Just who are you trying to kid? Read ALL of your populist literature and then rewrite this. When was the last time you bought a box of Wheat Thins?! Sure, the price is basically the same as years ago, but the SIZE OF the box has shrunk considerably. That is inflation, pure and simple. And the shrinkage phenomenon is evident on every grocery aisle. Get over yourself.
Thank you rjs for the compliment. I've been struggling for six years to simplify the argument to a few sentences and it continues to be a work in progress. If we are to win this debate we have to make it "clear and concise". It is precisely muddle thinking that is destroying our economy. Thus critique is always welcome, because without critique we won't improve the clarity and logic of the message. As for energy and geographical limited goods, such as oil, it's a I've been avoiding, since it is considerably more complex than trying to build a simple foundation model (my main objective for now). best regards
Thank you for emphasizing the link between increasing inequality and free trade. I agree fully. Wage structures can only form properly in a closed economy in my view. TTP will be another economic disaster as a result. My great hope is that we make clearer and stronger arguments, until perhaps all sides of the political isle wake up from their ideological slumber. I hope to tackle a new topic in the coming weeks: the myth of quantitative easing as a panacea. best regards
There are three points that people should understand in assessing the impact of trade and the meaning of these trade deals:
1) Trade has been an important factor increasing inequality in the United States;
2) The trade deficit is the major reason that the economy has weak demand and remains far below full employment;
3) The TPP and TTIP are about imposing a corporate friendly regulation structure, not trade.
your first paragraph says it all, it should be self evident to anyone who gives it a moment's thought...the only thing that i would add is that the entire industrial revolution and what has sprung forth from it was & still is dependent on free energy from the sun which has been stored for millennia in the form of fossil fuels..
Huffington Post: House and Senate Republicans rejected President Obama’s suggestion to reform a tax code that allows heirs to inherit extreme amounts of wealth largely tax-free.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz,(R-Utah), angrily responding to Obama's tax proposal: “That’s a non-starter. The audacity, that he thinks the government has a right to people’s money? He wants to transfer wealth. It’s one of the most immoral things you can do, is try to steal somebody’s inheritance, to steal it away from their family.”
(* Even though our grandma is taxed on every single dollar of tips she earns at her minimum-wage job as a waitress at the local diner.)
Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said there was no need to punish the children of the rich. “My preference is to have as much money available for people to reinvest back into the economy. I think we can succeed at helping the middle class without having to go after anybody, or make an example of anybody, or punish anyone.”
* Yes, no one wants to punish innocent children, especially those such as Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian.
Paul Krugman recently asked, "So who, exactly, has been waging class warfare?"
So I told him in a comment:
Warren Buffett (2006) “There’s class warfare all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war --- and we’re winning."
Warren Buffett (2011) "Actually, there’s been class warfare going on for the last 20 years, and my class has won."
How about this for a flat tax? ZERO! And those who want a government, by all means contribute. I guarantee that in such a scenario the rich will be contributing as it is they who benefit the most from the infrastructure that government provides -- printed money, business friendly regulations, property laws, thugs with guns to 'protect' their assets and way of life, etc.
The capital gains preference is uncapped. The larger the gain one reports, the greater the tax break — that differential between the 23.8% top cap gains rate and the 39.6% top marginal rate is gold, pure gold.
There's another aspect that makes the capital gains preference entirely too profitable. Taxpayers can defer it indefinitely simply by deferring the sale of taxable assets [and] put off your capital gains liability for your entire life.
Then comes the biggest loophole of all, the so-called trust fund loophole. This allows capital assets to be passed on to one's heirs at their appreciated value [and] the accumulated capital gains tax liability is utterly extinguished. Hundreds of billions of dollars escape capital gains taxation each year because of the 'stepped-up' basis loophole that lets the wealthy pass appreciated assets onto [job creators, such as Paris Hilton and Kim kardashian.]
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) claimed eliminating these all tax loopholes would hurt small businesses.
But the Treasury estimates that 99% of the revenue raised by boosting the capital gains tax rate and closing the inheritance loophole would be paid by the top 1% — and four-fifths of it would come from the richest tenth of 1%.
In Obama's 2015 State Of The Union Address, despite the GOP's plan to defund disability, raise the retirement age again, and possibly privatize Social Security, here's all Obama had to say on the subject:
"At every moment of economic change throughout our history, this country has taken bold action to adapt to new circumstances, and to make sure everyone gets a fair shot. We set up worker protections, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid to protect ourselves from the harshest adversity."
