting to break down as its 30 years old and we’re just trying to hang on for another five years or so without investing in new tooling. We keep paying for repairs that squeak out another year here and there.

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  17. Worth a read:

    “Rahm Emanuel’s dangerous free speech attack
    Chicago blocks a business from expanding because its president opposes same-sex marriage
    By Glenn Greenwald
    Thursday, Jul 26, 2012 10:10 AM EDT

    Should government officials be able to block businesses from opening or expanding due to disagreement with the political views of the business’ executives? Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel evidently believes he should have this power:”

    “It’s always easy to get people to condemn threats to free speech when the speech being threatened is speech that they like. It’s much more difficult to induce support for free speech rights when the speech being punished is speech they find repellent. But having Mayors and other officials punish businesses for the political and social views of their executives — regardless of what those views are — is as pure a violation of the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech as it gets, and beyond that, is genuinely dangerous.”

    http://www.salon.com/2012/07/26/rahm_emanuels_free_speech_attack/

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  18. That’s a pretty bone-headed move on Emanuel’s part. I can’t stand him anyway, and in some ways it doesn’t surprise me, but it’s the kind of move that gives liberals a bad name when it comes to free speech issues.

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  19. Because Brent checked in, I thought we would have a true MR this morning. So I didn’t prepare a faux one.

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  20. Mark,
    I don’t know if you have seen the book Saving the School: The True Story of a Principal, a Teacher, a Coach, a Bunch of Kids, and a Year in the Crosshairs of Education Reform about school reform in Austin but here is a <a href="http://www.texasmonthly.com/2012-08-01/bookrev.php&quot;

    While almost everybody wants to improve public schools, very few know how to do so. Both sides in the debate assume that some outside force (teachers’ unions, profiteers) is actively stopping educators from doing good work. But there’s little evidence to back up Brick’s nostalgia for the American high school’s halcyon days as a happy melting pot. Set educators free, and they will still struggle, because education is really difficult work.

    Amen to that.

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    • YJKT – I haven’t seen the book and the TX Mnthly link did not open for me, but I will find it later.

      I am reading Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel winner in economics who is not an economist.

      It is an easy read, with lots of examples and thought experiments. Every one of you would like this book. It is written with a light touch.

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  21. “lmsinca, on July 26, 2012 at 10:46 am said:

    That’s a pretty bone-headed move on Emanuel’s part. I can’t stand him anyway, and in some ways it doesn’t surprise me, but it’s the kind of move that gives liberals a bad name when it comes to free speech issues.”

    Agreed. Unfortunately, the mayor of Boston followed suit.

    “Boston Mayor Vows To Block Chick-Fil-A From Opening Restaurant After Anti-Gay Remarks

    AP | Posted: 07/20/2012 11:53 am Updated: 07/22/2012 12:09 pm”

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/20/chick-fil-a-gay_n_1689800.html

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  22. Personally, I think the Chick-Fil-A guy is pretty bone-headed as well to let his personal politics become part of the image of his business, but that’s his prerogative. Most people in business wouldn’t want to piss off a large number of consumers by making their politics known like that. We spend hours and hours everyday on the phone with our customers and some of them want to rant about political stuff but we both just keep our mouths shut………………we’re like bartenders, we listen and use words like amazing, interesting, and wow.

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  23. I scored a 67 but would have scored higher I guess if girls could have gotten varsity letters when I was in high school.

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  24. My bubble score is 46. That would have been lower if I had gotten paid today’s wage scale when I was a postdoctoral fellow.

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  25. oh, i think took that a week ago and scored a 13

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  26. correction: 12

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  27. Jeeze nova that’s a real bubble you’ve got there. I figured I would have the highest score so far………………wonder about okie and michi too. I bet okie is close to mine at least. I keep telling you guys we’re straight middle/working class here and so are our friends. I once told qb during a tax debate over at the plumline that I didn’t personally know anyone who made over $250K a year and I don’t think he believed me.

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  28. i took it again and got an 11. at this rate the bubble is anything outside of my immediate reach.

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  29. at this rate the bubble is anything outside of my immediate reach

    Funny nova.

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  30. Mark,

    The Johnson question was a trick question. Jimmie Johnson drives the 48 car. Jimmy Johnson is the former OSU/UM/Dallas/Miami coach.

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  31. I got a 57 (I suspect, like Mark, that military service and growing up in a rural area skewed my results to some extent, since according to Mr Murray I should have scored around a 9 based on my demographics).

