Peter Bromberg's UnBlog

I’ve been involved with the stock market since the early 80’s when I was a rookie broker with Merrill Lynch in Orlando. In fact probably the main reason I got out of stock trading and into programming was because I spent more time looking at the technical indicators than selling stocks and mutual funds! Back in the 1970’s legendary market guru Norman Fosback developed a “Daily Market Forecast” index that had an uncanny accuracy with predicting the direction of the next day’s market. Most of the items I have in this article were included in that index. There is a page on Yahoo Finance, http://finance.yahoo.com/advances   which provides most of these indicators daily. Another page on the WSJ, http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3021-tradingdiary2.html   provides the daily TICK and TRIN (Arms index) that are also components of Fosback’s indicator. I put together a console application that can be run daily via Task Scheduler to scrape these values daily and store them in...

When it comes to the alleged “fiscal cliff”, both supply-siders and Keynesians are in agreement that jumping off would bring tragic economic consequences. However, conventional wisdom is nearly always wrong, and I believe it’s wrong here. We won’t reach the fiscal cliff because the incentives that drive politicians ensure a deal. With the economy still limping, very few politicians will want to be on record as having voted to raise rates of taxation. Every member of the House of Representatives is up for re-election in 2014, a third of all senators are, and they’re not going to vote for large tax increases. Considering spending, though it nearly always occurs at the expense of growth, politicians exist to spend our money. We’ll never jump off the "fiscal cliff". For Keynesians like Obama and his advisers, they’re deluded by the false belief that government spending is an economic stimulant. So automatic reductions in spending by the feds would directly subtract...

“Fiscal cliff” is the popular term used to describe the conundrum that the U.S. government will face at the end of 2012, when the terms of the Budget Control Act of 2011 are scheduled to go into effect. Among the laws set to change at midnight on December 31, 2012, are the end of last year’s temporary payroll tax cuts (resulting in a 2% tax increase for workers), the end of certain tax breaks for businesses, shifts in the alternative minimum tax that will take a larger bite, the end of the Bush tax cuts from 2001-2003, and the beginning of dozens of new taxes related to Obamacare. These tax changes affect everyone -– not just “the rich”. At the same time, the spending cuts agreed upon as part of the debt ceiling deal of 2011 will begin to go into effect. According to Barron’s, over 1,000 government programs – including the defense budget and Medicare are in line for “deep, automatic cuts.” This bill was signed into law by Barack Obama on August 2, 2011 . Republicans should allow th...

When the President, his Vice President, his Secretary of State and others deliberately lie to American citizens about the tragic killing of an American ambassador and three of his staff, the nation has reached a point where decisions need to be made on Election Day. What disturbs me the most is the utter disdain for the truth that has marked the presidency of Barack Obama. It has been nearly four years of repeated lies about the steps that were taken to respond to the financial crisis; the so-called “stimulus” which wasted billions, and the literal explosion of entitlement programs. The administration literally seized control of General Motors and Chrysler, which were then in the normal process of bankruptcy, claiming to save the jobs of auto workers. What they really did was bypass the legitimate creditors and investors. They arbitrarily discontinued GM’s relationship with hundreds of auto dealerships, adding their employees to the unemployment lines. They then insisted that GM inve...

I grew up in a middle-class Jewish (but not religious) family where most everyone was - surprise - a Democrat, and voted Democratic. As I was growing up and into my teens and early 20's nobody really talked much about politics. It was basically, XYZ president or politician promised me this, and and I like him/her and I'm going to vote for him. Little if any critical independent thinking was devoted to "how" Mr. XYZ intended to PAY for whatever he promised. In my 20's I decided I needed to broaden my horizons, and traveled to Israel to live on a Kibbutz for about a year. I had a great time. I also worked hard (you HAVE to work on a kibbutz, period!). But I also learned that the kibbutz mentality is very socialistic, and not quite as capitalistic as many may think. I also learned a lot about the Jewish culture, morality, and history and how Christians and Jews are "joined at the hip". After all, Jesus Christ was born - and lived - a Jew. S...

Over the past several years, I’ve engaged in numerous debates with my liberal friends, and I think I’ve just about learned most of the tricks they pull at this late stage of the game. Here’s my short list of the “Favorite Nine”: 1) Attack The Messenger: Instead of addressing the argument that has been made, people using this method attack the person making it instead. This is particularly easy for many on the left who believe that almost everyone on the right is a racist, sexist, homophobic, Fascist, or some other horrible label.  2) The Bait & Switch: When a claim is made and your opponent refutes it, don’t try to respond, simply change the subject.  3) The Blitzkrieg: The goal here is blast your opponent with so many accusations that they can’t possibly respond.  4 ) Enter The Strawman: Tremendously exaggerating your opponent’s position and then claiming to fight against a position they don’t hold is always a great way to dodge the issues 5) History Will...