Martin Feldstein, the President Emeritus of the NBER, promoted the idea of gradually raising the eligibility age for full Social Security benefits to as high as 70. [He claimed] that would it increase the labor-force participation rate among people older than 65 (and expand the economy). But raising the retirement age would also add to the strain on the disability fund, which has had to cover more workers longer, ever since the retirement age was raised from 65 to 67.
And then there's the new rule change regarding the transfer of funds from the regular Social Security trust fund to the disability fund to keep it solvent. An analysis by Social Security’s chief actuary, Stephen Goss, suggests there’s less to the new House rule than meets the eye. That’s because the point of order is triggered only if lawmakers exceed a “0.01 percent” threshold, which equates to a $38.6 billion cap on what any one Congress can move from the retirement fund. That leaves too little room for some long-term, multi-year reallocation of payroll tax revenues but it is enough to get past 2016.
Gross says, “We’re projecting disability trust funds will be depleted in December of 2016. The shortfall for the ensuing 12 months would come to about $29 billion. What that means is that we could have a tax rate reallocation that could apply in 2016 — or 2016 and 2017 that would generate up to $30 billion, or even $35 billion, transferred to the disability trust fund, which would at least extend its reserve depletion date for one more year.”
Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas), who promoted the rule change as chairman of the Social Security panel on the House Ways and Means Committee, will relinquish his role to the new Ways and Means Committee Chairman, Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who has already installed his own staff on the committee. Now, Ryan (who wanted vouchers for Medicare) would like to be the architect for "reforms" in the social safety net. (He'll probably outlaw all hammocks too.)
The author may have "no idea" about payroll taxes because he does not appreciate how they destroy jobs and family wealth. The process is complex. On March 13, 2014, Bill Gates told an audience at AEI that he opposed the federal minimum wage and supported a replacement of the combined 15.3 percent payroll taxes as the best way to help workers and create jobs. A 4 percent VAT and elimination of unnecessary business tax expenditures would provide a more secure funding source for Social Security and Medicare.
There is no support for the claim that, "Republicans want to entice workers to take a payroll tax cut now, and then workers will have to hope that they have adequate Social Security credits to properly retire on later." Both Democrats and less conservative Republicans have recognized for decades that low paid workers cannot afford payroll taxes and this has led to generous earned income and child care tax credits. Unfortunately, the credits have simply expanded low wage jobs. Both workers and businesses rely on the credit rather than replace the payroll tax with less regressive funding or follow the author's suggestion to, "completely eliminate the Social Security cap".
The long range problem is wage stagnation that comes with high unemployment. Replacing the payroll taxes encourages full employment and higher salaries in two ways. For business, jobs are less expensive so there is less incentive to outsource and businesses that employ a lot of workers loose the disadvantage they had compared with businesses that have a low worker to sales ratio and profit more from intellectual property monopoly. For workers, there is an immediate 3.65 percent increase in take-home pay and the increased consumer spending grows the economy from the bottom up.
Robert Reich (January 18, 2015) -- The Republican establishment’s leading presidential hopefuls [Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney] know the current upbeat economy isn’t trickling down to most Americans. But they’ve got a whopping credibility problem, starting with trickle-down economics.
The lion’s share of economic gains over the past thirty-five years has gone to the top, regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans inhabit the White House. The most recent recovery has been particularly lopsided.
Since Reagan, Republican policies have nudged [the economy] toward big gains at the top and stagnation for everyone else. The last Republican president to deliver broad-based prosperity was Dwight D. Eisenhower, in the 1950s ... When Eisenhower was president, over a third of all private sector workers were unionized. Ike can’t be credited for this but at least he didn’t try to stop it — or legitimize firing striking workers, as did Ronald Reagan.
Under Reagan, Republican policy lurched in the opposite direction: Lower taxes on top incomes and big wealth, less public investment, and efforts to destroy labor unions. Not surprisingly, that’s when America took its big U-turn toward inequality. These Reaganomic principles are by now so deeply embedded in the modern Republican Party they’ve come to define it.
When Jeb Bush admits that the income gap is real but that “only conservative principles can solve it,” one has to wonder what principles he’s talking about.
