Odd Indeed

[And also, just because I love this:]

We ♥ Bo

Jess and I headed to West Midtown this morning, where (due to the recency of our move) we’re still registered to vote. We brought along Gemelli, mostly because we didn’t know how long we’d have to wait in line to vote (answer: two and a half hours), but we were pretty sure it was longer than a two-month-old puppy could stay by himself at home.

Frankly, Mel wasn’t a big fan of the wait, but he was very happy to vote (and not just because he enjoyed chewing the corner of the ballot). I won’t disclose my own choices, though I will say that he voted for Barack. Or, really, for Bo. Turns out, he and the First Dog have roughly the same markings.

Oh Say Can You RNC?

As an owner and board member of several companies, I find a lot of the political rhetoric around ‘job creation’ very confusing.

When I’m thinking about whether we need to hire more people at a company, here are the things I consider:

– Is demand for the business’ product or service growing?
– Is the current team having trouble keeping up with that growing demand?

And here’s one that thing that I’ve never even remotely considered:

– What’s my personal income tax rate?

Fellow business owners, are you honestly telling me your marginal income tax rate is what drives your hiring decisions?

Unpolitic

It’s a truism that anyone able to get elected to political office is probably therefore unfit to serve.

Still, on occasion, a politician surprises. Big kudos to Republican New York State Senator Roy McDonald, who this week departed from party lines to vote for marriage equality. I was impressed by the move, as it’s one I agree with already, but even more impressed by how he explained the switch, which would have won me over regardless:

You get to the point where you evolve in your life where everything isn’t black and white, good and bad, and you try to do the right thing.

You might not like that. You might be very cynical about that. Well, fuck it, I don’t care what you think. I’m trying to do the right thing.

I’m tired of Republican-Democrat politics. They can take the job and shove it. I come from a blue-collar background. I’m trying to do the right thing, and that’s where I’m going with this.

If I lived in his district, this guy would definitely have my vote.

As most non-tech folks missed this the first time through, a great, in-depth recap of the Stuxnet worm, which secretly derailed Iran’s nuclear program:

The construction of the worm was so advanced, it was “like the arrival of an F-35 into a World War I battlefield,” says Ralph Langner, the computer expert who was the first to sound the alarm about Stuxnet.

Was this us or the Israelis?  I suspect the second, and am extremely impressed either way.

Three Generations of Proud

omg.jpg

I think I speak for my father, who made Obama calls to Ohio undecideds in between patients, and for my grandfather, who lobbied for him in his Broward County, Florida retirement community, when I say:

Holy fucking shit! We did it!

[Quick Addendum: McCain’s concession speech reminded me everything I actually really like about the guy. I certainly don’t want him as president (especially with Sarah in tow), but I do sincerely wish him the best.]

How to Read the Market

Thoreau observed that the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

Let that mass buy and sell on an open market, however, and their desperation seems far less quiet. Instead, as they panic and blindly follow each other around, we reach situations like our current, ridiculous stock market mess, with the Dow dipping below 8000.

Before we go on, let’s be clear on exactly what that means. Eight thousand points is just about half of this year’s highest price. Which means that everyone who’s buying or selling stock, collectively, has come to the agreement that the thirty companies that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average – thirty of the largest companies in the world, like Walmart, Coca-Cola, ExxonMobil, and Pfizer – have just lost 50% of their long-term value.

Which, obviously, is ridiculous. Sure, we’re looking at some sort of recession ahead here. But do we really foresee a permanent 50% decrease in bargain shopping, soda drinking, gas buying and prescription medication taking? Certainly, the Dow should have dropped. But only by a relatively small amount – probably less than 10%. Which means that, if we’ve instead dropped 50%, we clearly have so many idiots involved in determining the price of the Dow that the price tells us a lot about panic and perception, but pretty much nothing at all about the actual state of the underlying market itself.

In fact, as we’ve all heard countless times, the real problem to fear isn’t even the price of stocks in the first place – it’s the potential seizing up of world credit markets. Companies large and small depend on short-term credit to smooth out their inherently unpredictable day-to-day cash flow; individuals need it to buy houses and cars, to go to college, or to simply charge groceries. All of which is to say, while a low-priced Dow might reflect something about the economy (or not, in our current case), a lack of credit would cause something in the economy – namely, to cause it to grind to a halt.

So, if that’s the problem, how to monitor it? And, if not the Dow, which numbers to follow obsessively from day to day?

In short, LIBOR and short-term Treasury yield.

Allow me to explain.

