The Big Picture

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• Is There a Better Way to Allocate Stocks thasn Buy & Hold??
• Kluge: The Athlete Machine
• U.S. Equity Sector ETF Performance
• Taleb: Learn to Love Volatility
• Beware Online “Filter Bubbles”
• Wall Street uses the Third Way to lead its assault on Social Security
• SNL Weekend Update: Chris Christie
• 10 Sunday Reads
• A Comparison of the Real-Time Performance of Business Cycle Dating Methods

Is There a Better Way to Allocate Stocks thasn Buy & Hold?? Posted: 18 Nov 2012 10:30 PM PST Buy and Hold Is Dead … Did It EVER Work?   CNBC, Market Watch, Forbes, Kiplinger, Wall Street Journal, CNN Money, The Street, Mark Cuban and others say that buy and hold is dead. Lubos Pastor of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and his colleagues have recently documented that buy and hold may never have been a viable investment strategy. Wall Street Journal columnist Brett Arends wrote in 2010: For years, the investment industry has tried to scare clients into staying fully invested in the stock market at all times, no matter how high stocks go…. It's hooey…. They're leaving out more than half the story. Leading economist Robert Shiller strongly hinted at this possibility in research which he published 30 years ago. As attorney, tax expert and financial writer Rob Bennett told us: The story in brief is that Yale University Economics Professor Robert Shiller published research in 1981 that turns our understanding of how stock investing works on its head. Shiller's findings let us all obtain far higher returns at greatly reduced risk. The problem is that, by the time Shiller published his research, many big names had already endorsed Buy-and-Hold (which was based on research discredited by Shiller). So the big shots in the field have been ignoring and then even covering up Shiller's findings for 30 years now. The thing that I have done that no one before me has done is to explain the practical IMPLICATIONS of Shiller's findings. Even Shiller has never done this. Shiller's book ("Irrational Exuberance") is fantastic, but it is all theory. He never tells investors WHAT TO DO. He has explained why in public interviews. He has said that he would be branded "unprofessional" by the experts in this field if he were to do so. Shiller and many others have been keeping their mouths shut about the practical implications of his theory for three decades now. Wall Street Journal's Arends explained: Consider the data from Professor Robert Shiller at Yale University. He tracks something known as the "Cyclically-Adjusted Price-to-Earnings Ratio." (These days it is also known as "the Shiller PE"). This compares stock prices with after-tax company earnings, but only after adjusting those earnings to take account of the fluctuations of the economic cycle. This helps avoid the distortions commonly found when you compare stock prices to a single year's earnings. At the peak of a boom, earnings are artificially inflated, while at the trough they are artificially depressed. The Shiller PE smooths that out. *** Can't time the market? It was clear as a bell that investors should have gotten out of stocks in 1929, in the mid-1960s, and 10 years ago. Anyone who followed the numbers would have avoided the disaster of the 1929 crash, the 1970s or the past lost decade on Wall Street. Why didn't more people do so? Doubtless they all had their reasons. But I wonder how many stayed fully invested because their brokers told them "You can't time the market." Bennett's website provides endorsements for his stock timing theories, and argues that the prevailing buy and hold dogma helped to cause the financial crisis: The story is that the true cause of the economic crisis was the reckless promotion of Buy-and-Hold Investing for 30 years after the academic research showed that there is zero chance that it can ever work in the long term. *** The short form of the story is that the stock market was overvalued by $12 trillion in 2000. This is public information. All in the field acknowledge that stock prices over time revert to the mean (John Bogle calls this an "Iron Law" of stock investing). So those who were paying attention to valuations knew in 2000 that within 10 years or so close to $12 trillion of spending power would disappear from our consumer economy. An economic crisis became inevitable once we permitted stock prices to rise so high. We should tell people to lower their stock allocations when prices rise to insanely high levels both to protect their own retirements and to protect the general economy from collapse. We should encourage Valuation-Informed Indexing, described in a Guest Blog Entry I wrote for the Free From Broke site titled A Better and Less Risky Way to Invest in Stocks. *** Dallas Morning News Columnist Scott Burns spilled the beans in a June 2005 column he wrote about my showing that the numbers used by most financial planners to help us plan our retirements are wildly wrong. Burns observed that the reason why we see few media reports about the errors in the retirement studies even though they will cause millions of middle-class people to suffer failed retirements in days to come if they are not corrected is that: "It is information most people don't want to hear." The "experts" (who see themselves as being in the business of selling stocks, not of giving independent and accurate investing advice) encourage us to follow dangerous strategies, and, once we do so, we become so emotionally invested in the strategies that we become hostile to hearing the realities. Many big names have seen the merit of the new investing ideas. Carl Richards, owner of Clearwater Asset Management and author of the Behavior Gap blog, told me: "I have read everything I can about Valuation-Informed Indexing, and I agree with you that Buy-and-Hold Passive Investing