Paul Krugman --- New York Times: Hating Good Government
"Sam Brownback, the state’s right-wing governor, went all in on supply-side economics: He drastically cut taxes, assuring everyone that the resulting boom would make up for the initial loss in revenues. Unfortunately for his constituents, his experiment has been a resounding failure. The economy of Kansas, far from booming, has lagged the economies of neighboring states, and Kansas is now in fiscal crisis ... Claims about the magical powers of tax cuts are often little more than a mask for the real agenda of crippling government by starving it of revenue ... Why this hatred of government in the public interest? Well, the political scientist Corey Robin argues that most self-proclaimed conservatives are actually reactionaries. That is, they’re defenders of traditional hierarchy — the kind of hierarchy that is threatened by any expansion of government, even (or perhaps especially) when that expansion makes the lives of ordinary citizens better and more secure."
Well for one thing, it seems that whether or not Baldwin-United eventually became primarily an insurance company is irreverent. As far as “naked short selling” being “a red herring”, “rare” and having “little impact on the markets” -- that is a very debated subject. There were proposed rule changes by the SEC to limit short-selling during the crash of 2008/09. And the article wasn’t primarily about “short-selling” specifically, but about all of the manipulation in the markets in general. All the info I provided was gleaned from other article with links, so you can debate the merits of those sources with them. Overall, I thought the story was interesting nonetheless. If you want to add a “correction”, I think you should. But I’m not sure how I could edit it to make it more “accurate”. Thanks for commenting.
it wasn't just the CPI that was down this week; import prices fell 2.5% in December, export prices fell 1.2%, and producer prices fell 0.3%...a falling price environment changes the way we have to think about most of the other reports that we review, because any downturn they indicate may be just due to lower prices....for instance, last week it was reported that November wholesale sales fell by 0.3%, while wholesale inventories rose by 0.8%; that was in part because wholesale petroleum sales fell by 2.1%, and despite the fact that wholesale petroleum inventories fell by 3.7%....but since wholesale crude oil prices were down 3.2% in November, that means actual sales of barrels of petroleum rose about 1.1%, while inventories, in barrels of oil, just fell 0.5%...with crude oil prices down 18.9% in December, it's almost a certainty that wholesale sales and inventories of non-durable goods, denominated in dollars, will fall when that report is released three weeks from now...but even so, such a report would indicate a positive contribution to GDP if the actual quantity of goods produced and sold or inventoried increases, irregardless of the headline change...in fact, even if GDP falls in dollars in a given quarter, it's still possible that quarter's GDP will be recorded as an increase if the deflator is negative...
the first thing we note is that automotive sales weren't revised much; originally reported as increasing by 1.7%, they're still indicated 1.6% higher...hence, retail sales ex auto took a larger hit, revised from up 0.5% to up just 0.1%...by far the largest factor in that was a revision of November's gas station sales, which were originally reported down 0.8%, and now are seen to have decreased by 3.0%...other business types seeing notable downward revisions include clothing stores, sales of which were reported up 2.2% and are now revised to a 1.2% increase, sales at electronic and appliance stores, which were reported up 0.9% and are now shown as up just 0.1%, November sales at drug stores, originally reported up 0.8%, now revised to a 0.4% increase, and sales at bars and restaurants, which were reported as increasing 0.7% and have now been revised to show a 0.3% increase...in addition, both furniture stores and non-store retailers sales were revised 0.3% lower, while November sales at miscellaneous stores were revised up, from an originally reported decrease of 1.7% to a decrease of just 0.8%...
Fundamental short selling helps find the proper stock price in a world of stock promoters. It is not clear from your article that Baldwin-United was primarily an insurance company. Chanos made his name, and landed in a front page article in the Wall Street Journal, by finding things to object to in their accounting.
As soon as I read 'naked short selling' in your article, I knew that the rest was nonsense. Naked short selling is a red herring. It is rare, and has little impact on the markets.
Both, in terms of highest median household income and lowest levels of poverty, guess which states fair better -- Red States or Blue States? I think you already know the answer.
Just who are you trying to kid? Read ALL of your populist literature and then rewrite this. When was the last time you bought a box of Wheat Thins?! Sure, the price is basically the same as years ago, but the SIZE OF the box has shrunk considerably. That is inflation, pure and simple. And the shrinkage phenomenon is evident on every grocery aisle. Get over yourself.
