Rearview Mirror Justice- Online Scams, Madoff Response, Charles Ponzi

Subtitled- "No Help for Dudley Dooright"

Last night I discovered (through the person's stupidity) an online scam on craigslist. The person attempted 2 times to sell a really nice Acura TL for $4,000 on Michigan based boards. They used the same e-mail address, and followed with the same Picassa account for more pictures. The first time they even had a picture of a carfax report from a different car. Different cars each time, but in perfect condition (likely from a dealer lot being fully detailed).

Keynes vs Minsky "Financial Instability Hypothesis" and GREED

John Maynard Keynes formulated the body known today as Keynesian economics is his largest work "General Theory" of 1936. Keynesian economics with its microeconomic cousin, neoclassical economics, is the basis for the actions of world governments over the past year of financial bailout and of the economic structure that preceded it (likely even fueled it).

Stock market and Swine flu pandemic panacea...

“There is a certain lunatic fringe in the stock market, and there always will be whenever there is any successful bear movement going on… they will put the stocks up above what they should be and, when frightened, … will immediately want to sell out… when it is finally rid of the lunatic fringe, the stock market will never go back to 50 per cent of its present level…

We shall not see very much further, if any, recession in the stock market, but rather … a resumption of the bull market, not as rapidly as it has been in the past, but still a bull rather than a bear movement.”
 

--Economist Irving Fisher 1929 to a conference of bankers 2 days before the 1929 crash.

Online Calculators

Here is a useful website with links to online financial planning calculators all over the internet for all types of situations.

http://www.choosetosave.org/calculators/

Looking forward to a presentation at a conference in a few days with Harry Markowitz, the father of "Modern Portfolio Theory." We'll see how he views his Nobel Prize work after the occurrence of a statistically impossible event. Well one could occur every 1,000 years. But we have had two of these in a little over 100 years.

Of course it has to be in San Diego. How far can swine flu blow if I am right by the border to Mexico?

An online personal financial planning course

If you want to gain knowledge of personal financial planning issues (for free), I just found a great course to help you get there. It is quite detailed, broken into lessons, and has some useful add-on tools.

http://ocw.uci.edu/courses/AR0102092/

Thank you UC Irvine for being so progressive to help the public, and thank you to Get Rich Slowly for pointing this out to me and helping the public take control of their finances from those who oppose their best interests (which seems to be everyone these days).

Osinski's "Manhattan Project"

The following link is an article by Michael Osinski, one of the main people responsible for developing and implementing the means to repackage mortgages into traditional bonds (so they could be resold), then into CDO's allowing for various levels of risk.

"My Manhattan Project"

Many parties share responsibility for what has happened in our mortgage markets, but I believe this article displays something important in core statistical understanding that contributed to this mess.

Media- Unaccountable For-Profit Financial Advice

John Stewart has been one of the only people calling out some of the most obvious violators of public trust, the financial media.

CNBC Financial Advice

Jim Cramer Part 1

Jim Cramer Part 2

Jim Cramer Part 3

It was funny before, but honestly, am I being taken by everyone?

In reality, most of us will never step foot in a place like the resort the AIG execs ran up a $500,000 bill at, but we have each paid for that right thousands of times over now, not to mention we should get to take a private jet to get there. At least with the NFL owners, it seems less direct. We only fund them through multi-billion dollar tax rebates for new stadiums with more seating so they can have more attendance revenue. That's better than just writing a check.

Do you feel like you are low man on the totem pole?

So today we have the NFL justifying it's meeting at the same resort where AIG was lambasted for their retreat footed by taxpayer dollars. Much farther back in history, during economic hardship, the victorious underdog gave average Americans hope that even if everything is gamed sheer determination can beat the obviously better competitor. Even in horse racing and boxing (2 sports notorious for being gamed) we have the recent movies Seabiscuit and Cinderella Man detailing two narratives from the Great Depression. Yet that was a time when the athlete underdogs grew up as and were still the average Joe. They didn't make millions each year.

Market Valuation

Sorry for the delay on this promised post, but today is the perfect day to encourage you (sarcasm) and say, I can't make the numbers work to justify the market being this high today. It should still go down more. As a disclaimer, I will be speaking specifically of the S&P 500 currently at $706.