is extremely problematic… I value and respect the passion, hard work and research that you have put into this very important issue…. I think what you are doing has huge value." Rahiv Sethie, a professor of economics at Barnard College, Columbia University said of me: "Rob Bennett makes the claim that market timing based on aggregate P/E ratios can be a far more effective strategy than Passive Investing over long horizons (ten years or more). I am not in a position to evaluate this empirically but it is consistent with Shiller's analysis and I can see how it could be true." Wade Pfau, Associate Professor of Economics at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo, Japan, researched the question and learned that "Valuation-Informed Indexing provides more wealth for 102 of the 110 30-year periods" in the historical record. Bill Schultheis, author of The New Coffeehouse Portfolio exclaimed upon discovery of my web site: "Holy Toledo! This is great stuff!" A calculator at my site called The Stock-Return Predictor will let you see with numbers why Buy-and-Hold is so dangerous. The calculator runs a regression analysis of the historical stock-return data to show the most likely 10-year annualized return starting from any of the various possible starting-point valuation levels. In 1982, the most likely 10-year annualized return was 15 percent real. In 2000, it was a negative 1 percent real. Given that the value proposition of stocks changes dramatically with big price changes, there is obviously no one stock allocation that can work for any investor at all times. Investors need tools like this to learn when they need to change their allocations. I don't think it should be too hard to understand why The Stock-Selling Industry desperately wants to keep tools like this out of the hands of middle-class investors. All industries would like their customers to believe that their product is worth buying at any possible price. But when too many become convinced that Buy-and-Hold can work, the insane level of overvaluation that follows causes an economic crisis (this has happened four times in U.S. history now — we have not since 1900 had an economic crisis that was not preceded by a time of insane stock overvaluation and we have not had a time of insane overvaluation that did not produce an economic crisis). There comes a point when marketing considerations need to take a back seat to preservation of our free market economic system, which cannot survive if all middle-class investors see their retirement savings wiped out (the historical data shows that we are likely to see another 65 percent price drop from where we stand today in the event that stocks continue to perform in the future anything at all as they always have in the past). *** The tool that is used by those informed about valuations to predict long-term returns (short-term returns cannot be predicted — it is true that short-term timing does not work) is "P/E10″. The P/E10 value is the price of the S&P index over the average of the last 10 years of earnings. Yale Economics Professor Robert Shiller (author of Irrational Exuberance) has been showing with research for 30 years now that P/E10 can be used to effectively predict long-term returns. Arends pointed out in an earlier article that: "This ratio [P/E10] has been a powerful predictor of long-term returns" and that "valuations is by far the most important issue for investors." A graphic that compares the Year 20 Annualized, Real, Total Return v. the P/E10 that applied on the day the index fund was purchased is here. The same graphic for 10 years out is here. A graphic comparing how investors following a Buy-and-Hold strategy would have fared over the entire historical record compared with those following a Valuation-Informed Indexing strategy is here. Norbert Schenkler, the financial planner who prepared the graphic, concluded that: "The evidence is pretty incontrovertible. Valuation-Informed Indexing…is everywhere superior to Buy-and-Hold over 10-year periods." The one exception found by Schenkler, the late 1990s, no longer applies since the onset of the stock crash (the graphic was prepared prior to the crash). Shiller used the P/E10 tool to warn us of the economic crisis that began in 2008 in his book (published in March 2000). He said that in the event that stocks performed from 2000 forward as they always have in the past: "The real losses could be comparable to the total destruction of all the schools in the country, or all the farms in the country, or possibly even all the homes in the country." I've collected a number of quotes from leading experts in the field who have expressed grave doubts about Buy-and-Hold here. I've collected 20 studies showing that valuations affect long-term returns and that thus Buy-and-Hold can never work in the long term here. If you prefer taking in information by listening rather than by reading, I have recorded 200 podcasts addressing various aspects of the question. They are available for downloading here. I post updates on developments relating to this story daily at my twitter feed here. Check out Bennett's stock market valuation calculator. Note: We are not investment advisers, and lack the experience and historical knowledge of securities returns to be able to comment on Bennett's system. We encourage investors to judge for themselves. Post to Facebook Post to Twitter 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 Add to Reddit Post to Delicious 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Post to StumbleUpon Add to Google Bookmarks Add to LinkedIn Send via Gmail Send via E-mail program Print with PrintFriendly Post to Blogger Send via Buzzster! Add to MySpace Add to NewsVine Post to Slashdot Add to Squidoo Add to Technorati Favorites Post to Digg Add to Bebo Add to Evernote Add to FriendFeed Post to Google+ Add to Plaxo Pulse