    Of course, I think Charles Murray is full of it, so it doesn’t entirely surprise me that he doesn’t have me pegged at all. And I knew the difference between Jimmie and Jimmy Johnson, although I don’t think I’ve EVER watched a NASCAR event. . . I guess I just read a lot! 😀

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  32. Maybe, but I think also a couple of things. I lived for several years in S.A. in a very working class neighborhood. I also sold industrial chemicals for several years and was routinely on factory floors. Finally, I took a year off school. (I ran out of money ) and worked construction and landscaping for that year. I definitely came home sore every night!

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    • I did two summers in college on factory floors. Was a member of IBEW. Built switching components for nuclear submarines – they were big enough to walk through. One day, I was wiring inside a switching component when the chief electrician, Vic, an Englishman, asked me to carefully duck down and step out of the unit. Turned out I was less than a foot from a live rail coursing 25kV. “Shit”, he said, “You could ‘ave ruined my whole dye.” Mine, too.

      I worked in HS in a tile and terrazzo factory, except during baseball season.

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  33. My dad used to help build ICBM missile silos around Tucson. If you ever dropped a tool or your hard hat down the silo, it’d be welded to the wall when you went to retrieve it.

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  34. I’ve worked in a factory twice, once while I was in high school (furniture) and once in college (natural foods), also wore a waitress uniform for many years and still go to bed bone weary from working in our very own warehouse some days.

    Also wanted to let y’all know that Kevin Drum (yes that flaming liberal) agrees with all of us (so far) and Glenn Greenwald re Rahm Emanuel and the mayor of Boston.

    I’ll confess that I can imagine exceptions to this rule. If the Westboro Baptist Church or the KKK wanted to open a hamburger joint in Irvine, my dedication to the First Amendment would be pretty sorely tested. I suppose I’d let them in, but I won’t pretend that I might not scrutinize their applications a little more closely than usual, hoping to find a reason to turn them down.

    That aside, there’s really no excuse for Emanuel’s and Menino’s actions. If you don’t want to eat at Chick-fil-A, don’t eat there. If you want to picket them, go ahead. If they violate the law, go after them. But you don’t hand out business licenses based on whether you agree with the political views of the executives. Not in America, anyway.

    On a related note, what makes this whole situation so weird is that Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy has always opposed gay marriage. He’s a devout Southern Baptist, just like his father, who founded the company. The place is closed on Sundays, for crying out loud. There’s just nothing new here.

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  35. Here’s another one from Drum discussing the battle that’s waging between supporters of Geithner vs Barofsky, I might have to read his book.

    I say: why choose? Like it or not, Team Tim is right: the banks had to be bailed out, the same way you’d bail out electrical utilities rather than let everyone go without electricity. They’re just too important to the rest of the economy. Perhaps the bank bailouts should have been more punitive (that’s my view), but frankly, this is nibbling around the edges. Punitive or not, we needed to spend a boatload of money to rescue the banks.

    But Team Neil is right too: consumer debt overhang has been hobbling the recovery ever since 2008, and it’s outrageous that so little money was spent rescuing consumers right along with the bankers. Obama should have pushed a lot harder for cramdown legislation; Fannie and Freddie should have been enlisted to rewrite mortgages; money should have been airlifted into consumer pockets, either to spend or to pay down debt; and schemes should have been set up for homeowners who were too far gone to save that allowed them to rent their homes back from the banks that foreclosed on them.

    This is basically a long way of saying that we didn’t do enough and we didn’t spend enough money. Yes, the banks had to be rescued. But homeowners should have been rescued too. The stimulus needed to be bigger and longer. And the Fed should have ignored the wailings of the wealthy and temporarily targeted a higher inflation rate. None of this would have stopped the recession, but it would have made it a lot shorter and shallower. It’s a crime that millions have suffered needlessly because we didn’t have the guts to stand up and do this.

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  36. Also, I still have the smallest bubble head so far, I’m just not sure if I should be proud or be crying in my herbal tea. I think Kevin and/or Okie might give me a run for my money though.

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    • It’s very interesting. With a 45 I am the closest to the bubble of anyone so far (except nova, who is exceptionally bubblized). Yet with my colleagues at work and several others in the market who were discussing this today, where the range was 35 to 45, I had the highest score and was the most “regular guy” around. It was also notable that all the people in the market that I talked to about this were striving as hard as they could to be “regular guys”. No one wanted a low score. I mean no one. I got all kinds of hell for “bumping” my score by including Sam Adams beer as a mass-marketed beer to stock in my fridge rather than assuming it was a premium beer. The stigma attached to being somehow outside the “normal” range of experience was strong, even when being outside meant being better off and privileged.

