Hello world!

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Arcanaut

Welcome to WordPress.com. After you read this, you should delete and write your own post, with a new title above. Or hit Add New on the left (of the admin dashboard) to start a fresh post.

Here are some suggestions for your first post.

  1. You can find new ideas for what to blog about by reading the Daily Post.
  2. Add PressThis to your browser. It creates a new blog post for you about any interesting  page you read on the web.
  3. Make some changes to this page, and then hit preview on the right. You can always preview any post or edit it before you share it to the world.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

Testing Poll Creation Ability in WordPress

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Kevin S. Willis

Filed under: Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Morning Report

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Brent Nyitray

Vital Statistics:

Last Change Percent
S&P Futures 1288.4 -3.3 -0.26%
Eurostoxx Index 2364.3 18.430 0.79%
Oil (WTI) 99.48 0.380 0.38%
LIBOR 0.567 -0.005 -0.79%
US Dollar Index (DXY) 81.026 0.192 0.24%
10 Year Govt Bond Yield 1.90% -0.02%

Happy Friday the 13th.
It is a slow news day ahead of a 3-day weekend. S&P futures are down slighly, while Europe is up slightly. Sovereign yields are lower.
Import prices came in as expected, while the trade deficit increased. J.P. Morgan’s earnings were down 23%, but still in line with expectations. Tier 1 common equity and Tier 1 common ratio are well in excess of Basel III requirements. Jamie Dimon is speaking to the press right now, and is noting that regulatory uncertainty is hurting the mortgage market. He also takes a shot at the Durbin Amendment, calling it a “Gross Miscarriage of Justice.” Don’t put too fine a point on it, Jamie.
Earnings season gets into full swing next week, with most of the financials reporting, along with big names like Ebay, Johnny John, IBM, Intel, Softee, Google, and GE.
Edit: University of Michigan Consumer confidence came in at 74 up 6% MOM and more or less flat YOY.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 20 Comments »

This one’s for you, qb and ashot

Posted on January 13, 2012 by ScottC

It appears that the blogger upgrade to threaded comments is currently unusable in an IE browser, and ATiM has a couple of significant contributors who are unfortunately forced to use IE, at least during the day. Since we do not want to lose them, lms and I have agreed to revert back to the so-called full page comments style for now, meaning the comment box will not exist at the bottom of the post page, but you will instead be directed to a new page to enter any comments. Again, this is not ideal, but the alternative is that ATiM will lose two of its more prolific contributors, which would be unacceptable. I’ll keep looking for a way around this problem, as I hope will Kevin. If anyone else has suggestions, let us know. In the meantime, I expect qb and ashot to produce some earth shattering posts and comments at which we will all gaze in awe while wondering to ourselves “Now that’s why we’re dealing with this cumbersome comments system.” No pressure, though.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 27 Comments »

Mayhem in Tampa?

Posted on January 13, 2012 by msjs0315

This is a bitcomplicated.  On a dare from a Republican friend, I went and read the Rules of the Republican Party, as adopted at the 2008 nominating convention, henceforth known as the Rulebook. (sorry, it’s a pdf)

I’ll start with the RepublicanParty’s Rule 16.  In part, it says that if a state selectsits delegates before the Party says it can, “the number of delegates to thenational convention from that state shall be reduced by fifty percent (50%)”  (Rulebook, page 25).

The next item relates to the “beforethe Party says it can” part.  Rule 15(b)of the above cited document states that only Iowa, New Hampshire, SouthCarolina and Nevada can hold delegate selecting events prior to the firstTuesday in March but not before February 1 (Rulebook, page 18).

But in 2010 the RNC revisedRule 15(b).  This was something of abiggie, as the GOP doesn’t normally change these rules in betweenconventions, per page iv of the Rulebook.  The revised rule furtherstipulates that if any state other than the excepted four held an earlyprimary/caucus, the state “shall provide for theallocation of delegates on a proportional basis.”

Well, so much for the rules.

As of this writing, Iowa, NewHampshire and South Carolina all moved their events into January, and otherstates—Florida, Michigan, Colorado, Maine and Arizona—are all holdingprimaries/caucuses prior to the first Tuesday in March.  So, in theory each should: (a) have thenumber of delegates going to the nominating convention halved; and (b) have toallocate delegates proportionally.