Thank you rjs for the compliment. I've been struggling for six years to simplify the argument to a few sentences and it continues to be a work in progress. If we are to win this debate we have to make it "clear and concise". It is precisely muddle thinking that is destroying our economy. Thus critique is always welcome, because without critique we won't improve the clarity and logic of the message. As for energy and geographical limited goods, such as oil, it's a I've been avoiding, since it is considerably more complex than trying to build a simple foundation model (my main objective for now). best regards
Bud
Thank you for emphasizing the link between increasing inequality and free trade. I agree fully. Wage structures can only form properly in a closed economy in my view. TTP will be another economic disaster as a result. My great hope is that we make clearer and stronger arguments, until perhaps all sides of the political isle wake up from their ideological slumber. I hope to tackle a new topic in the coming weeks: the myth of quantitative easing as a panacea. best regards
There are three points that people should understand in assessing the impact of trade and the meaning of these trade deals:
1) Trade has been an important factor increasing inequality in the United States;
2) The trade deficit is the major reason that the economy has weak demand and remains far below full employment;
3) The TPP and TTIP are about imposing a corporate friendly regulation structure, not trade.
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/joe-nocera-on-politic...
your first paragraph says it all, it should be self evident to anyone who gives it a moment's thought...the only thing that i would add is that the entire industrial revolution and what has sprung forth from it was & still is dependent on free energy from the sun which has been stored for millennia in the form of fossil fuels..
Huffington Post: House and Senate Republicans rejected President Obama’s suggestion to reform a tax code that allows heirs to inherit extreme amounts of wealth largely tax-free.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz,(R-Utah), angrily responding to Obama's tax proposal: “That’s a non-starter. The audacity, that he thinks the government has a right to people’s money? He wants to transfer wealth. It’s one of the most immoral things you can do, is try to steal somebody’s inheritance, to steal it away from their family.”
(* Even though our grandma is taxed on every single dollar of tips she earns at her minimum-wage job as a waitress at the local diner.)
Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said there was no need to punish the children of the rich. “My preference is to have as much money available for people to reinvest back into the economy. I think we can succeed at helping the middle class without having to go after anybody, or make an example of anybody, or punish anyone.”
* Yes, no one wants to punish innocent children, especially those such as Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian.
Paul Krugman recently asked, "So who, exactly, has been waging class warfare?"
So I told him in a comment:
Warren Buffett (2006) “There’s class warfare all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war --- and we’re winning."
Warren Buffett (2011) "Actually, there’s been class warfare going on for the last 20 years, and my class has won."
where the stock market indicated real health and investment.
How about this for a flat tax? ZERO! And those who want a government, by all means contribute. I guarantee that in such a scenario the rich will be contributing as it is they who benefit the most from the infrastructure that government provides -- printed money, business friendly regulations, property laws, thugs with guns to 'protect' their assets and way of life, etc.
The capital gains preference is uncapped. The larger the gain one reports, the greater the tax break — that differential between the 23.8% top cap gains rate and the 39.6% top marginal rate is gold, pure gold.
There's another aspect that makes the capital gains preference entirely too profitable. Taxpayers can defer it indefinitely simply by deferring the sale of taxable assets [and] put off your capital gains liability for your entire life.
Then comes the biggest loophole of all, the so-called trust fund loophole. This allows capital assets to be passed on to one's heirs at their appreciated value [and] the accumulated capital gains tax liability is utterly extinguished. Hundreds of billions of dollars escape capital gains taxation each year because of the 'stepped-up' basis loophole that lets the wealthy pass appreciated assets onto [job creators, such as Paris Hilton and Kim kardashian.]
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) claimed eliminating these all tax loopholes would hurt small businesses.
But the Treasury estimates that 99% of the revenue raised by boosting the capital gains tax rate and closing the inheritance loophole would be paid by the top 1% — and four-fifths of it would come from the richest tenth of 1%.
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-capital-gains-20150119-...
In Obama's 2015 State Of The Union Address, despite the GOP's plan to defund disability, raise the retirement age again, and possibly privatize Social Security, here's all Obama had to say on the subject:
"At every moment of economic change throughout our history, this country has taken bold action to adapt to new circumstances, and to make sure everyone gets a fair shot. We set up worker protections, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid to protect ourselves from the harshest adversity."
http://bud-meyers.blogspot.com/2015/01/obama-ignores-third-rail-in-sotu-...
