The Big Picture

Startups Are Not Disruptive — They the Global Rich Get Richer
Succinct Summation of Week’s Events (May 3, 2013)
Which is a Better Inflation Hedge, Gold or Houses?
10 Friday AM Reads
Predicting Jobs Data Is Hard — and Useless, Too.
The Vanishing Middle: Job Polarization and Workers’ Response to the Decline in Middle-Skill Jobs
Stones Tickets? Disaster

Startups Are Not Disruptive — They the Global Rich Get Richer

Posted: 03 May 2013 10:30 PM PDT

In the closing keynote of NEXT Berlin 2013, acclaimed science-fiction author and journalist Bruce Sterling tackled a variety of topics like design fiction, start-up culture, and the mass adoption of disruptive technology. He sees science fiction as a form of design – design fiction that is part of the start-up

Bruce Sterling on Fantasy prototypes and real disruption

hat tip boingboing

Succinct Summation of Week’s Events (May 3, 2013)

Posted: 03 May 2013 12:30 PM PDT

Succinct summation of the events for the week ending May 3, 2013.

Positives:

1. The markets hit new highs with the S&P 500 > 1600, Dow over 15,000.
2. April Payrolls +165k. Upward revision of 114k to the February and March. Unemployment rate falls to 7.5% 3. Average hourly earnings rise .2%, in line and average duration of unemployment falls.
4. Jobless claims come in at the lowest level since 2008. Claims drop 18,000 to 324,000
5. First time in 17 years the market hasn't had a 5% correction from January through May.
6. Average 30 year mortgage rate fell to 4 month lows of 3.60%, prompting refi applications to rise 2.8% (most since January) .
7. FOMC minutes indicate the Fed will maintain its pace of $85B monthly bond buying (or may do even more).
8. March personal spending grows 0.2% v flat expectations.
9. Treasury yields hit 2013 low (so much for the "Great Rotation.")
10. Case/Shiller home price index rises to highest since Dec '08. Home prices rise 9.32% year-over-year; Home prices rise 1.24% month-over-month
11. Italian 10 year bond auction delivers the lowest yield since October 2010.
12. Ford sales up 17.9% in U.S. in April (year over year). GM April sales up 11%.
13. ISM manufacturing fell less than expected to 50.7. This beat economists' expectations of a fall to 50.5. (glass half full)
14. Pending home sales jump 1.5% v expectations of +1%;
15. Stoxx 600 rises for the 11th straight month, the longest winning streak since 1997.

Negatives:

1. Euro-area Q4 household savings rate falls to the lowest levels since 1999.
2. Average work week falls to 34.4 from 34.6 hours; Labor participation rate = 63.3%, lowest since 1979
3. EU manufacturing at 46.7 remains firmly below 50.
4. Euro-area April economic confidence falls to 88.6 v expectations of 89.3.
5. March personal income grows 0.2% v expectations of 0.4%.
6. EU unemployment reaches another record high of 12.1%.
7. March Factory Orders fall 4% vs est of down 2.9% (February revised lower by 1.1%). Non defense cap goods orders ex aircraft revised lower y/o/y.
8. ISM mfr'g falls to 50.7, slowest since Dec. Employment component also falls to lowest since Nov at 50.2.
9. Chicago PMI slides to 49 v expectations of 52.5.
10. China PMI comes in at 50.6 v expectations of 50.7.Japan March industrial output rises 0.2% v expectations of +0.4%.
11. Greece retail sales -14.4% v expectations of 15.2%.
12. German retail sales in March in line but down .3% m/o/m (Feb revised lower by 0.6).

Which is a Better Inflation Hedge, Gold or Houses?

Posted: 03 May 2013 10:30 AM PDT

Source: Bloomberg’s Chart of the Day, Federal Housing Finance Agency

Here is something I never would have guessed at, via Dave Wilson of Bloomberg: If you want to be hedged against the risk of a pickup in inflation, you would be better off buying houses than gold.