Except that won’t be thecase, either.

It turns out that the delegate-assigningevents in Iowa, Colorado and Maine are non-binding so they get to retain theirfull delegation numbers.  And Floridagets to keep its winner-takes-all-delegates status, although its delegate count has been halved.

Is any of this making senseyet?

OK, how about Rule 38?  “No delegate or alternate delegate shall be boundby any attempt of any state or Congressional district to impose the unit rule.”(Rulebook, page 37)  Translation: Winner-take-allmay not be after all.

Depending on how angry and howdivided the GOP is when the delegates head to the convention in Tampa, theRepublican Party’s rules, and the candidate(s) with supposedly the mostdelegates, could face some potentially fascinating challenges.

Or everyone could unite under the common goal of defeating Barack Obama.  And if that’s the case, the GOP shouldn’teven bother with many of these rules for 2016.  After all, Rule 42 states “Rules 25 through 42 shall be the temporary rules of the next national convention” (Rulebook, page 40), so they won’t be in force after this summer anyway.  


I haven’t read the Democratic Party’s Rulebook, largely because no one’s dared me to.  It may well be in the same shape.

Filed under: 2012, GOP | 5 Comments »

Which is Crazier? South Carolina Polling or Blogger’s New Commenting Format?

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Michigoose

Stephen Colbert, favorite son, polls higher in South Carolina than Jon Huntsman.

Discuss amongst yourselves for a bit–I’m on my way out to a birthday dinner for a friend and will join the discussion in progress. . .

Filed under: Uncategorized | 13 Comments »

FYI – Blogger changes

Posted on January 12, 2012 by ScottC

So yesterday Blogger put in place some changes, in particular to the comments section. Unfortunately, they did not add new options, but rather changed existing options, so it is impossible (at least for now) for us to keep the look that we used to have.

The major change they made was to add threading comments, ie exactly what PL has now. The primary downside to this change, as we experienced last night, is twofold. First, there appears to be spacing/font issues in the comments. It doesn’t look quite right, and the comments input box seems to be a bit erratic, sometimes showing up and other times not. Also, on mobile devices (at least the iPad and iPhone) there are some technical problems. For instance, I can no longer copy and paste from the comments.

We can get the comments section to revert back to the way it looked via one of two options, but with one significant exception. The comments input box will not appear on the post page under the comments. Instead, you have to click on “Post a comment”, and you will be taken either to a pop-up window with the input box, or a whole new page with the input box. Currently we have it set to the latter, but in either case, all of the comments are viewable in the new window, as well as on the original post. If you want you can look through last nights open thread to see the comments that some of us have already had about each option.

None of the options are ideal, and each has its drawbacks. We are currently using what is called the full page comments, ie clicking on “post a comment” takes you to a whole new page, with all the comments in a blogger style format, and an input box at the top. There are other options on that page which you may or may not like (ie view blog entry, collapse comments). But I just wanted to give you a heads up. Please post any comments/preferences to this post, and we will have to come to a consensus on which style we should use going forward.

UPDATE: One thing I forgot to mention. When I was trolling around on the Blogger help site last night, I saw one comment which suggests that, when using the threaded comments option, if comments ever reach a total of 200, then the Plum Line method of only displaying X number of comments with a “Load More” button kicks in. And there were complaints about the loading speed of the “Load More”. So it seems that, with threading, Blogger is moving towards the Plum Line style which we all loved so much.

UPDATE 2: I’ve turned the threaded comments back on, at lms’ suggestion, so others can see what it looks like and test it out. Please post any problems here or, if you can’t post at all, e-mail me or kevin or lme.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 99 Comments »

Morning Report

Posted on January 12, 2012 by Brent Nyitray

Vital Statistics:

Last Change Percent
S&P Futures 1294.5 6.3 0.49%
Eurostoxx Index 2371.5 31.960 1.37%
Oil (WTI) 101.97 1.100 1.09%
LIBOR 0.5715 -0.005 -0.87%
US Dollar Index (DXY) 81.118 -0.140 -0.17%
10 Year Govt Bond Yield 1.92% 0.01%