Martin Feldstein, the President Emeritus of the NBER, promoted the idea of gradually raising the eligibility age for full Social Security benefits to as high as 70. [He claimed] that would it increase the labor-force participation rate among people older than 65 (and expand the economy). But raising the retirement age would also add to the strain on the disability fund, which has had to cover more workers longer, ever since the retirement age was raised from 65 to 67.
And then there's the new rule change regarding the transfer of funds from the regular Social Security trust fund to the disability fund to keep it solvent. An analysis by Social Security’s chief actuary, Stephen Goss, suggests there’s less to the new House rule than meets the eye. That’s because the point of order is triggered only if lawmakers exceed a “0.01 percent” threshold, which equates to a $38.6 billion cap on what any one Congress can move from the retirement fund. That leaves too little room for some long-term, multi-year reallocation of payroll tax revenues but it is enough to get past 2016.
Gross says, “We’re projecting disability trust funds will be depleted in December of 2016. The shortfall for the ensuing 12 months would come to about $29 billion. What that means is that we could have a tax rate reallocation that could apply in 2016 — or 2016 and 2017 that would generate up to $30 billion, or even $35 billion, transferred to the disability trust fund, which would at least extend its reserve depletion date for one more year.”
Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas), who promoted the rule change as chairman of the Social Security panel on the House Ways and Means Committee, will relinquish his role to the new Ways and Means Committee Chairman, Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who has already installed his own staff on the committee. Now, Ryan (who wanted vouchers for Medicare) would like to be the architect for "reforms" in the social safety net. (He'll probably outlaw all hammocks too.)
http:/www.politico.com/story/2015/01/republicans-target-social-security-114382...
The author may have "no idea" about payroll taxes because he does not appreciate how they destroy jobs and family wealth. The process is complex. On March 13, 2014, Bill Gates told an audience at AEI that he opposed the federal minimum wage and supported a replacement of the combined 15.3 percent payroll taxes as the best way to help workers and create jobs. A 4 percent VAT and elimination of unnecessary business tax expenditures would provide a more secure funding source for Social Security and Medicare.
There is no support for the claim that, "Republicans want to entice workers to take a payroll tax cut now, and then workers will have to hope that they have adequate Social Security credits to properly retire on later." Both Democrats and less conservative Republicans have recognized for decades that low paid workers cannot afford payroll taxes and this has led to generous earned income and child care tax credits. Unfortunately, the credits have simply expanded low wage jobs. Both workers and businesses rely on the credit rather than replace the payroll tax with less regressive funding or follow the author's suggestion to, "completely eliminate the Social Security cap".
The long range problem is wage stagnation that comes with high unemployment. Replacing the payroll taxes encourages full employment and higher salaries in two ways. For business, jobs are less expensive so there is less incentive to outsource and businesses that employ a lot of workers loose the disadvantage they had compared with businesses that have a low worker to sales ratio and profit more from intellectual property monopoly. For workers, there is an immediate 3.65 percent increase in take-home pay and the increased consumer spending grows the economy from the bottom up.
Robert Reich (January 18, 2015) -- The Republican establishment’s leading presidential hopefuls [Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney] know the current upbeat economy isn’t trickling down to most Americans. But they’ve got a whopping credibility problem, starting with trickle-down economics.
The lion’s share of economic gains over the past thirty-five years has gone to the top, regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans inhabit the White House. The most recent recovery has been particularly lopsided.
Since Reagan, Republican policies have nudged [the economy] toward big gains at the top and stagnation for everyone else. The last Republican president to deliver broad-based prosperity was Dwight D. Eisenhower, in the 1950s ... When Eisenhower was president, over a third of all private sector workers were unionized. Ike can’t be credited for this but at least he didn’t try to stop it — or legitimize firing striking workers, as did Ronald Reagan.
Under Reagan, Republican policy lurched in the opposite direction: Lower taxes on top incomes and big wealth, less public investment, and efforts to destroy labor unions. Not surprisingly, that’s when America took its big U-turn toward inequality. These Reaganomic principles are by now so deeply embedded in the modern Republican Party they’ve come to define it.
