The Big Picture

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• The Role of Total Hours Worked in Japan’s (Lack of) GDP Growth
• Why Does Anyone Still Believe the NSA?
• 10 Monday PM Reads
• Key Trends in a Milestone Year for ETFs
• 10 Monday AM Reads
• What the Heroes of Blogging Have Accomplished
• NoahOpinion’s Heroes of Blogging
• Moral Hazard: Slumdogs vs. Millionaires

The Role of Total Hours Worked in Japan’s (Lack of) GDP Growth Posted: 14 Jan 2014 02:00 AM PST

Why Does Anyone Still Believe the NSA? Posted: 13 Jan 2014 10:30 PM PST Only a FOOL Still Believes the NSA   The NSA and other intelligence officials have been repeatedly caught lying about their spying programs. Officials in the legislative, judicial and executive branches of government all say that the mass surveillance on Americans is unnecessary: 3 Senators with top secret clearance "have reviewed this surveillance extensively and have seen no evidence that the bulk collection of Americans' phone records has provided any intelligence of value that could not have been gathered through less intrusive means" Another Senator with top secret clearance agrees, and so does the congress member who wrote the Patriot Act, and more than 100 congress members from both parties As does the official panel created by President Obama to review NSA spying, made up of top former White House officials and other government insiders, including the head of counter-terrorism under Clinton and Bush and former deputy CIA director Michael J. Morrell NBC News reports: A member of the White House review panel on NSA surveillance said he was "absolutely" surprised when he discovered the agency's lack of evidence that the bulk collection of telephone call records had thwarted any terrorist attacks."It was, 'Huh, hello? What are we doing here?'" said Geoffrey Stone, a University of Chicago law professor…. "That was stunning. That was the ballgame," said one congressional intelligence official, who asked not to be publicly identified. "It flies in the face of everything that they have tossed at us." The conclusions of the panel's reports were at direct odds with public statements by President Barack Obama and U.S. intelligence officials. A non-profit, bipartisan policy group says that NSA mass surveillance has no impact on terrorism CNN terrrorism expert Peter Bergen says that mass surveillance is not needed to stop another 9/11 Former president Clinton (and apparently Carter, as well), agree that mass surveillance is unnecessary As do the chairs of the 9/11 Commission which was created by Congress and the White House As does the counter-terrorism czar under the Clinton and Bush administrations, Richard Clarke. And see this As does a federal judge (and see this) Top terrorism and security experts also agree, saying that: Mass spying by the NSA has never stopped a single terrorist attack Mass surveillance doesn't protect us from terrorism Mass spying actually interferes with our ability to stop terrorism Indeed, the NSA itself no longer claims that its mass spying program has stopped terror attacks or saved lives. Instead, intelligence spokesmen themselves now claim that mass spying is just an "insurance policy" to give "peace of mind". But given that mass surveillance by governments on their own people have always been used – for at least 500 years – to crush dissent, that the NSA has a long history of spying on Congress for political purposes, and that high-level NSA whistleblowers say that the NSA is using spying to blackmail politicians and social critics and to prosecute people the government dislikes, the question is whose peace of mind the programs preserve And while the NSA claims that disclosure of its spying programs hurts America's security, that's what authoritarians always say. For example: When leakers disclosed that the FBI was conducting mass spying on – and smearing – anti-war Americans, attorney general John Mitchell said that the leaks would "endanger" the lives of government agents Founding Fathers Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Adams did exactly what Edward Snowden did … and were likewise labeled as traitors by the British government So how can anyone believe the NSA at this point? Unfortunately, fear of terror makes people unable to think straight … and when the government undertakes a large, idiotic project – like launching the Iraq war – many people will go to great lengths to grasp at straws to try to rationalize the government's ill-conceived campaign. The minority of Americans who believe the NSA have – sadly – fallen for the same trick …

