Today’s Planet Money podcast is interesting (and surprisingly not depressing).
Today is the birthday
… of Peter Coyote, the actor. He’s 67. Coyote does a lot of voice-over and narration. He’s the one that sounds a lot like Henry Fonda. He’s appeared in more than 100 films and television shows (including recently in “Commander in Chief”), though he began acting only at age 39. He tested for the part of Indiana Jones.
… of “Chicken George.” Actor Ben Vereen is 62. He played Alex Haley’s ancestor, “Chicken George,” in Roots.
… of singer John Prine, 62.
… of David Lee Roth, 54.
… of Tanya Tucker, 50.
… of Bradley Whitford. He’s 49.
… of Brett Favre. He’s 39.
… of Dale Earnhardt Jr. He’s 34.
Helen Hayes was born on October 10th in 1900. Hayes won two acting Oscars — leading in 1932 and supporting 39 years later in 1971.
Long regarded as “the First Lady of American Theater,” Helen Hayes earned international esteem and affection during a career that spanned more than eighty years on stage and in films, radio, and television. As a screen actor she won two Oscars, as a stage actor she won a prestigious Drama League of New York award, and in 1988 President Ronald Reagan presented her with the National Medal of Arts. Deeply in love with her profession, Hayes enjoyed playing a variety of roles, from Amanda Wingfield in Tennesse Williams’s “The Glass Menagerie” (1948) to a little old lady stowaway in AIRPORT (1970). Both the charm of her comic roles and the depth of her tragic ones made Hayes one of the most respected and beloved American actors.
Thelonious Monk was born on this date in 1917.
Thelonious Monk, who was criticized by observers who failed to listen to his music on its own terms, suffered through a decade of neglect before he was suddenly acclaimed as a genius; his music had not changed one bit in the interim. In fact, one of the more remarkable aspects of Monk’s music was that it was fully formed by 1947 and he saw no need to alter his playing or compositional style in the slightest during the next 25 years. (All Music)
A must-have jazz album is Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall. All Music has a review and the background — the tape had been lost for decades.
Monk died in 1982.
How Long Before the Market Bottoms? Three years? Six years?
How long before it recovers? 29 years? 24 years?
That’s what the history of the comparable 1930s and 1970s crashes tells us. The Economix Blog has the details.
Even when the financial news is good, it speaks to the pending doom of the civilized world. Case in point:
Chief Financial Offer Keith Sherin told analysts on a conference call that he film segment saw its profit rise 40%, led by the performance of “Mamma Mia,” a movie adaptation of the hit Broadway musical, starring Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan. The film has grossed more than $500 million worldwide.
The Republicans have alienated whole professions. Lawyers now donate to the Democratic Party over the Republican Party at 4-to-1 rates. With doctors, it’s 2-to-1. With tech executives, it’s 5-to-1. With investment bankers, it’s 2-to-1. It took talent for Republicans to lose the banking community.
David Brooks (of all people)
You all do recognize that McCain is insane demented, don’t you?
Yes, I am serious.
Cartoon from 1987 applicable today.
Oh, and at the moment, the crisis indicator we’re told to watch, the TED Spread, is up 6.666% today. How scary is that?
[With the TED, up is bad.]
A very clear and informative column in Friday’s New York Times from Paul Krugman. It explains in the briefest terms how we got here and the need for immediate action.
Generations of Americans have been trained to follow the Dow Jones Industrial Average for a quick snapshot of how the economy is performing or is expected to perform. There’s a lot that’s ill-advised about that habit, but, most importantly, attending to the ups and downs in the Dow won’t tell you much about the current financial crisis. Ours is a crisis of credit: Financial firms are unwilling to lend to each other (at all-but-exorbitant rates) for fear that borrowing firms may fail or that they themselves may need the cash to fend off their own crisis.
Whereas the hourly fortunes of the Dow or any stock index are, at best, indirect reflections of this reluctance to lend, the TED Spread measures credit conditions directly. Bloomberg tracks the TED Spread here. What sounds like second-rate Nutella is actually the difference between the interest rate banks charge each other on three-month loans and the interest rate on three-month U.S. Treasury bills.
Why TED? The T comes from “T-bill,” shorthand for short-term Treasury bills, and the ED comes from “eurodollar contracts.” . . .
T-bills are the safest investment. Loaning between banks is riskier. The difference between the interest rates (the TED Spread) shows the perception of the risk. Historically the TED is around 0.5. Right now it’s at 4.23.
John McCain and his running mate talking about some one-time terrorist guy while the world economy is collapsing around us puts Nero into a whole new light.
Throw me a little discussion, eh?
Yours truly,
The Management
“We are near total financial and corporate meltdown dude.”
New York University economist Nouriel Roubini to Felix Salmon, October 7th
Roubini has been one of the primary doomsayers leading into the current crisis. Alas, he’s been an accurate sayer too as it turns out.
Here’s what Roubini wrote today. Not for the faint of heart. The lead sentence:
“The US and advanced economies’ financial system is now headed towards a near-term systemic financial meltdown as day after day stock markets are in free fall, money markets have shut down while their spreads are skyrocketing, and credit spreads are surging through the roof.”
“Ralph Nader attracted only 8 people to a campaign appearance at Dartmouth College.”