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  37. lulu, if it makes you feel any better I’d probably have an even higher score except that both of my parents were advanced-college-degree professionals (I’m third generation in that regard, although my brother went in the opposite direction and he’s an auto mechanic) and the closest I’ve come to a factory floor was the motor pool in the Army. But I’ve worked since I was 14–full time during the summers and the last two years I was in college, plus a full load of classes and ROTC those two years in order to graduate and get commissioned.

    As I said, I think Mr Murray is full of it.

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  38. Mark/Scott:

    I could put up a post in the morning as long as you don’t mind it not being financial (and a little later than usual since I’m in the MDT zone).

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  39. My score is a 47. At one point I thought I was taking the Jeff Foxworthy ‘You May Be A Redneck’ list. I’m not sure what the point of the trick Jimmy Johnson question was. I cheated on one question. I never bought a pick-up truck but I was given one when we needed a second vehicle right after my son was born. My dad was in the military and we moved around a lot. I’m a degreed professional but I am in the construction industry so I spend a lot of time eating lunch with plenty of people who do lots of hunting and fishing and so forth.

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  40. 1.5%, John; we’ll see how your prediction goes!

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    • I’m not sure what happened. I’m a generation away from coal miners and steelworkers.

      Some of the answers could have gone either way, such as the branson on. I know about the place in MO, but I picked Richard b/c he came to mind first and I think its unlikely that I’d ever take in a show.

      and where the hell is my coffee service this morning.

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  41. It’s interesting to find out about others here at ATiM. We live a very middle class life. Most of our neighbors and friends don’t even have bachelor’s degrees. As a matter of fact I get teased all the time for having a Masters, probably because I don’t use it really. We live in a rather affluent rural community built on almost all half acres but most of us have our own businesses; contractors, plumbers, store owners etc. A few of our neighbors sold and bought in the really ritzy new neighborhood about 7 years ago ($800K homes) and have now lost them. Those of us who stayed put with the exception of two homes have managed to hang on so far. We almost all tried to send our kids to college. I think my husband and I had the best luck with that as all of ours have advanced degrees……………….the youngest will receive her Masters in Dec.

    My dad earned his Bachelors from USC in chemical engineering on the GI Bill and worked in the oil industry briefly, my little sister was born in Houston, but then changed industries and worked in management and became an executive vp of a large heating and air conditioning company.

    Of our best friends, the wife was a stay at home mom with a disabled child and her husband went back to school in his 40’s to get his bachelors because he needed it to advance at Boeing. Of my six cousins, three went to college and three didn’t. On my husband’s side only his brother, out of five kids has a degree, but all of our children do or will.

    We live in a very family oriented community and we’ve been here 33 years. Sports is huge and so are horses. At one point about 15 years ago the horse population was larger than the human. It’s a bit of a red neck town for CA and pretty conservative. I finally quit attending council meetings and working with the city about two years ago, around the 2010 election, when our council voted to issue a proclamation in support of the Arizona immigration bill………………….sheesh. I’m fairly certain they haven’t missed me.

    I’ve had several opportunities to work professionally and did right out of college until I met my current husband of 34 years. We decided to have children right away and so I stayed home. About the time I was ready to go back to work we inherited my niece and nephew and it became impossible, from our perspective anyway. I’ve had lots of interests and money making hobbies, even had my own dance store for awhile, over the years but never got back to work full time until we bought the business 11 years ago.

    That’s lulu in a nutshell.

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  42. Nova, funny because I picked Richard Branson also and still scored a 67. I went back and took it again and scored a 69 when I added in a Denny’s (on a road trip) and a couple of movies I’d forgotten about. The only reason I watch Judge Judy is because my husband likes to watch it while I’m cooking dinner but it wouldn’t be my first choice so it could go either way and I never watched Oprah as I hate those kinds of shows. Dr. Phil forget it.

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  43. i think i got crushed on those restaurants. i had zeroes across the board. movies too. out of that list, i had the King’s Speech.

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  44. If they would have put fast food joints in there I would have had zeros across the board. It’s funny because we very rarely eat out except when we’re traveling and then we do eat at some of those places. When we’re home, if we eat out, it wouldn’t be at one of the chains like that. I very rarely have the desire to eat out now, since I got the food poisoning that apparently started all my recent health issues. As a matter of fact, you could say I almost panic just thinking about it. 😉

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  45. Click here for a list of all the bankers, economists and financial experts who are now calling for the break up of the big banks.

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  46. I went back and took out the restaurant visits (since they were all outliers–ate at a few of them as part of RFTC activities this year) and it didn’t change my score at all, so I don’t know how heavily weighted those are.

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