That’s according to Michael Hartnett, chief investment strategist at Merrill Lynch. His chart (above) shows the U.S. house-price index and the price of Gold since 1995.

According to Bloomberg, “Home prices rose 6% through the end of last year from their low in the second quarter of 2011. Q1 reading is due May 23. Prices in 20 of the largest U.S. cities increased 0.4 percent through the first two months of this year, according to the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index.”

As houses became more expensive, gold got cheaper. Its off as much as 31% from its September 2011 peak of $1,923.70 an ounce.

Source:
Houses Surpass Gold for Hedging U.S. Inflation
David Wilson
Bloomberg May 3 2013

10 Friday AM Reads

Posted: 03 May 2013 06:43 AM PDT

My morning reads:

• Preferred Shares Find Favor Among Banks (WSJ)
• The Intel Opportunity & Andy Grove (Stratechery)
• We have an Inflation Problem: There’s Not Enough of It (NYT)
• The Falling Cost Of Solar Energy Is Surprising Everyone (Business Insider)
• Betaworks is Buying Up All the Key Pieces of the Online-News Ecosystem (Atlantic)
• WTF? GOP Census Bill Would Eliminate America’s Economic Indicators (UPDATE) (Huffington Post) see also A new GOP bill would prevent the government from collecting economic data (Wonkblog)
• Austerity: The History of a Pernicious Idea (New Republic) see also Faced With Discredited Research, WSJ Doubles Down On Calls For Austerity (Media Matters)
• 10 Technologies That Are Completely Changing The World (Business Insider)
• 'Time Crystals' Could Upend Physicists' Theory of Time (Wired)
• The Section: Knights of Soft Rock (Rolling Stone)

What are you reading?

Employment Situation

Source: Barron’s

Predicting Jobs Data Is Hard — and Useless, Too.

Posted: 03 May 2013 04:26 AM PDT

This morning, I tweeted out Spencer Jakab’s WSJ column on NFP — It’s a Hard Job Predicting Payrolls Number, with the annotation “Its pointless, too.”

While I understand the obligation many economists have to their employers to make a jobs forecast, you have no such obligation. You don’t have to make a prediction, weigh in, make a guess, create a forecast model or even read other people’s forecasts.

Why not?

Here are three reasons:

1) People are really, really bad at making accurate forecasts: Most forecasts are at best, an educated hypothesis and at worst, a blind guess. A glance at the history of these sorts of predictions reveals that everyone gets these things wrong. I have yet to see someone consistently forecast these things. Indeed, I have yet to see a good 3 month in a row streak forecast by any economist. We simply lack the ability to predict the future.

2) Modelling isn’t much better: The combination of a huge number of known variables, poor data assembly, and a number of unknown variables — plus a healthy dollop of unforeseen randomness — makes employment data forecasting at best slightly better than raw guessing.

3) Even if you could make an accurate forecast, it wont help you in the markets: That’s the funny part of all this — it is a meaningless exercise for investors, and a dubious one for traders. This is especially true in the present investment environment where the FOMC looms as large as they do. The next level analysis is whether the good news is bad (meaning less accommodation) or good (economic improvement) or conversely where bad news is good (meaning more accommodation) or bad (economic deterioration).

