Posted by: Tom Keene on October 7, 2011
"He's patient. He's not flopping around back there. He's very stable," Dartmouth coach Bob Gaudet said. "With the style we have, he's a really good complement for the rest of our team. We should be a really good, solid team, and he'll be a big part of it."
Phil Perry, New England Hockey Journal, January 2011
There will be a presidential (excuse me, a Presidential) debate, Tuesday. Suits and ties will descend upon Dartmouth College and Hanover, NH (rated #1 perfect bubble-like city). Certitude will be spoken. Candidate rebuttal debated. Knives sheathed. (It's October, for crying out loud.)
There will be cuts. Of the eight candidates, x number will disappear into the azure mist of the Land of Speaking Fees. Y candidates will sustain until an angel descends and the Grand Old Party selects of the 8 or 9 or 10?
I suggest that Bloomberg and the Washington Post hold the debate at the Rupert C. Thompson Arena where Bob Gaudet doesn't cut.
Rather, he takes skilled, smart underclassman and mints upperclassman who ask pointed questions that would make the American Jockocracy and GOP Candidates squirm. Even worse, they become "was educated at" and vote.
All of this dissolves to how totally disconnected the Candidates are from the public. A 14% approval rating for our Congress? Really?
Michele, Mitt, Rick-squared and rest would be so brave as to receive questions from the student Green I spoke to this perfect-bubble autumn day.
Said Candidates could do no better than to skate (stagger) in on goalie James Mello, he of Rehoboth, MA, established 1643. (Shh! I beat him glove-side high as he established how totally lame I was.) Mello would launch a pierce-ed question that would give pause. If we were ever so lucky, young Mello, Coach Gaudet and even us...would get a straight answer.
It's A Big Country. Our political-class cynicale should understand that James Mello and all of Hanover are begging, begging for Bachmann, Cain, Gingrich, Huntsman, Paul, Perry, Romney, and Santorum to exit their self-inflicted Dartmouth Bubble. Discuss.
Posted by: Tom Keene on October 5, 2011
Stocks rose after the Financial Times quoted Olli Rehn, European commissioner for economic affairs, as saying there is an "increasingly shared view" that the region needs a coordinated approach to halt the sovereign debt crisis.
Regan & Nazareth, Bloomberg News
There you go again. Coordinated. It's a shared view, and increasing. Consider the shorts stopped out!o
I have no clue on the vector of the "markets" other than to suggest that a VIX of 40.82 suggests a less-crowded trade and a mean, mean-reversion towards 20.50 sometime before Chris Christie runs for President of the New Jersey States of America.
Meanwhile, back at the data-check ranch....how to keep up, how to measure, how to gauge where you are?
Enter the cross-asset data check. Cross-asset means equities, bonds, currencies and commodities. For global Wall Street it is best sequenced currencies, bonds, commodities and equities.
I digress. Within the present VIX-above-40 ark, which animal should you follow? Connect the dots from state of equities (futures) to yield movement, 10-year and 2s/10s spread dynamics, to oil and gold delta to the tripod of EURUSD, USDJPY, EURJPY and the secondary noise of say DXY, copper and the 30-year bond yield.
Confused? Like your 201(k), it's more art than science. It is, in a time of maximum epsilon, a cross-asset cacophony. Discuss.
Posted by: Tom Keene on October 4, 2011
#occupywallstreet http://t.co/TmnYaovp Americans, start acting for your freedoms, stop being lazy ***kers
It is in each and every way a personal experience; a fallback on childhood.
Item: The mothers of TriBeCa descend upon the ice rink to instruct future straight-teethed prepsters in the art of Sidney Crosby. They, Mothers in black, are marginally kind to Fathers working the marginal 70-hour work week.
Item: I detect, after square-root on "n" analysis that the begging on New York City streets is more desperate.
Item: They (who?) await, AWEIGHT, Chris Christie wait and wait and wait...
