More on advocacy versus forecasting at Credit Writedowns

About a year ago I told you there would be less policy advocacy and more policy forecasting at Credit Writedowns. This is an update

News Links: Down with the Eurozone, It’s not about Berlusconi

Down with the Eurozone – Nouriel Roubini – Project Syndicate For the last decade, the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain) were the eurozone’s consumers of first and last resort, spending more than their income and running ever-larger current-account deficits. Meanwhile, the eurozone core (Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, and France) comprised the producers of

Daniel Kahneman on Investing: Luck Vs. Skill

I have Daniel Kahnemann’s book Thinking Fast and Slow, but have yet to read it. Judging from the positive reviews and his past work, it sounds like it should be pretty good. Kahnemann was on CNBC last week discussing some themes from his book and skill and luck in the world of investing. The video is below. Take a look.

Also see “Daniel Kahneman: How cognitive illusions blind us to reason” from this Saturday’s Guardian

Paul Davidson: The State of Economics (wonkish)

Paul Davidson argues that a theory is the way humans describe real world observations on the basis of a model that starts with a few axioms. An axiom is an assumption accepted as a universal truth that does not need to be proved. From this axiomatic foundation, the theorist uses the laws of logic to deduce conclusions that explains what we observe in the world of experience. All theories are generally accepted in some tentative fashion. Theories are not ever conclusively established and can be replaced when events are observed that are deviations from the current existing theory. Thus, the financial crisis of 2007-2009 should have been sufficient empirical evidence to indicate that the axiomatic basis of the mainstream theory needs to be replaced

Point of Maximum Pessimism?

We have been structurally bearish on equities since Absolute Return Partners was established in 2002. ‘Structurally bearish’ does not imply that we, or our clients, have had no exposure to equities throughout this period. Neither does it mean that we have been expecting equities to post a loss every year for the past nine years. No, ‘structurally bearish’ is a term we (and others) use to express our view on multiple trends. In a structural bear market, price/earnings (P/E) ratios decline; i.e. corporate earnings need to outgrow the decline in valuations for equities to post positive returns. Equity investors are swimming against the tide, so to speak.

Now, nine years after having made that call, we begin to spot real value again with European equities trading at 9.4 times trailing 12-month earnings and 7.6 times next year’s earnings (see chart 3). A price-to-book value just below 1 and a dividend yield of 5.3% does not exactly make the value story any less compelling

A few thoughts on economic nationalism

I want to talk a little about the political economy. A few months ago I added the topic tag “nationalism” to the topics this blog covers because I believe this is an issue which becomes relevant during global economic crises

Herbert Hoover: 1931 Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union

Last week I excerpted from Herbert Hoover’s 1930 State of the Union address. This time I wanted to excerpt from the 1931 SOTU because the Credit Anstalt event had already happened, triggering retail deposit runs. Bank runs is something about which Mohamed El-Erian, the head of PIMCO, has recently expressed concerned because of the wholesale funding squeeze now ongoing in France.

What caught my eye was where Hoover says “The situation largely arises from an unjustified lack of confidence.” This seems to be an almost verbatim copy of the sentiments Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke expressed in Minneapolis just two weeks ago

Steve Jobs

The man is special

How credit crisis revealed weakness in US approach to epidemic of fraud

This column addresses the high price paid by the President’s Council of Economic Advisors’ failure to read Akerlof & Romer

The Internet’s Filter: Condemned to be Free?

Rick Bookstaber opines about a future world in which the flood of information being produced will be filtered by third parties like Facebook and Google with as yet unpredictable consequences for society. Perhaps these filters are just computationally more powerful versions of our own cognitive filters. But the filters are not under our control. We won’t understand how they are deciding what to allow through the filter for our consideration

Does LinkedIn take advantage of weak links?

Rick Bookstaber asks whether LinkedIn anything more than a resume warehouse? Is it simply a web-based Rolodex to make it easier to stay up with your business contacts? He doesn’t know the business model for the company, and doesn’t have any basis to comment on its long-term prospects, but in a somewhat stream-of-consciousness mode, he hears the “linked” in LinkedIn, and it starts him thinking about network theory, and the place LinkedIn most naturally fills in that space, which is to establish weak links

Americans oppose increasing the debt ceiling. Here’s why

The sense that America’s spending is out of control is visceral. It will be cut. Looking for a job, running a business or Investing in a world of austerity is a lot different from getting along in normal times. I advise everyone to think about how this impacts them because the cuts are definitely coming