The first thing we want to know is, are banks willing to make loans? Do they trust that people can pay those loans back? And, most crucially, do they trust each other? Because, basically, the credit crisis kicked off when banks started to realize that, after a string of bank defaults, any number of other banks might similarly be teetering near collapse. So, reasonably, they simply stopped loaning money to other banks. If you don’t know what’s on any other bank’s balance sheet, don’t know if they’re healthy or exceedingly sick, probably better to play it safe and simply not lend to them at all.

So the number we’d want to know is, how much would banks, on average, charge to lend to other banks? Much like with an individual credit card, where banks charge people with bad credit much higher interest rates than people with good credit, so would banks charge higher interest rates to other banks if they thought that most had potentially bad credit.

To measure that, you’d probably have to call around from bank to bank, asking how much they’d charge to lend to other banks. Fortunately, a couple of blokes in the UK do that for us on a daily basis, then publish that number as the London Inter-Bank Offered Rate, or LIBOR.

If LIBOR goes up, banks are trusting each other less, and the credit crisis is getting worse; if LIBOR goes down, they’re trusting each other more, and things are getting better.

You can follow LIBOR data in the first chart on this page. But, in short, the three-month LIBOR is currently at about 4.82%; a month ago, it was 2.82%. A trend, again, in the ‘not good’ direction, though one I suspect to see reverse itself this coming week.

But LIBOR only paints half of the picture. It gives us a sense of what banks think about the state of other banks, and therefore of the credit market as a whole. But it doesn’t tell us how they’re acting on that information. Are they actively making loans, investing in stocks, and generally putting capital into the market in a way that will ease up the credit crunch? Or are they playing it safe, and hanging on to their cash?

Fortunately for us, there’s a good metric here, too. Because when banks hold on to ‘cash’ what they actually do (at least the lion’s share of the time) is buy Treasury Bills. Treasury Bills are exceedingly safe – since they’re backed by the US Government, if T-Bills start defaulting, we don’t have a US Government, and dollars themselves aren’t worth anything anyway – but they also pay out at least a small amount of interest, and are therefore better than simply stuffing money under a very large bank mattress.

So, in short, banks put unused cash in Treasury Bills. And, much like with any other kinds of lending, the more people willing to make a loan, the less interest any of them can charge. Since a Treasury Bill is essentially a loan to the US Government, if lots of banks have lots of cash, and are willing to make such loans, the interest rate the US has to pay out on those Treasury Bills – the ‘yield’ – goes down. Conversely, if banks put their money in other, more lucrative places, the government needs to pay more on their Treasury Bill loans to compete for that money, so the yield goes up.

In other words, if banks are still freaking out and holding money in cash, Treasury yields go down. If the credit market starts to thaw out, and they start to make the wide array of loans we need to power the economy, Treasury yields go up.

Fortunately for us, the US Treasury tracks these numbers themselves. Currently, the 30-day Treasury Bill yields just 0.06%, down from 3.98% one year ago (a 98.5% drop!), and a price so low it’s basically equivalent to giving money to the US Government for free.

Here, too, I expect at least some degree of turnaround this week, but it certainly paints a picture of how bad the credit mess actually is.

So, to recap:

1. The Dow is a worthless number to follow at this point, because too many idiots panicking have made it excessively low, and mindlessly volatile.

2. LIBOR is a better measure, as it shows how much banks trust each other. If LIBOR is going down, things are looking up for the global economy.

3. Similarly, Treasury yield is a better measure, as it shows whether banks are actually making loans and investments, or just sitting on cash. Treasury yields going up would be an excellent sign for a credit market thaw.

In Memoriam

I opposed the war at its inception. And, over the past five years, my opposition has grown, as I’ve found myself increasingly dismayed by the folly of our foreign policy, by our wholesale ignorance of Middle Eastern, colonial, and military histories.

But, during that same time, through running CrossFit, I’ve also had the chance to develop real friendships with active-duty soldiers, with Navy SEALs, Airforce pilots and front-line Marines.

I am embarrassed to say how few soldiers I knew prior to that. And I am embarrassed to say that, until recently, I don’t think I really understood what it meant to oppose the war yet support our troops.

As Thomas Campbell observed in the first World War, it is the patriot’s blood that seeds Freedom’s tree. Happy Memorial Day.

Touche

“Wherever there’s injustice, oppression, and suffering, America will show up six months late and bomb the country next to where it’s happening.”
– P.J. O’Rourke, Peace Kills: America’s Fun New Imperialism