Kluge: The Athlete Machine Posted: 18 Nov 2012 07:17 PM PST Derived from the German adjective Klug (meaning “clever”), Red Bull Kluge combines complex machinery patched together with the energy and prowess of world-class athletes, to see what happens when physics gets physical. Sean MacCormac (Skydiver), Joey Brezinski (Skateboarder), Rickie Fowler (Golfer), Danny MacAskill (Trials Biker), Ryan Sheckler (Skateboarder), Drew Bezanson (BMX Rider), Bryce Menzies (Off-Road Truck Racer), Rhys Millen (Drifter), Robbie Maddison (Freestyle Motocross Rider), Lolo Jones (Hurdler), Pat Moore (Snowboarder) Get the behind the scenes footage and find out how it was done here: http://www.redbullusa.com/kluge Song: Soul Wars by AWOLNATION: http://goo.gl/BwPcp

U.S. Equity Sector ETF Performance Posted: 18 Nov 2012 12:00 PM PST   (click here if charts are not observable)

Taleb: Learn to Love Volatility Posted: 18 Nov 2012 09:00 AM PST “In economic life and history more generally, just about everything of consequence comes from black swans; ordinary events have paltry effects in the long term.” -Nassim Nicholas Taleb   Nassim Taleb’s contribution to the world of finance are two fascinating concepts — essays really — subsequently expanded into book length. The first is Fooled By Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets, which describes the tendency of investors to find patterns where none exist, and to attribute to skill that which might be better credited to luck. His second book is a corollary of sorts, almost the inverse to Fooled by Randomness: The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. The key takeaway being that we dramatically underestimate the probabilities of improbable events, as well as their outsized impacts. Over the weekend, Taleb had a worthwhile essay in the WSJ: Learning to Love Volatility. I can sum it up in Taleb’s 5 rules: Rule 1: Think of the economy as being more like a cat than a washing machine. Rule 2: Favor businesses that benefit from their own mistakes, not those whose mistakes percolate into the system. Rule 3: Small is beautiful, but it is also efficient. Rule 4: Trial and error beats academic knowledge. Rule 5: Decision makers must have skin in the game. Its worth reading the entire thing. Over the years, I’ve found that Taleb’s essays are the best way to digest his thinking. This one is no different.     Source: Learning to Love Volatility Nassim Nicholas Taleb WSJ, November 16, 2012 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324735104578120953311383448.html

Beware Online “Filter Bubbles” Posted: 18 Nov 2012 07:00 AM PST Eli Pariser: Beware online “filter bubbles” May 2011 Author Bio: Eli Pariser

