Holy Indian reservation roulette wheels Batman!  The newly launched Republic Report, an anti-corruption blog focusing on how self-interested dollars are warping the public-interest responsibilities of America’s democratic institutions has actually hired convicted felon Jack Abramoff to be one of its lead bloggers.  Yes, that Jack Abramoff, “Casino Jack”, as profiled in the Alex Gibney film, [...]

Chris Matthews speaks with The Atlantic‘s Steve Clemons and Matthew Hoh of the Center for International Policy Last night, former State Department official and US Marine Matthew Hoh, now a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy, and I had a very good discussion with Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball about Defense Secretary Leon [...]

The most interesting piece from this past week was Quit Your Job and Die Alone by Financial Samurai at Untemplater. What was so epic about this article? This reminded me of my harsh reality check on full-time blogging. There are too many of us falling for the dream and wanting to be “our own boss.” [...]

First published in the May/June 2011 issue of Foreign Affairs, The Black Swan of Cairo: How Suppressing Volatility Makes the World Less Predictable and More Dangerous is a thought-provoking effort by co-authors Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Mark Blyth to advance the idea the efforts of policy-makers to smooth out the peaks and troughs of volatility [...]

This is my version of the “map of the market”… The graphic should be pretty self-explanatory. The bottom line is that positive and negative months are random. Good luck trying to find a pattern.

Many of you know that I have a spreadsheet with the monthly total returns for the S&P going back to 1926. I thought I would share with you a summary of that data. It’s pretty interesting (at least I think it is). The best month, based on geometric average total return is December. The worst [...]

Just saw a headline on WSJ.com about the latest unemployment figures. Nonfarm payrolls rose by 243,000 last month, the Labor Department said Friday, marking the biggest gain since April. The jobless rate fell by two-tenths of a point to 8.3%, the lowest it has been since February 2009. Both figures contradicted expectations of a slowdown [...]

EUR/USD was rising today, but sank after US nonfarm payrolls came out better than was predicted and unemployment rate unexpectedly decreased. Service industry also showed positive tendencies. On the negative side, factory orders grew with slower pace than was expected by specialists. The currency pair …

UPDATE: I NAILED this drop as the stock tanked $3/share or 10%+ from my initial short at $29ish, now down to the $26 area…stay tuned next week to hear about some solid PennyStocking Silver subscriber and trading challenge student profits … Continue reading → .

The reaction to January’s jobs report shows how tragically our expectations have fallen, especially among some Democrats and their supporters. Their cheerleading isn’t just bad policy or bad politics, although it is both of those things. It’s also callous and insensitive to the misery of millions. It’s important to keep explaining what needs to be [...]