When Jeb Bush admits that the income gap is real but that “only conservative principles can solve it,” one has to wonder what principles he’s talking about.
http://robertreich.org/post/108489468160
Paul Krugman --- New York Times: Hating Good Government
"Sam Brownback, the state’s right-wing governor, went all in on supply-side economics: He drastically cut taxes, assuring everyone that the resulting boom would make up for the initial loss in revenues. Unfortunately for his constituents, his experiment has been a resounding failure. The economy of Kansas, far from booming, has lagged the economies of neighboring states, and Kansas is now in fiscal crisis ... Claims about the magical powers of tax cuts are often little more than a mask for the real agenda of crippling government by starving it of revenue ... Why this hatred of government in the public interest? Well, the political scientist Corey Robin argues that most self-proclaimed conservatives are actually reactionaries. That is, they’re defenders of traditional hierarchy — the kind of hierarchy that is threatened by any expansion of government, even (or perhaps especially) when that expansion makes the lives of ordinary citizens better and more secure."
Well for one thing, it seems that whether or not Baldwin-United eventually became primarily an insurance company is irreverent. As far as “naked short selling” being “a red herring”, “rare” and having “little impact on the markets” -- that is a very debated subject. There were proposed rule changes by the SEC to limit short-selling during the crash of 2008/09. And the article wasn’t primarily about “short-selling” specifically, but about all of the manipulation in the markets in general. All the info I provided was gleaned from other article with links, so you can debate the merits of those sources with them. Overall, I thought the story was interesting nonetheless. If you want to add a “correction”, I think you should. But I’m not sure how I could edit it to make it more “accurate”. Thanks for commenting.
ZeroHedge says, "There is no Inflation (Unless you eat food, use water, live in a house, get sick, go to school or do taxes)
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-17/there-no-inflation-unless-you-e...
it wasn't just the CPI that was down this week; import prices fell 2.5% in December, export prices fell 1.2%, and producer prices fell 0.3%...a falling price environment changes the way we have to think about most of the other reports that we review, because any downturn they indicate may be just due to lower prices....for instance, last week it was reported that November wholesale sales fell by 0.3%, while wholesale inventories rose by 0.8%; that was in part because wholesale petroleum sales fell by 2.1%, and despite the fact that wholesale petroleum inventories fell by 3.7%....but since wholesale crude oil prices were down 3.2% in November, that means actual sales of barrels of petroleum rose about 1.1%, while inventories, in barrels of oil, just fell 0.5%...with crude oil prices down 18.9% in December, it's almost a certainty that wholesale sales and inventories of non-durable goods, denominated in dollars, will fall when that report is released three weeks from now...but even so, such a report would indicate a positive contribution to GDP if the actual quantity of goods produced and sold or inventoried increases, irregardless of the headline change...in fact, even if GDP falls in dollars in a given quarter, it's still possible that quarter's GDP will be recorded as an increase if the deflator is negative...
here is a copy of the table from the advance report for November, as reported by Census last month; here's the table from this month, showing the November sales change by business type as revised this week....
the first thing we note is that automotive sales weren't revised much; originally reported as increasing by 1.7%, they're still indicated 1.6% higher...hence, retail sales ex auto took a larger hit, revised from up 0.5% to up just 0.1%...by far the largest factor in that was a revision of November's gas station sales, which were originally reported down 0.8%, and now are seen to have decreased by 3.0%...other business types seeing notable downward revisions include clothing stores, sales of which were reported up 2.2% and are now revised to a 1.2% increase, sales at electronic and appliance stores, which were reported up 0.9% and are now shown as up just 0.1%, November sales at drug stores, originally reported up 0.8%, now revised to a 0.4% increase, and sales at bars and restaurants, which were reported as increasing 0.7% and have now been revised to show a 0.3% increase...in addition, both furniture stores and non-store retailers sales were revised 0.3% lower, while November sales at miscellaneous stores were revised up, from an originally reported decrease of 1.7% to a decrease of just 0.8%...
Fundamental short selling helps find the proper stock price in a world of stock promoters. It is not clear from your article that Baldwin-United was primarily an insurance company. Chanos made his name, and landed in a front page article in the Wall Street Journal, by finding things to object to in their accounting.
As soon as I read 'naked short selling' in your article, I knew that the rest was nonsense. Naked short selling is a red herring. It is rare, and has little impact on the markets.
Which Party Is Better for the Economy? (by state)
Both, in terms of highest median household income and lowest levels of poverty, guess which states fair better -- Red States or Blue States? I think you already know the answer.
http://angrybearblog.com/2015/01/which-party-is-better-for-the-economy-b...
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