Wall Street uses the Third Way to lead its assault on Social Security Posted: 18 Nov 2012 06:00 AM PST Wall Street uses the Third Way to lead its assault on Social Security By William K. Black   Third Way, lobbyists for and from Wall Street who are leading the effort to enrich Wall Street by privatizing Social Security, was created by Wall Street to fool some of the people all of the time.  I have written previously to expose their fictional claims to be a moderate or liberal Democratic group. Eric Laursen documented Wall Street's effort to become even wealthier by privatizing Social Security in articles and his recent book ("The People's Pension: The Struggle to Defend Social Security Since Reagan (AK Press)). I showed that Third Way makes itself useful by providing a faux "liberal" or "moderate" "Democratic" quote machine that can be used to discredit Democrats and Democratic policies such as the safety net.  I gave examples of how Third Way gave aid and comfort to the effort to defeat Elizabeth Warren and the effort to unravel the safety net.  Third Way continues to prove that you can fool some of the people all of the time. The National Journal ran an article on November 8, 2012 entitled "Left Divided over 'Grand Bargain.'" "Groups concerned with protecting entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare are finding themselves at odds over whether an overarching fiscal deal during Congress's end-of-year session would help or hurt their cause. The AFL-CIO organized a day of action on Thursday–part of a broader post-election campaign to protect entitlements–with dozens of events scheduled nationwide to urge lawmakers to avoid such a deal. A 'grand bargain' to prevent the year-end onset of tax hikes and spending cuts 'could cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits, all to give tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans,' the labor group argued on its organizing site. But the union campaign is being met with resistance from others on the left. 'We, like you, are ecstatic about the reelection of President Barack Obama and what it means or American growth and prosperity,' wrote Jim Kessler, senior vice president for policy for Third Way, a liberal think tank with a centrist approach, in an open letter to the groups involved with the day of action. 'However, as fellow progressives, we were disappointed to learn that you will be leading an effort against the President to impede a balanced grand bargain.' In order to protect safety-net programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, the left must embrace reform, Kessler writes." Let me attempt again to make the basic facts clear.  Third Way is not a "liberal think tank."  It does not take "a centrist approach."  It is not run by "fellow progressives."  It is not concerned with "protecting entitlements."  It is not even a "think tank."  Third Way is a creature of Wall Street.  It's version of "protecting" the safety net was made infamous during the Tet offensive in Viet Nam when the American officer explained that "it became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it."  Third Way is the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party, which seeks to defeat Democratic candidates like Elizabeth Warren running against Wall Street sycophants like Senator Scott Brown and seeks to unravel the safety net programs that are the crown jewels of the Democratic Party.  Wall Street's "natural" party is certainly the Republican Party, but Wall Street has no permanent party or ideology, only permanent interests.  Third Way serves its financial interests and the personal interests of its senior executives.  Wall Street has always been the enemy of Social Security and its greatest dream is to privatize Social Security.  Wall Street's senior executives live in terror of being held accountable under the criminal laws for their crimes.  They became wealthy by leading the "control frauds" that drove the financial crisis and the Great Recession.  This is why Wall Street made defeating Warren a top priority. Third Way is run by a man who Laursen terms an "acolyte" of Pete Peterson.  Peterson is a Republican, Wall Street billionaire who has two priorities – imposing austerity on America and privatizing Social Security.  Privatizing Social Security is Wall Street's unholy grail.  They would receive hundreds of billions of dollars in fees and ensure that their firms were not only "too big to fail," but "too big to criticize" if they could profit from a privatized retirement system.   (We do not know who funds Third Way because it refuses to make its donors public.  Given who dominates its Board of Trustees, however, the donors must be overwhelmingly from Wall Street.) Third Way's self-description has some elements of honesty, admitting that it is "led by a prominent private sector Board of Trustees, drawn from finance, industry, academia, the non-profit sector and government."  The order is revealing – the board is dominated by finance, with a thin veneer provided by industry, and with the barest patina of "academics" and "government." Here are key excerpts from their web site identifying their board. ·             John L. Vogelstein Mr. Vogelstein is the Chairman of New Providence Asset Management, LLC and Senior Advisor to Warburg Pincus, LLC. [He co-managed that huge private equity firm.] ·             Bernard L. Schwartz Mr. Schwartz is Chairman and CEO of BLS Investments, LLC. ·             David Heller Mr. Heller … was … the Global Head of Equity Trading for Goldman Sachs. ·             Georgette Bennett Dr. Bennett—an award-winning sociologist, criminologist, and journalist…. [Yeah criminologists!] ·             William D. Budinger William D. "Bill" Budinger is the founder of Rodel, Inc., where he served for 33 years as its chairman and CEO.  [Rodel manufactured semi-conductors.] ·             David A. Coulter Mr. Coulter serves as Managing Director and Senior Advisor at Warburg Pincus, focusing on the firm's financial services practice. Mr. Coulter retired in September 2005 as vice chairman of J.P. Morgan & Chase Co. He previously served as Executive Chairman of its investment bank, asset and wealth management, and private equity business. ·             Jonathan Cowan Prior to co-founding Third Way, Mr. Cowan founded and ran Americans for Gun Safety….  In 1992, he co-founded Lead…or Leave, which became the nation's leading Generation X advocacy group.  [He lobbied to protect "second amendment rights" to bear arms and led a Pete Peterson inspired group urging "Gen X" members to unravel the safety net.] ·             Lewis Cullman Mr. Cullman was the Founder and President of Cullman Ventures, Inc., a diversified corporation that included the At-A-Glance group, which manufactures and markets diaries…. ·             William M. Daley William Daley served as President Obama's Chief of Staff from January 2011 until January 2012. Prior to his Chief of Staff role, he was Vice Chairman … of … JPMorgan Chase, from 2004 until 2011. As Special Counsel to President Clinton in 1993, Daley coordinated the successful campaign to pass the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). He was co-chair of the US Chamber of Commerce Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness.  [This is code for deregulation of finance.] ·             John Dyson Mr. Dyson is Chairman of Millbrook Capital Management, Inc. (MCM), a private investment firm. ·             Robert Dyson Mr. Dyson … is Chairman and CEO of the Dyson-Kissner-Moran Corp., a privately owned, diversified investment holding company…. ·             Andrew Feldstein Andrew Feldstein is the CEO and Chief Investment Officer of BlueMountain Capital Management…. Prior to co-founding BlueMountain in 2003, Mr. Feldstein spent over a decade at JPMorgan where he was a Managing Director and served as Head of Structured Credit; Head of High Yield Sales, Trading and Research; and Head of Global Credit Portfolio. ["High yield" is a euphemism for junk bonds.] ·             Brian Frank Mr. Frank is a Director and Portfolio Manager at MSD Capital, L.P., the private investment firm founded by Michael Dell. ·             Michael B. Goldberg Mr. Goldberg joined Kelso & Company in 1991 as a Partner and Managing Director.  [Private equity.] ·             Peter A. Joseph Mr. Joseph has been in the private equity investment business for over twenty years…. ·             Derek Kaufman Derek Kaufman is Head of Global Fixed Income at Citadel LLC. He is a member of Citadel's Portfolio Committee. Prior to joining Citadel in 2008, Mr. Kaufman was a Managing Director at JPMorgan Chase…. ·             Derek Kirkland Mr. Kirkland is a Managing Director and Co-Head of the Global Financial Institutions Group at Morgan Stanley's Financial Institutions Group in Investment Banking. ·             Ronald A. Klain Ronald A. "Ron" Klain is President of Case Holdings, and General Counsel of Revolution LLC.  [Case is an investment fund for the holdings of AOL's founder.] ·             Thurgood Marshall, Jr. Mr. Marshall is a partner at Bingham McCutchen LLP, and a Principal of Bingham Consulting Group. Mr. Marshall counsels and devises strategies for advancing clients' interests before Congress, the executive branch and independent regulatory agencies. [He is a lobbyist for a firm best known for representing financial firms.] ·             Susan McCue Ms. McCue is President of Message-Global, LLC, a strategic communications and public affairs firm she founded in January 2008 to advance progressive campaigns, activism and issue advocacy in the U.S. and globally. ·             Herbert Miller Mr. Miller, former CEO and Chairman of The Mills Corporation, one of America's most innovative and successful mall developers and managers, founded Western Development Corporation (WDC) in 1967 and serves as its Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and Principal Stockholder. ·             Michael Novogratz Mr. Novogratz has been President and Director of Fortress Investment Group LLC….. Prior to joining Fortress, Mr. Novogratz spent 11 years at Goldman Sachs…. ·             Andrew Parmentier Mr. Parmentier is a Founding and Managing Partner of Height Analytics. He and fellow Managing Partner John Akridge formed the company in January 2009. He has worked in the financial services industry since 1997…. ·             Kirk Radke Recognized internationally as one of the top private equity attorneys during his 28 year career at Kirkland & Ellis…. Among professional activities, Mr. Radke is Co-Chair & Organizer of the International Bar Association Private Equity Symposium, Founder of the Private Equity General Counsel Network, Founder of Legal Series and Co-Founder of the Private Equity Law Firm Roundtable. ·             Howard Rossman Dr. Rossman is a President and Founder of Mesirow Advanced Strategies, Inc. and a Vice Chairman of its parent, Mesirow Financial Holdings Inc. He is responsible for all aspects of fund management, including manager due diligence, strategy analysis and asset allocation. ·             Tim Sweeney Mr. Sweeney has been President and CEO of the Denver-based Gill Foundation since October 2007. For more than 30 years, he has worked to advance equality for all people regardless of sexual orientation or gender expression. ·             Ted Trimpa Mr. Trimpa is a partner with the international law firm, Hogan Lovells LLP. ·             Barbara Manfrey Vogelstein She has over 24 years of experience in venture capital and specialized equity investing. [S]he was a Partner of Warburg Pincus, one of the world's largest private equity firms. ·             Joseph Zimlich Mr. Zimlich is the Chief Executive Officer of Bohemian Companies, a group of family-owned real estate and private equity holdings.   Twenty of the twenty-nine trustees come from finance (counting the lawyer whose specialty is representing private equity firms).  Their most common background is Mitt Romney's – private equity – and hedge funds.  The nine non-finance members include: A Pete Peterson acolyte who previously created supposedly centrist front groups for gun rights and an effort to enlist "Gen X" in Wall Street's assault on the safety net A developer of giant malls A semi-conductor manufacturer A manufacturer of diaries A criminologist/journalist A PR specialist A gay rights activist A lobbyist at a firm best known for representing finance A lawyer The board includes three representatives of "main street" (malls, semi-conductors, and diaries).  They are not heavy hitters compared to the finance representatives.  On finance issues, Third Way is Wall Street.  It is run by Wall Street for Wall Street.  It is liberal only on social issues such as gay rights – and Wall Street created Third Way to focus on finance. I have explained in other articles the incoherence and ineptitude of the financial policies that Third Way (including Casey, who temporarily left Third Way's board to serve as President Obama's chief of staff, where he urged Obama to adopt austerity and the Great Betrayal.  I have explained how those policies would have thrown the nation back into recession and doomed Obama's chance for re-election.  Third Way has learned nothing from their errors – they continue to push the Great Betrayal and austerity.  Their overriding goal is to begin the process of privatizing Social Security.  The fact that their policies would cause a gratuitous recession, immense misery, and terrible electoral losses to Democrats does not represent a policy failure to Wall Street.  Wall Street would be the grand winner if we began to privatize Social Security as Third Way proposes. The "left" is not divided on the need to oppose austerity and the Great Betrayal.  Third Way is not left or center or even right.  It is Wall Street on the Potomac.  Opposition to austerity and the Great Betrayal is not a left v. center issue.   Wall Street's proposed financial policies are terrible for virtually all Americans.

