The Big Picture

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• The Parts Are More Than the Whole: Separating Goods and Services to Predict Core Inflation
• Government Shutdown Caused By Bad Policy By Both Parties
• 10 Monday PM Reads
• Ten Reasons Why You Must Attend the Big Picture Conference!
• 10 Monday AM Reads
• Look Out Below, Government Shutdown Edition
• $11 Billion Fine? Just a Cost of Doing Business

The Parts Are More Than the Whole: Separating Goods and Services to Predict Core Inflation Posted: 01 Oct 2013 02:00 AM PDT

Government Shutdown Caused By Bad Policy By Both Parties Posted: 30 Sep 2013 10:30 PM PDT The Real Cause of the Crisis: Forget Partisan Rhetoric … The Threatened Government Shutdown Is Caused By Bad Policy By BOTH PARTIES Preface: Remember what the Founding Fathers said about partisan soap operas. While partisans focus on specific things the other side is doing – "Obamacare" and the "debt ceiling" are the buzzwords of the day – the truth is that we wouldn't be in this budget crisis in the first place if the government hadn't engaged in bipartisan idiocy by: Killing the Golden Goose of the internet economy – by far the strongest section of the U.S. economy – through mass surveillance, which directly harms internet companies, Silicon Valley, California … and the entire U.S. economy (Facebook lost 11 millions users as of April mainly due to privacy concerns … and that was before the Snowden revelations) Encouraging American businesses to move abroad for decades, sucking money out of the U.S. economy and injecting it into foreign economies Fighting a series of wars – which are horrible for the economy – when not absolutely vital to protect against an imminent attack Creating the too big to fail banks, which are dooming the economy Giving massive subsidies to the giant banks, saving the big banks at taxpayer expense, choosing the banks over the little guy, and saying no to helping Main Street … while continuing to throw trillions at the giant banks Throwing a large percentage of those bailouts at foreign banks (and see this) Throwing money at other corporate welfare queens Giving massive subsidies to the doomed nuclear industry Propping up the bondholders … which is killing the rest of the economy Refusing to prosecute criminal fraud … which is destroying the economy Engaging in massive quantitative easing, which drains the government coffers, hurts the economy and the little guy, and more than offsets any savings from budget cuts in other areas (a huge portion of the money from quantitative easing went to foreign companies. More here and here) Engineering a "jobless recovery" which is really a redistribution of wealth from the little guy to the big boys … which hurts the overall economy Allowing an over-financialized economy, which leads to depressions Allowing runaway fraud, waste, and corruption Spending large amounts of money on a failed drug war Allowing giant corporations to escape paying taxes – or even allowing them to get tax refunds – while slamming the small business owner and little guy (we at Washington's Blog aren't partisan one way or the other, but we are for fairness. Moreover, small businesses create a lot more jobs than big businesses)

10 Monday PM Reads Posted: 30 Sep 2013 01:30 PM PDT My afternoon train reading: • The Unofficial Dividend.com Guide To Being An Investor (Dividend.com) • 10 Terms Investment Pros Use to Raise Money (The Reformed Broker) • The Shocking Cost to Taxpayers of a Shutdown (Fiscal Times) • 10 surprising economic trends that rule the world (Quartz) • Fed Too Familiar With Lost Workers Seeks New Guideposts: Economy (Bloomberg) see also Janet Yellen record gives pointer to Fed policy if Obama picks her as chair (FT.com) • How Tighter Mortgage Standards Are Holding Back the Recovery (WSJ) • Invest in whatever Wall Street hates (MarketWatch) • Who Should Invest in Startups? (Priceonomics) • How I botched it on CNBC (Salon) • Survival After Cancer Diagnosis Strongly Associated With Governments Spending On Health Care (Science Daily) What are you reading?   Source: Bloomberg

