Global crisis foment

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Oct 7, 2009 in Blog, Worst of the Blog | 1 comment Normally I do not post about geopolitics because generally these issues do not affect the performance of the financial markets. However, I have to alert you to rumblings about Iran that I am reading, mostly via Stratfor, and why that warrants our attention. The issue of course is that Iran is developing nuclear capability. That’s something that’s especially agitating Israel –...
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Happy blogiversary!

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Oct 6, 2009 in Blog | 1 comment Today marks one year since I first put fingers to keyboard and began writing the blog. Thank you to all of you who read the blog with gusto. While there have been many exciting, informative and prescient posts on the blog – including calling the market bottom back on March 12th – this is not what I consider to be the blog’s first year highlight. Nope, instead my usage...
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Pay czar saying the right things

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Oct 6, 2009 in Blog | 1 comment Ken Feinberg, the Obama Administration’s pay czar, is talking about what he feels is necessary to reform pay at firms that have received huge chunks of tax payer monies. The companies in question are: AIG, Bank of America, Chrysler Financial, Chrysler LLC, Citigroup, GM and GMAC Financial Services. His focus is on the 175 most highly compensated executives at these firms. In general he...
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Soft vs. hard

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Oct 5, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Way back in the day I was an entertainment and media analyst for about a half a second in my career. But my official opinion of the industry was that I didn’t like any of the companies that occupied the entertainment space…other than Electronic Arts, but shares in EA were never on sale – and I love bargains. But the point of today’s post is to study the entertainment...
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Tenuous job market

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Oct 2, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments September’s unemployment rate climbed to 9.8% as businesses fired an additional 263,000 people. This number far exceeded consensus economist estimates of 175,000. This will certainly have a deep reverberation through the financial markets. The amount of the statistical “miss” will cause everyone to doubt their economic projections. That crisis in confidence will only be abated...
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Council of regulators proposed

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Oct 1, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments One of the pillars of change that I have been calling for is a change in the institutions that watched, but did not act, as the world’s financial systems glutted themselves on debt and then suffered colossal acid reflux of that debt. The Obama Administration has proposed sweeping changes to the U.S. financial system. Unfortunately that major proposal has stalled mostly due to (get this)...
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A stunning statistic

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Oct 1, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Household debt currently sits at 125% of after-tax income! In the mid-90s, before the credit gluttony ensued, the number was around 80%. The slightly positive news is that the 125% is down slightly.
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