SNL Weekend Update: Chris Christie Posted: 18 Nov 2012 05:00 AM PST

10 Sunday Reads Posted: 18 Nov 2012 04:40 AM PST Good Sunday morning. A few items that caught my eye that I thought might be worth your time: • It’s Not All About The Fiscal Cliff (Comstock) see also Kaletsky: Confessions of a deficit denier (Reuters) • Thaler: Applause for the Numbers Machine (NYT) • Hating Tech, Loving Junk: Global money managers have abandoned tech stocks and small caps in favor of junk bonds and REITs. This will not end well. (Barron’s) • Steve Jobs vs. Sam Walton: The tale of the tape (CNN Money) see also Amazon’s Jeff Bezos: The ultimate disrupter (Fortune) • How Dead Is the Book Business? (NYT) • Chicago judge okays AG suit vs S&P. Bad omen for rating agencies? (Thomson Reuters) • Notes on the Decline of a Great Nation (Spiegel Online) • Scientists uncover a new pathway that regulates information processing in the brain (Science Codex) see also Study reveals how the brain stores information about social rank (Wellcome) • When armies become media: Israel live-blogs and tweets an attack on Hamas (Gigaom) • IRS sued for not enforcing campaign restrictions on churches (Daily Page) see also Freedom From Religion Foundation sues IRS for not enforcing electioneering restrictions on churches (The Daily Page) What are you reading?   13 Cents of Every Retail Dollar Was Spent at Gas Stations Source: Real Time Economics

A Comparison of the Real-Time Performance of Business Cycle Dating Methods Posted: 18 Nov 2012 02:00 AM PST

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