Our time would be better utilized trying to discern the current state of the labor market — what actually is (and recently was) rather than what might be. This is useful data for companies, policymakers and labor participants. It has actual utility. Predictions don’t.

~~~

Consensus forecast is for 140,000 in April, with jobless rate at 7.6%.

Employment situation report released at 8:30am

Previously:
NFP Day: The Most Over-Analyzed, Over-Emphasized, Least-Understood Data Point (February 4th, 2011, 7)

The Vanishing Middle: Job Polarization and Workers’ Response to the Decline in Middle-Skill Jobs

Posted: 03 May 2013 03:00 AM PDT

Stones Tickets? Disaster

Posted: 03 May 2013 02:30 AM PDT

It's a disaster.

And it's hiding in plain sight. All you've got to do is go to their site and see what's available, your jaw will drop.

Enthralled with the ancient British rockers, the mainstream press has completely dropped the ball on this story. So busy reporting last weekend's club gig, the sycophantic reporters refuse to do any…reporting. To see that the bottom just dropped out of the Stones business.

Yes, go to Rolling Stones

And click to "Get Tickets."

Then pull up May 3rd's gig at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, America's number two market, home to more poseurs than anywhere but the Cote d'Azur.

First you'll be stunned how seamlessly AXS works. We've been told for eons that Ticketmaster is an unbeatable champion. But AXS is faster, easier and just an all-around better experience.

So pick the May 3rd gig. If you can't navigate to this page, stop reading this now, you're too ignorant to get the points I'm going to be making anyway.

Select 2 seats. Don't allow for splits. There are frequently single seats available in good sections for the most desirable gigs.

Select "Best seat at any price level."

Then click on "Find Tickets."

Whew!

You can sit right down front!

But it gets better!

You can still get 8 seats together in desirable sections!

Which means…

Sales are horrific.

It's even worse for the May 20th gig. You can still get 8 seats together right down front!

How did this happen?

GREED!

Let me tell you how this works. AEG pays the Stones whether they sell out or they don't, whether anybody shows up or the hall is empty.

This is a far cry from the way business was done in the years the Stones became the "World's Greatest Rock & Roll Band."

Used to be there was a guarantee, and then a split after break even.

But then Michael Cohl revolutionized the business.

And then Bob Sillerman rolled up the promoters and the acts had a field day, raping big time promoters for huge guarantees.

And the small shows got squeezed out, only the big ones counted in the mind of the public. And the Internet burgeoned. And suddenly, scalping became rampant. Even via the eBay company StubHub, never mind by individuals speculating.

And the game was rigged. There were so many pre-sales and holdbacks that demand seemed to outstrip supply in all cases. So resale prices went through the roof!

And until 2008, everybody was loaded with cash, the rich still are, they want to go to the show not to see it, but to say they were there.

And Mick Jagger is pissed these people have more money than he does. He wants to fly private and vacation without the hoi polloi, so he needs to rip you off, he needs to get all that money!

That's what the inflated ticket prices are all about. Making sure scalpers don't get the markup.

But this time around, prices are so damn high the public is balking, which surprises even me, because this truly looks like the last tour. But what we've learned here is the mania surrounding recent Stones shows has been created by the press, there's just not that much demand, people cared more about Miley Cyrus and Beanie Babies. Yes, parents care more about their kids than decrepit rockers.

The initial shows last fall did well. Because of the mainstream press around the marketing angle of fifty years…

But just like the Cream comeback was an event in London and a dud in New York City, the bloom is off the rose, there's no story, people just don't care.

Do they care for $100?

A lot more.

Then again, the Stones have been doing weak business for eons. You could always get a ticket.

So where does this leave us?

In the land of Kid Rock. Where everybody scales back, where we have a reset, where even the execs take less.

Because what once was is no longer.

The Stones have jumped the shark.

And that means most of the other classic rock acts have too.

Furthermore, if you think the Stones are phenomenal in concert, you haven't seen them, or are used to the Grateful Dead. They lock on occasionally, otherwise, it's rough.

So if you're against paperless ticketing, you're a weasel. That's what delivered $600 tickets, fear that the scalpers would take too much of the profit.

And if you're against airline style variable pricing, you're part of the problem too. Because if we had such a system, AEG could lower the price and sell out. But now they can't.

Oh, they'll find some way to fill the hall. The biggest stars paper, from Springsteen to Kenny Chesney.

And a loss is in the offing, unless the Stones give back.

But they won't.

But maybe they will. Dainty dropped out because he couldn't come up with the money. Maybe if AEG does a great job they'll get a better, profitable deal in the rest of the world.

Yes, at some point, everybody drops out. The deal becomes too expensive. Not only for the promoters, but the public.

But this is what income inequality has wrought. Acts pissed that record sales have dropped have raised ticket prices so high the public has now cried UNCLE!

~~~

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