Do you like round numbers? Nice round numbers? Then you can impress yourself and your friends by noting that since October 9, 2007, one year ago today, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average had its all time high close, the index has lost 5,000 points.
Give or take a few depending on where it ends up in two hours.
The high close was 14,164.53 on October 9, 2007. (The highest ever was 14,279.96 two days later.)
At Noon MDT today it’s at 9168.50.
Update at Close: So much for 5,000. The Dow closed today at 8,579.19.
So, down 5585 in one year.
And the question becomes, how low can it go?
John Lennon should have been 68 today.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Jackson Browne is 60.
Jackson Browne has been both an introspective, cerebral songwriter and a politically attuned voice of conscience. He emerged in the early Seventies as a soul-baring young folksinger whose songs dealt with riddles of romance and existence. In his middle period he became a more extroverted rock and roller. Later work grew more topical in nature as Browne sang of political and social realities within and beyond our borders.
Robert Wuhl is 57. Wuhl, known most recently for Arli$$, shared in two Emmys for writing for the Academy Awards show (1991, 1992). NewMexiKen liked him best as the coach in Bull Durham.
“Okay, well, uh… candlesticks always make a nice gift, and uh, maybe you could find out where she’s registered and maybe a place-setting or maybe a silverware pattern. Okay, let’s get two! Go get ’em.”
Tony Shalhoub, Monk, is 55.
Guillermo del Toro, writer-director-producer of El Laberinto del fauno, is 44.
Annika Sorenstam is 38.
Sean Lennon is 33.
Charles Walgreen was born on this date in 1873. Yes, he’s the man who began the Walgreen’s drug store chain, starting in Chicago. It was a Walgreen’s soda fountain employee who invented the malted milkshake in 1922, which puts him right up there with Edison as far as NewMexiKen is concerned.
And Bruce Catton was born on this date in 1899.
Bruce Catton was fifty when he began work on the first two of what would become thirteen books on the Civil War – Mr. Lincoln’s Army, (1951) followed one year later by Glory Road. His debut was hailed by the Chicago Tribune as “military history at its best.” He “combines the scholar’s appreciation of the Grand Design with a newsman’s keenness for meaningful vignette,” said Newsweek. Catton immersed himself in a vast range of primary materials, especially the diaries, letters and anecdotal reports of soldiers on the ground, which gave his books from the outset their unique, “you are there” ambience.
In 1954, Catton became the first editor of American Heritage Magazine in Washington, where he remained as Senior Editor until his death in 1978.
“There is a near-magic power of imagination in Catton’s work,” wrote Oliver Jensen, who succeeded him as editor of the magazine, “that seemed to project him physically into the battlefields, along the dusty roads and to the campfires of another age.”
“But Missouri’s always been Republican,” Pyle protested.
“I think Missouri’s had about enough,” Holly Haggard said.
“The consensus seems to be that Tuesday night’s presidential debate was extremely boring. Here are six viable suggestions for how the next one could be better.”
Six Ways To Improve The Debates
NewMexiKen suggests no more old white guy moderators. (Lehrer, Brokaw and Schieffer’s average age is 71.) Get that woman that moderated “The Weakest Link.”
“The coordinated rate cut was unprecedented and surprising. Never before has the Fed issued an announcement on interest rates jointly with another central bank, let alone five other central banks, including the People’s Bank of China.”
Amazing fact: Less than one percent of stock exchange trading days accounted for 96% of the gains over 40 years, 1963-2004.
By fleeing for the comfort of safe and insured, however, investors with a time horizon beyond a few years may be doing real damage to their long-term finances. If you’re tempted to make a big move to cash right now, you’re doing something called market timing. It’s an implied statement that you’ve figured out the right moment to get out of stocks — and will also know the right time to get back in.
So let’s dispense with the first part straightaway. The right time to move out of stocks was a year or so ago, before various stock indexes the world over fell by one-third or more.
If you missed that opportunity, you’re hardly alone.
But if you sell now, you’ll be locking in your losses. And once you’re in cash, there isn’t much upside. In fact, with interest rates low, you’re likely to lose money in cash, because inflation will probably eat up the after-tax returns you earn from a savings or money-market account.
From Switching to Cash May Feel Safe, but Risks Remain, an article in today’s New York Times.
If you sell now, when will you get back in? You may miss the memo.
A good article.
One year ago today the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 Composite Index — which tracks virtually every stock listed on U.S. exchanges — peaked at 15,806.69.
It begins today at 9,926.42.
That’s a loss of 37.2%.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) made an overnight change in the homeowner bailout he proposed at Tuesday’s presidential debate, making it more generous to financial institutions and more costly for taxpayers.
McCain’s staff says it was always meant that way.
60 million people watching and McCain — seemingly — just makes shit up. Is he a liar or does he just not know what he’s talking about?
Take the 29 question 2008 campaign trivia quiz from The New Yorker.
NewMexiKen scored just 18 correct out of the 29.
The notion that people don’t know who I am is a little hard to swallow. I’ve been running for president for the last two years. I’ve campaigned in 49 states. Millions of people have heard me speak at length on every topic under the sun. I’ve been involved now in 25 debates, going on my 26th. And I’ve written two books which any — everybody who reads them will say are about as honest a set of reflections by, at least, a politician as are out there.
Barack Obama
“Across this country, this is the agenda I set before my fellow prisoners.”
John McCain