10 Monday PM Reads Posted: 13 Jan 2014 01:30 PM PST My afternoon train-reading: • Who would have guessed Supermodels make bad currency traders? (FT.com) • Leaving CAPE Town (Reformed Broker) but see Goldman turns bearish on US equities (FT) • Fed Sent $77.7 Billion in Profits to Treasury Last Year (Real Time Economics) • The Drunkard’s Walk (Seeking Wisdom) • Three things the press gets wrong about Apple in China (Fortune) • If you get a PhD, get an economics PhD (Noahpinion) see also The Case for Hiring “Outlier” Employees (Harvard Business Review) • Bridge scandal: 10 things the public needs to know (Star Ledger) • It takes a village to green-light new hires at Amazon (WSJ) • Fallen foreclosure king David J. Stern is disbarred by Florida Supreme Court (MoJo) • How Effective Will Your Diet Be in 5 Years? (Priceonomics) What are you reading?   What You Know About Retirement Investing Is Wrong Source: WSJ

Key Trends in a Milestone Year for ETFs Posted: 13 Jan 2014 11:30 AM PST Source: WSJ

10 Monday AM Reads Posted: 13 Jan 2014 07:30 AM PST Good Monday morning. Here is what I am reading today: • What if this bull market is actually just a very old bear? (Financial Post) • A Market Streak Has Ended, but the Echoes Haven't (NY Times) see also Why Stocks are a "Harder Call" Now (Reformed Broker) • How Healthy Is the Public Technology Market? (Tom Tunguz)   Continues here

What the Heroes of Blogging Have Accomplished Posted: 13 Jan 2014 05:45 AM PST Last week, Noah penned a very interesting post, titled “Heroes of Blogging” (he includes a few kind words about your humble author). The temptation is to create one's own list of blogging heroes, but instead I want to focus your attention on the impact of the entire financial blog format — on markets, investing and financial journalism. In my biased and not-so-humble opinion, the world of finance blogs has grown into having a surprisingly large impact on modern finance. How? Consider what factors it has wrought. Blogging: 1. Loosened the grip of traditional players on information and news: Go back in time a decade or so, and we all got our financial news from only a handful of sources. The mainstream papers and magazines dutifully reported what companies said, government agencies reported and what markets did. Blogging has added a level of skepticism to the media diet. There is a willingness to call out nonsense that quite bluntly, deserves to be called nonsense. Not that it didn’t happen before bloggers were willing to do it — but it happens much more quickly and with more depth than pre-blogging days. Continues here

NoahOpinion’s Heroes of Blogging Posted: 13 Jan 2014 04:00 AM PST Lovely sentiments from Noah Smith on a few of your favorite bloggers, including Josh Brown and yours truly: Barry Ritholtz: There is a huge amount of financial disinformation and misinformation and just plain bullshit out there in the world. Most financial news is random noise, and some is even worse than that. And there’s a good reason why there is all that bad financial information out there: it makes money for the people who put it out there. Thus, it is kind of a wonder that Barry Ritholtz exists at all. Barry Ritholtz works in the financial industry, giving people advice and helping them manage their money. But in addition, he offers lots of free advice on his blog, The Big Picture. That in and of itself is highly unusual. Much of his advice is about how you shouldn’t trust the finance industry of which he is a part. That is even more unusual. And when Barry makes a correct prediction – such as when he nearly perfectly called the bottom after the 2008 stock market crash – he attributes it to luck. That is pretty extraordinary. Along with his partner and fellow blog hero Josh Brown (The Reformed Broker), Barry is helping to bring honesty to financial media. Barry is, to my knowledge, the first popular finance blogger to report extensively on behavioral finance. Since most individual investors (read: YOU) tend to make a ton of investing mistakes – trading too much, chasing trends, being overconfident, etc. etc. – behavioral finance is probably the single most important thing that most blog readers can learn about. Well done. Truly lovely and humbling sentiments. I will do my best to live up to the philosophy Noah describes . . .

Moral Hazard: Slumdogs vs. Millionaires Posted: 13 Jan 2014 03:00 AM PST Some argue that income inequality isn’t systemic enough: Slumdogs vs. Millionaires The Daily Show Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook (04:14) Why some media lauds the end of unemployment insurance fraud, which is totally different from Wall Street fraud. Slumdogs vs. Millionaires – Moral Hazard The Daily Show Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook (04:59) January 9, 2014

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