Ten Reasons Why You Must Attend the Big Picture Conference! Posted: 30 Sep 2013 09:00 AM PDT Josh here: I never promote stuff on the blog that I’m not totally excited for in real life, and I truly could not be more excited for our upcoming The Big Picture Conference 2013, to be held October 8th in New York City. This year we’re expecting our largest crowd yet, mostly owing to the insanely high quality speakers list for the event, partial list here: Scheduled Speakers In the meantime, I thought I’d explain why I’m so pumped for the event and why I think you’ll really enjoy it. 10. Bang for your buck. Our idea this year on pricing was to blow all other conferences away in terms of the maximum bang for your buck. We priced at $249.00 this year and I think we offer an incredible amount of content for a price even treble that amount. We wanted to be as inclusive as possible but still keep the intimacy The Big Picture conference has become known for. Our venue, the McGraw Hill Auditorium, is just right in that regard. 9. My idea for my own panel was to invite some of the most well-known, intelligent chief market strategists in the business and discuss the state of their profession in 2013. Jeff Kleintop (LPL), Dan Greenhaus (BTIG) and Art Hogan (Lazard) are three of the smartest, most insightful strategists in the business – they’ll join me to talk about markets, media, turning out the noise and amplifying the signal. I’m also planning to leave lots of time for Q&A so you guys can start getting your questions ready now. 8. Stephanie Pomboy (Macro Mavens) is one of the most respected and influential economists in the world. Her client list includes governments, billionaires and major corporations. Stephanie’s doing a presentation that you won’t want to miss. 7. Crazy stuff happens. Last year David Rosenberg pulled a pair of rose-colored glasses out of his pocket and began walking back and forth blindly across the stage. “Oh, now I get it! Now I see why you’re all so happy about this economic recovery!” The year before that, I moderated a panel consisting of James Altucher, Howard Lindzon and Henry Blodget. Altucher led off with a story about getting an erection on the way to the conference and then Howard Lindzon began dropping F-bombs uncontrollably. Blodget turned white as a sheet, but there was no escape. Good times… 6. There will be trillions in AUM represented on stage. James O’Shaughnessy is doing a presentation for us. Last year, James made the case for why stocks had much more upside, quantitatively speaking. If you recall the gloom of last October, this wasn’t exactly a lay-up call. James nailed it, obviously, and this year we have no idea what he’ll have to say. Jack Brennan, the Chairman of Vanguard is also speaking at the conference. Jack ran Vanguard as CEO from 1996 to 2008 and has overseen the company’s massive expansion into a $2 trillion asset management giant. He’ll be covering the state of the financial services and advisory industry, what’s working now and what is coming in the future. 5. Networking! One of the key reasons to attend any conference is for the chance to meet with like-minded (or not so like-minded) professionals. The swapping of intel, shared experiences and war stories is sometimes the best part – not to mention the potential business opportunities that arise from these kinds of encounters. My very unscientific guess is that 60 some-odd percent of attendees are involved in the wealth management and/or investment business directly. These include portfolio managers, financial advisors, family office people, hedge fund investors, analysts, traders etc. 4. The media. There’s always a lot of coverage of The Big Picture conference in the press and this year will be no different. On hand will be reporters and representatives from Bloomberg, CNBC, Wall Street Journal, Yahoo Finance, Business Insider, Forbes, Fortune, the New York Times and more. Last year it was a lot of fun to watch some of the most well-known bloggers and journalists covering finance meet their fans and readers in the audience as they covered the event. 3. Barry’s presentation. Barry’s new presentation he’s been on the road with is entitled ‘Romancing Alpha, Forsaking Beta’. In many ways, it’s back to his roots after several years of doing his Bailout Nation / Credit Crisis stuff. Barry began writing the Apprenticed Investor column at TheStreet.com almost a decade ago and I still remember some of the lessons to this day. The new show he does is all about how frequently we seem to be fixated on the wrong thing when putting money to work. He gotten a big response on it from the circuit this summer, if you haven’t caught it yet this is your chance. 2. Breakfast, lunch and snacks. Yes, we’re feeding you. 1. We have Art Cashin, a rare treat. Art’s a director for UBS and has been on the floor of the NYSE for forty years. No one has better stories, he’ll be laying ‘em on us during a fireside chat with Barry. You almost never get to hear and see Art off the floor, this will be a truly special, once in a lifetime moment for traders, investors and market aficionados. I could go on and on but I think you get the drift. I love The Big Picture Conference, this is my third go-round, and I think you will too. Click  below to reserve your spot and I’ll see you there! The Big Picture Conference 2013

10 Monday AM Reads Posted: 30 Sep 2013 07:00 AM PDT My morning reading: • Forget stock picking, stick with the indexes (MarketWatch) • ‘Sharing economy’ is here to stay, so get used to it (Los Angeles Times) • How Many 'Greater Fools' Does It Take to Make a Bubble? (Moneybeat) see also Housing Market Is Heating Up, if Not Yet Bubbling (Dealbook) • A Synopsis of Fedspeak (Tim Duy’s Fed Watch) • The JP Morgan apologists of CNBC (Reuters) see also Why Judges Are Scowling at Banks (NYT) • Fiscal debates: Troubled waters ahead or perfect calm? (Vanguard) • How to probe public attitudes? (Understanding Society) • The Genius Of Twitter: A Paean (Tech Crunch) • Obsoletive (stratēchery) • New York in Black and White (Wired New York) What are you reading?   Apple Passes Coca-Cola as Most Valuable Brand Source: NYT

Look Out Below, Government Shutdown Edition Posted: 30 Sep 2013 04:15 AM PDT click for updated futures 7     I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news? Well, as the futures above shows, US markets are under lots of pressure, widely blamed on the economic impact of the likely shut down of government tonight at midnight. Shutting down nearly 25% of an already fragile economy is hardly the recipe for growth and advancement. The good news is that so far, all we have is political posturing. History suggest that nothing happens until at least 12 hours after our September 30th midnight deadline. No one gets serious about any sort of deal before noon on October 1. At that point, political pressure on the House Republicans — from constituents, from Business leaders, and from elder statesmen — will start in earnest. A few days later, it can become more intense. We see the same sort of patterns with the debt ceiling limit as well (that’s schedule to hit at midnight October 17). As NBC’s Pete Williams have reported, we have had 17 prior government shutdowns over the past 40 years, including 21 days in 1995 (table below). So while this feels like its new and unusual, it is actually more commonplace than most of us believe.     The odds favor a resolution in a matter of days or weeks.     See also: • First U.S. Shutdown in 17 Years at Midnight Seen Probable (Bloomberg) • The Odd Story of the Law That Dictates How Government Shutdowns Work (The Atlantic) • Wall Street Uneasy in Face of Government Shutdown (Dealbook) • Government shutdown would threaten fragile economy (Politico) • House Republicans Push Obamacare Delay as Shutdown Nears (Bloomberg) • Debt ceiling fandango: the key dates (FT Alphaville) • Government Shutdown Near as House Votes to Delay Obamacare (Bloomberg) • Krugman: Rebels Without a Clue (NYT) • 'Political Shenanigans' Take Center Stage, Hitting Risk Appetite (MoneyBeat) • The Right Gets Its '60s (NYT)

$11 Billion Fine? Just a Cost of Doing Business Posted: 30 Sep 2013 03:30 AM PDT click for video   Source: $11 Billion Fine? Just a Cost of Doing Business for JPMorgan: Ritholtz Jeff Macke Breakout – Thu, Sep 26, 2013 http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/breakout/11-billion-fine-just-cost-doing-business-jpmorgan-175948500.html

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