And, the bid falls away...in Bank of America, and advances in the 10-year Note. Copper and oil descend.
Most alternative-minimum-tax animals that I know are "acting for their freedoms." They aspire to medical insurance (the deductible on three stitches in the primogeniture chin gives pause.) They anticipate the PSATs. They will attempt to not separate and/or divorce given a dearth of "lazy."
They want to contribute. They want to work and "support." Let me repeat the ancient, and I do mean Franklinian ancient, American desire.
They, wife & husband, want to work.
"Want" is the delta between legitimate angst and "lazy ***k-is-what-the-post-collegiate-hipsters-protesteth-too-much-do-during-Jets-halftime." No wonder I scored at a lesser rate: I'm not a Jets fan.
Seriously, the tape is terrible. (Tape, in 2011, is cross-asset with non-bonused FX emphasis.)
We need to define the debate, occupy cross-asset markets, and occupy conversation with smart people. Our politicians need to "occupy" action. The natives are restless. Rumble, rumble, rumble; Mutiny, mutiny, mutiny.
Protest! Ken and I, and You. And with thanks, You do...occupy Surveillance. Discuss.
Posted by: Tom Keene on September 29, 2011
Ezra Klein, he of Bloomberg View and The Beltway Post, just launched a "timeline" of sport as we know it. (No, not Braves, Cardinals, Rays & Red Sox.)
Sport is Europe and it is ugly tilting to one of those Mad Max movies where Tina Turner holds court.
Sport.
Jeremy Warner launches a "comment" at The Telegraph, quoting Benjamin Franklin and advancing Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. It's all good stuff, readable, thought-provoking, and brilliant upon successful prediction, say mid-November. Europe unable to leverage its way out of Bartertown.
I defer to facts, humility and Michael McKee.
Sequence in crisis is not taught; it is earned. McKee is battled scared...2nd Battalion, 3rd Division at The Battle of Reykjavik. ("Both sides DISCOVERED the extent of the concessions the other side was willing to make." My large caps and read Dixit/Nalebuff on game theory.) We, and I include moi, can blather all we want as the EURIBOR-OIS cauldron boils.
Truth is...we have no clue.
What Warner nails, and McKee guards against, is the folly of "co-ordination." (Where do those double-dots go?) The fiction that is suit & ties & a single Chanel suit in control. The hope and fair prayer that it will all work out. (Circlepalooza, hope & fair.)
Franklin (read, Gordon Wood) from the distant purpose of our past, would turn to Geithner and whisper, "we shall all hang, separately." Discuss.
Posted by: Tom Keene on September 26, 2011
Much is the same. 187 nations of economists, wonks du policy and political leaders ascending and descending the moment. A description for the Greece is Going Down in Flames Fall Meeting of the IMF can be found in the words and phrases heard in hallways and seminars, hotels and bars.
This year's word is "confidence," or lack thereof.
Nineteen (or is it 22?) nations are in search of confidence. There is general understanding it is out there. Not, in the economic textbooks or International Monetary Fund outlooks, reports and monitors. Confidence is to be had and increased if only "the people" could think of and in the medium-term.
I have yet to hear the phrase "fiscal drag." There are five flavors of language to describe a hope for a directionally gentler austerity. (Circle, "hope.")
The words have changed. So too, the canter of the elites and their still evident entourages.
Everyone is worn out. The fifth year of Crisis IMF brings new words, walks and sounds. (I just heard "shovel-ready." In 2006 shovel-ready meant two acres overlooking Georgica Pond, East Hampton Village, New York.)
Or perhaps, our unemployment, our tepid GDP, our debt are best framed in the words, gait and sounds not heard.
The arrogance and the confident power is gone. There are still black cars. They file down and through M Street, Pennsylvania Avenue and 19th Street. But, they are black cars without sirens screaming.
This IMF meeting, this September, this is a Washington in Silence. Discuss.
