by Jason Apollo Voss | 18 09 2009 | Blog
I was at a Borders bookstore recently when I saw an interesting title for a bio of FDR: “Traitor to His Class.” That aptly describes me when it comes to the ridiculous and outsize pay packages that Wall Street has notoriously awarded for decades. Now the...
by Jason Apollo Voss | 17 09 2009 | Blog
Weekly jobless claims declined last week by a modest 12,000. The four week average, which aims to smooth weekly volatility, declined by 8,750. Given the huge number of jobs in the U.S., I would consider this to be flat job market performance. This is slightly...
by Jason Apollo Voss | 17 09 2009 | Blog
Further proof that normalcy is almost, well, normal again: housing starts were up in August. The bulk of the 1.5% increase was due to new construction of apartments. Single family residences (i.e. not condos) were down for the first time in 6 months. Additionally...
by Jason Apollo Voss | 15 09 2009 | Blog
Just as there is the Consumer Price Index (CPI) to measure consumer-level inflation, there is a Producer Price Index (PPI) to measure manufacturer-level inflation. In August the Labor Department reported the PPI was up 1.7%. This is practically the perfect number....
by Jason Apollo Voss | 15 09 2009 | Blog
For the month of August retail sales were up 2.7%. This compared to a consensus expectation of up 2.0%. This kind of big outperformance, 35% to be exact, is encouraging and suggests that the virtuous circle of “good stock market performance leading to increased...
by Jason Apollo Voss | 13 09 2009 | Best of the Blog, Blog
Let’s step slightly outside the bounds of finance and talk about something that distresses me; something not often discussed in our culture. Namely, our culture of lying. I bring this up, not to moralize (because that’s not me), but to send up a corrupting...
