Market Still Deluding Itself That It Can Escape The Inevitable Dénouement
September 13, 2010
One of my favorite analysts is Albert Edwards of Societe Generale in London. Acerbic, witty and brilliant. Emphasis on brilliant. The fact that he is a Doppelganger for James Montier (who long time readers are well acquainted with) is a coincidence (or he would say vice versa). I only kind of have permission to forward this note to you, but better to ask forgiveness… So, this week he is our Outside the Box. And a short but good one he is.
I am in Amsterdam and it is late, but deadlines have no time line. Tomorrow more work on the book. It is getting close to the end. Most books are finished when the authors quit in disgust. How many edits can you do? I am close.
I wonder late at night, with maybe a few too many glasses of wine, why I feel like a book is so much more than an e-letter. Really? The last ten years of what I have written are on the archives. Good (ok, sometimes really good) is there. But some are an embarrassment. What was I thinking?
But somehow in my Old World brain, a book is more than a weekly letter. It is somehow more permanent than an "online" letter. Which may be archived forever. The book is "paper" and may be around for a few years. But the online version is here for a long time.
I know that is stupid. Really I do. But what is a 61 year old mind to do? A strange world we live in.
It is really time to hit the send button. More than you know! The conversation tonight has been too deep!
Your working on Labor Day analyst,
The Mystery of the Awful Economists
March 7, 2005
This week's letter comes to use from Barry Ritholtz, Chief Market Strategist of the Maxim Group and a frequent guest on CNBC. I have been reading his commentary for several years and this special report takes a look at the employment numbers.
Ten possible explanations as to why this is the jobless recovery are explored. The first two are the ones most cited by Wall Street economist, but the last eight dig deeper into the data and give us an Outside the Box look at what is going on with the numbers. Barry challenges the economist to find a way to include new factors into their models in the hopes of improving future forecasts of employment.
While economists have recently been over-guessing the employment numbers, last Friday they made a rare under-guess. The forecast was 220,000-225,000 based on several news articles and the actual number came in at 262,000.