Markets are slightly positive this morning as good news out of Europe is offset by disappointing economic numbers out of the US. Spain and Italy had good debt auctions, which is pulling down sovereign yields across the board. The ECB held rates at 1% and noted “tentative signs of stabilization” in Europe.
Initial Jobless claims for the week ending 1/7 were 399k, versus 375k expected. Continuing claims were higher as well. Retail Sales for December were flat ex autos. November numbers were revised upwards. Given the comp numbers reported last week, I would not be surprised to see upward revisions. It feels like an outlier.
Regarding the jobs numbers, an interesting dynamic will be playing out in the unemployment numbers. Workers who have been unemployed for over 6 months are considered “discouraged workers” and do not count in the unemployment numbers. As the economy improves, those workers will start looking for work again and should be counted as “unemployed” This should add upward pressure to the unemployment numbers. But, with an election coming up, the Labor Department will want to understate this phenomenon as much as possible. So I would take any unemployment numbers with a grain of salt, if you don’t already.
The winter that never was (it is 40 degrees and rainy this morning in the Northeast) is wreaking havoc on natural gas prices. While WTI continues to hang around $100, gas is now down to $2.71. Natural gas bulls are being taken to the woodshed, and is approaching the 2009 lows of $2.51. It will be interesting to see if someone ends up getting carried out on a gas bet.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 7 Comments »

Bits & Pieces (Wednesday Night Health Edition)

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Michigoose

Well, there goes my reason for drinking red wine!  Guess I’ll just have to stick with white. . . and the occasional martini when I’m out of state (due to Utah’s often odd liquor laws a real martini can’t be made here:

Metered Dispensing
Utah law requires restaurants, clubs, on-premise banquet licensees, reception centers, and airport lounges to use a metered dispensing system that is calibrated to dispense no more than 1.5 ounces of primary liquor in a mixed drink. Secondary alcoholic flavorings may then be added to a mixed drink as the recipe requires, not to exceed a total of 2.5 ounces of spirituous liquor.


Internal medicine vs surgery. . . also female vs male.  “Eating is for wimps and dermatologists!”  LMAO!


And just to show how versatile these characters are, here’s the explanation we’ve all been waiting for:




While Garth Brooks/Chris Gaines doesn’t allow YouTube (or iTunes, for that matter) to distribute his videos, Don Henley is a worthy substitute:


And another oldie but goodie:

Bob graduated from the high school that I would have attended had I stayed in Ann Arbor (darn my parents for moving!!), and one year he came back to be the Senior Prom “band”.  One of my very best friends of all time knew how much I loved Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band and invited me to the prom. . . Best. Concert. Ever!

Filed under: Uncategorized | 85 Comments »

Morning Report

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Brent Nyitray

Vital Statistics:

Last Change Percent
S&P Futures 1282.1 -4 -0.31%
Eurostoxx Index 2333.4 -14.120 -0.60%
Oil (WTI) 101.41 -0.830 -0.81%
LIBOR 0.5765 -0.003 -0.52%
US Dollar Index (DXY) 81.325 0.426 0.53%
10 Year Govt Bond Yield 1.94% -0.03%

Markets are a touch weaker this morning after yesterday’s rally. Euro sovereign yields are tighter on a lack of news. The Fed’s Beige Book comes out around 2:00 this afternoon and tomorrow we get jobless claims and retail sales data.
Bloomberg is speculating that the Fed is ready to start large-scale mortgage purchases again. I suspect the reason for this is the new increased fee that Fannie Mae is going to charge, which will probably tack on 10 basis points or so to the interest rate on new mortgages starting next month. The hope is that they can reduce the base yield of MBS in order to take the sting out of the increased fee.
Rumors of a big refi package coming from the GSEs will get more life as Fannie Mae’s CEO Michael Williams is stepping down. The rumor has been that the government will start offering no-questions-asked refis to anyone who is current on their mortgage. I have said before that the originator is the weak link in this plan, but there is an election coming up. Even if it doesn’t work, it allows obama to say he is doing something about house prices.
Lennar reported earnings in line with expectations this morning, but the focus is going to be on the outlook. They reported a 35% increase in backlog and a 20% increase in new orders – more indications that construction is coming back, albeit from a very depressed level. Historically, housing starts would be 1.5MM to 2MM units at this point in the economic cycle, not the current 650k annual pace. Their view is that the housing market is stabilizing.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 85 Comments »

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