You’ll find plenty of blame to go around on this subject, but a little study shows that there were four or five major factors that caused the last big recession, and neither a single president or a single party can be blamed. First, the expanded mandate of Fannie and Freddie - The housing collapse can be traced back the Clinton administration’s pressuring of Fannie and Freddie to encourage more home buying. The Community Reinvestment Act — in which banks were encouraged to lend to people who normally would not be worthy of obtaining home loans — was especially pernicious. The Act had been around for a long time prior to Clinton, but the Clinton Administration turned a once-obscure and lightly enforced banking regulation law into one of the most powerful mandates shaping American cities. This actually started way back in the Carter administration. Second, The FED kept interest rates too low for too long . Keeping interest rates artificially low led predictably to excessive credit a...

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an intergovernmental body, set up at the request of member governments. It was first established in 1988 by two United Nations organizations, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and later endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly through Resolution 43/53. Its mission: "to provide comprehensive scientific assessments of current scientific, technical and socio-economic information worldwide about the risk of climate change caused by human activity , its potential environmental and socio-economic consequences, and possible options for adapting to these consequences or mitigating the effects." Note carefully that the mission of the IPCC clearly states "climate change caused by human activity" as a foregone conclusion - before it even begins to do any scientific research! The chief characteristic which distinguishes a scientific method of i...

A graph titled 'Private Sector Job Creation' on the Obama-Biden campaign website… announces proudly that 4.4 million private sector jobs have been created over the past 28 months. But at the same point during the Reagan recovery, the economy had created 9.5 million new jobs.     Contrary to the Obama campaign's misleading claim of 4.4 million new jobs created, total jobs today are still half a million less than in January 2009 when Obama entered office.    The unemployment rate, which we were told would not exceed 8% if we enacted Mr. Obama's stimulus package…has never fallen below 8% during his presidency. The rate has averaged 9.2% since February 2009. After Bush's tax rate cuts were all fully implemented in 2003, the economy created 7.8 million new jobs over the next 4 years and the unemployment rate fell from over 6% to 4.4%. President Obama and his chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, Alan Krueger, brag that private sector ...

Over the last 15 years, we've been told that human CO2 emissions would cause global warming to accelerate to new dangerous levels, and this "unequivocal" warming would generate fantastic, catastrophic climate change disasters - the IPCC's climate models told us this, and truth be told, they were absolutely and spectacularly wrong. As the U.S. has baked during the hot summer of 2012, the rest of the globe has been treading water, so to speak.  As the HadCRUT global temperature chart above shows, the large growth in atmospheric CO2 levels continues. Yet the 15-year trend of stable to a slight global cooling remains . This extended 180-month period of non-warming was not predicted by a single global climate model. The IPCC's climate models obviously have very serious, fundamental issues that can't just be 'tweaked' away. The most serious issue is their being CO2-centric, thus minimizing other factors (i.e., forcings) that influence temperatures an...

Socialism in Europe and in this country always starts the same way – promise people free health care and free retirement and free housing and whatever free stuff wins political favor and gets you reelected. This is what progressive liberals do and what Obama is doing. And people keep voting for them because they love "free stuff".  They don't care where the money comes from.  Some claim that the "rich" will pay for it all. But, the rich do not have enough money. They may have enough to pay for the very poor, but not for everyone. So, the socialists borrow the money. That way, they are still giving the populace free health care. But, at some point you can't borrow the money anymore because the people you are borrowing it from realize that they will never be paid back. This is the tipping point at which socialism fails. Past this point, you have to tax the people to whom you promised the "free" stuff in order to pay for their "free" s...

“Trickle down” is of course a disingenuous misnomer invented by the left to stigmatize conservative supply-side economic policies. It implies favoring the rich—that doing so will “trickle down” to everyone else. Nonsense. Conservatives don’t care any more or less about the rich than do liberals. The point for conservatives is not to help the rich, but to limit the harm done to incentives by tax policy so individuals have greater opportunities to become rich. President Obama misrepresents supply-side economics and then goes on to misinform his audience that it’s never worked. People are entitled to their own opinions, but they’re not entitled to their own facts.    Every time supply-side economic policies have been tried, tax rate reductions were applied to every income group — lower-income, middle-income, and upper-income alike — giving everyone a better shot at success. This is true regarding supply-side policies of the 1920s, 1960s, 1980s and 2000s. Economist Thomas S...

Romney is making this election about Barack Obama. Considering the current state of the economy, Barack Obama has a record that he simply cannot run on. This is why the "Generic Republican" did so well in the primary season polls against Obama.  Republicans are putting forward a contrasting vision, but the election is ultimately a referendum on Obama.  Romney is correctly focusing on that issue. Romney has a history of turning things around. With the economy still limping along, only a 63 percent labor force participation rate, and American debt dangerously spiraling out of control, this country absolutely must have a change in direction.  Fixing entities that are in trouble is exactly what Mitt Romney has spent much of his life doing. As CEO of Bain Capital, Romney oversaw the investment and renovation of numbers of struggling companies, with an 80% overall success rate.  He successfully led the effort to save the 2002 Winter Olympics, which...

