Financial News

[southsider2k5]

 

What the hell chart is that? The dollar opened the year at 80.58 and is currently trading 79.50.

[StrangeSox]

It's indexed with 1997 being 100. Don't ask me why.

 

edit: wait I'm not sure that's correct.

 

edit2: Inverse dollar value

Edited March 2, 2012 by StrangeSox

[southsider2k5]

It's indexed with 1997 being 100. Don't ask me why.

 

It is not right. The dollar is not up 20% this year. Its down like 1%.

[StrangeSox]

It is not right. The dollar is not up 20% this year. Its down like 1%.

 

That shows it almost flat for the year, but it's inverse.

[southsider2k5]

That shows it almost flat for the year, but it's inverse.

 

The inverse would be up 1%, still not up 20%.

[StrangeSox]

It appears to end at or near the start of 2012. The chart isn't granular enough to really see the current year data.

[southsider2k5]

It appears to end at or near the start of 2012. The chart isn't granular enough to really see the current year data.

 

Whatever it is doing, it isn't right. That is not a performance chart for the us dollar index. It is no where close to accurate.

[Balta1701]

Where does it show a 20% increase/decrease in the dollar? I mean, I could believe you if you were saying it was down 5% and the real number was 1%, but there's no 20% anywhere in there.

[Balta1701]

Whatever it is doing, it isn't right. That is not a performance chart for the us dollar index. It is no where close to accurate.

You are definitely right on this though.

[Balta1701]

Here's the TWEXB graph straight up.

 

[StrangeSox]

It's 10000/TWEXB.

 

edit: because you still want the inverse to be normalized at 100.

Edited March 2, 2012 by StrangeSox

[Balta1701]

It's 10000/TWEXB.

I don't see any obvious reason why you'd want to do either of those operations to the data.

[StrangeSox]

I don't see any obvious reason why you'd want to do either of those operations to the data.

 

To visually show correlation. Plotting dollar against oil price should show divergence, not convergence, if dollar value drives oil price. Inversing dollar gives a more visually intuitive correlation while having the numerator at 10000 keeps 1997=100. But one obvious effect is flattening of the line.

[Balta1701]

To visually show correlation. Plotting dollar against oil price should show divergence, not convergence, if dollar value drives oil price. Inversing dollar gives a more visually intuitive correlation while having the numerator at 10000 keeps 1997=100. But one obvious effect is flattening of the line.

Your eye can usually make out anti-correlation just as easily as correlation, and scaling the number reduces the impact it has on your eye so that the movements are less impressive.

[StrangeSox]

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fredgraph.png?g=5qD

[southsider2k5]

To visually show correlation. Plotting dollar against oil price should show divergence, not convergence, if dollar value drives oil price. Inversing dollar gives a more visually intuitive correlation while having the numerator at 10000 keeps 1997=100. But one obvious effect is flattening of the line.

 

It massages the numbers to make them work better when they don't show what you want.

[southsider2k5]

Where does it show a 20% increase/decrease in the dollar? I mean, I could believe you if you were saying it was down 5% and the real number was 1%, but there's no 20% anywhere in there.

 

You are right actually, it is 25%. It goes from right about 80 to start this year to over 100 now. And even indexed it doesn't make any sense. Indexing shouldn't turn a 1% loss into a 25% gain.

[Balta1701]

You are right actually, it is 25%. It goes from right about 80 to start this year to over 100 now. And even indexed it doesn't make any sense. Indexing shouldn't turn a 1% loss into a 25% gain.

The last time either of those graphs is close to 80 is 2001. Are you looking at te line for oil?

[Y2HH]

I dislike math, therefore I now dislike most of you.

[StrangeSox]

Updated paper from Saez on income distributions:

http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2010.pdf

 

In 2010, average real income per family grew by 2.3% (Table 1) but the

gains were very uneven. Top 1% incomes grew by 11.6% while bottom 99%

incomes grew only by 0.2%. Hence, the top 1% captured 93% of the income

gains in the first year of recovery. Such an uneven recovery can help explain

the recent public demonstrations against inequality. It is likely that this uneven

recovery has continued in 2011 as the stock market has continued to recover.

National Accounts statistics show that corporate profits and dividends

distributed have grown strongly in 2011 while wage and salary accruals have

only grown only modestly. Unemployment and non-employment have

remained high in 2011.

 

This suggests that the Great Recession will only depress top income

shares temporarily and will not undo any of the dramatic increase in top

income shares that has taken place since the 1970s.

[Balta1701]

Three top executives of MF Global Holdings Ltd. when it collapsed could get bonuses of as much as several hundred thousand dollars each under a plan by a trustee overseeing the securities firm's bankruptcy case, people familiar with the matter said.

 

Louis Freeh, the former Federal Bureau of Investigation director now in charge of unwinding what is left of the New York company, is expected to ask a bankruptcy-court judge as soon as this month to approve performance-related payouts for the chief operating officer, finance chief and general counsel at MF Global, these people said. All three executives kept their jobs after the company's Oct. 31 failure in order to help Mr. Freeh untangle the firm's assets and maximize payouts to creditors.

Hey, putting the hyperlink in the smiley actually works.

[NorthSideSox72]

Hey, putting the hyperlink in the smiley actually works.

I have a strong suspicion this is part of a building deal for their cooperation against others.

 

[Balta1701]

I have a strong suspicion this is part of a building deal for their cooperation against others.

Even if you're right..."yes I was paid several hundred thousand dollars in bonuses for my cooperation" seems like it wouldn't stand up in court anywhere outside of Wall Street.

[NorthSideSox72]

Even if you're right..."yes I was paid several hundred thousand dollars in bonuses for my cooperation" seems like it wouldn't stand up in court anywhere outside of Wall Street.

Here is what I think you are missing. These were not bonuses in addition to anything. These guys probably we slotted for large bonuses. The deal was likely something like "you get to keep your job for an extra year, and get part of your bonus, if you help us untangle this whole web and show us everything".

 

Its a gamble though. On the one hand, having a few people like that around during the investigation could probably get you answers to your questions a lot more quickly, or even just plain get them at all. On the other hand, if one of them was actually complicit in some way, they could hide their tracks as they go, potentially. I'd bet there are independent auditors stalking their every move.

 

 

[Balta1701]

Anyway, it's gonna get posted anyway. Jobs report at 225,000, unemployment flat at 8.3%, but the real buried lede is that there were substantial upward revisions to January and December, basically putting another 60k jobs in there. So altogether, there's a count of 285,000 jobs upwards in this report, and it wouldn't be too surprising to see January/February revised upwards in the next round. This would be "Meh" in a normal recovery but post-crisis it's quite good, and that's large enough that people coming back into the job pool didn't push up the unemployment rate.