1. Higher taxes lead to higher spending, not lower deficits . Evidence from Europe shows that politicians almost always claim that higher taxes will be used to reduce red ink, but the inevitable result is bigger government.  2. A value-added tax would be a disaster . The statists won’t be able to impose a European-style welfare state in the United States without first imposing this European-style money machine for big government. 3. A welfare state cripples the human spirit . 4. Nations reach a point of no return when the number of people mooching off government exceeds the number of people producing . The welfare state, unchecked, inevitably leads to fiscal collapse. One need only look to Greece to see this in action. 5. Bailouts don’t work .   Imagine how much better things would be in Europe if Greece never received an initial bailout. Much less money would have been flushed down the toilet and this tough-love approach would have sent a very positive message to...

First of all, this is just not true. Secondly, this makes an assumption that all conservatives are white. There are many black conservatives.   Are there racists in the Republican party? Sure, but no more than you’ll find in the Democratic Party. So, why are Republicans being constantly accused of racism? It’s a political strategy . If black Americans weren’t convinced that the GOP was racist, they’d probably break 70/30 or even 60/40 for the Democrats instead of 90/10 and that would be devastating to the left. That’s why the Democrats are desperate to shout "racism" at every possible opportunity. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or false because the political stakes are so high for the left. Thinking for oneself, loving your country, understanding and embracing the free market capitalist system, and loving your Constitution means you are not “black” but instead you are a "house negro" or a "token" for the Republican party.  ...

  UN? Here’s how to get your mojo back on global warming: (1) Stop holding sustainability conferences in the world’s most exotic locales, like Rio, and stop booking yourselves into five-star hotels on everybody else’s dime. People’s BS detectors are pretty much set on “high” all the time these days, given the beleaguered state of the global economy. When you preach that everyone else needs to adopt a more modest lifestyle while living high off the public teat and emitting enough greenhouse gases to choke a whale, you undercut your credibility. (2) Stop organizing conferences attended by 50,000 people. Seriously, 50,000? That’s a fuster cluck, not a meeting. (3) Stop pushing ways to make fossil fuels more expensive (through carbon taxes and the ineffective and corrupt cap-and-trade market in Europe) and start pushing ways to make renewable energy less expensive. The economics are simple. Tell people your entire plan for saving the planet means they have to go ...

The Danish health care system is the nightmare of any anti-government free market believer -- it's a tax-funded state-run universal health care system. Denmark provides "free" health care to all residents, funded through taxes. There is an optional private health care sector, but it is tiny compared with the vastly larger public system that is used by most of the population. Users pay for a few procedures, such as fertility treatments (from the third attempt onwards) and non-essential cosmetic surgery, as well as most of their own dental care and a portion of prescription medication.    Apothecaries are privately owned, but doctors" visits and hospitalization, including tests, treatment, follow-up care, and some medication, are fully covered. The Danish health care system is not cheap. According to OECD's Health Data 2009, Denmark's health cost per person, public and private, was $3,512. But in the US the cost is more than double at $7,290! In addition,...

Google (and most other search engines) have special operators and search url suffixes that many internet users are unaware of. Here is a fresh list for your searching pleasure. intitle: Restricts the search to the titles of the web pages, for example if you want to search for the web pages having WordPress or Blogging in the title, use the syntax intitle:WordPress or intitle: “digital photography” (multiple words can be grouped into a phrase by putting them inside quotes). inurl: If you include this keyword in your query, Google will restrict the results to documents containing that word in the URL (address of the website). The query inurl:teaching will return documents that mention the words teaching in their URL. intext: The query using intext:term results in documents containing the term in the text/content. For instance: intext:Globalization will return documents mentioning the term globalization. Additionally, you can use allintext:term with phrases or combination of word...

I’ve seen several pieces over the last week that maintain this as economic fact: http://www.forbes.com/sites/johntharvey/2012/06/17/job-creators/ http://whowhatwhy.com/2012/05/27/rich-guy-on-how-middle-class-are-the-job-creators/ http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/06/17/1100766/--The-Only-Real-Job-Creators-Are-Consumers I think what happens here is that some liberal blogger, professor or pundit writes something like this and then everybody else jumps aboard and starts echoing the meme without doing any critical thinking. Consumers do drive an economy, but these authors miss the mark. Lots of businesses happen to be consumers of other businesses. So when you tax businesses and pass legislation that makes it harder for business to succeed, businesses stop buying things, which ultimately hurts consumer spending. All of this does not even touch on the fact that small businesses are the true engine of growth for this country. And, most small businesses are taxed like individuals...

According to Keynes, the root cause of economic downturns is insufficient aggregate demand. During  World War II and it's immediate aftermath, Keynes was immensely influential. By the 1970's when the great inflation was unfolding,even Keynes' chief critics such as Milton Friedman or Robert Mundell still retained many Keynesian assumptions. With the crisis of 2008, Keynesian policies came back with a bang and reoccupied center stage. Following the Crash of 2008, these policies are no longer satisfactory. If the entire global economy is to follow Keynesian medicine, which requires more money printing, spending, borrowing and bailing out - on top of all the money printing, spending and borrowing that preceded the crisis, then we need to look at them with fresh and critical eyes. The place to begin is with what Keynes actually said. First of all, Keynes did not believe that fiscal stimulus alone could ‘kick’ the economy into full employment equilibrium as many of his mode...