Yes, but what's the Fair Value?

Chart of the Day:

With third-quarter earnings largely in the books (96% of S&P 500 companies have reported for Q3 2010), today's chart provides some long-term perspective to the current earnings environment by focusing on 12-month, as reported S&P 500 earnings. Today's chart illustrates how earnings declined over 92% from its Q3 2007 peak to Q1 2009 low which brought inflation-adjusted earnings to near Great Depression lows. Since its Q1 2009 low, S&P 500 earnings have surged (up over 900%) and have just crossed above a level that occurred at the peak of the dot-com bubble. In fact, earnings have only been higher than current levels for a 29-month stretch that occurred at the tail end of the credit bubble.

Happy 235th Birthday Marines!

Oh, Joy! Oh, Fuck!

This Wednesday after the election we hover in anticlimax, meandering here and there in a bout of confusion. Oh, yay, the House has been reclaimed by putative conservatives.  Oh fuck, Republicans are shut out in our backyard county council elections, again.  Oh joy, Mr. Crisp White Shirt and Red Tie is now the Governor of Ohio, a state your host has successfully avoided for 45 years, so doesn't really care.  Oh, crap, certified statist nutjobs will still run California.  Oh, creaminmypants, cast your eyes upon the Sunshine State and be blinded by the Republican solar prominance led by the son of Cuban exiles.  We're going to DisneyWorld one more time to celebrate!  Oh, bug up my ass, can it be true that Barney Frank has not been foreclosed on?  Oh, Allah the Merciful Slayer of Unbelievers, Peace be Upon Him and All Those Who Kill in His Name, a Republican has taken the Register of Wills slot in Backasswards County. 

So new names here and there to build an illusion of hope, but old names to continue the torment and stale brown tongued rhetoric, too.

We will not be predicting the future here, only condemning it as it reveals itself on a daily basis.   Nevertheless, a few basics are expected.  Whether Democrat or Republican, Statist or Conservative, we stand prepared to be betrayed, to see our principles trashed and corrupted in vain spasms of compromise, mendacious bipartisanship, and human weakness.  The other side will be to blame.  Everyone will overreach and the mainstream media and the blogosphere will deliver salvo after salvo on how their favored side has savaged justice and fair sport.  We each will find some kind of encouraging result on the margins indicating our trend is here to stay and their alloted grains of sand continue to drop without mercy through the glory hole.  We'll blame the government for all of this, either too much of it or too little.

My side, though, we grind our teeth at the gobsmacking losses (Boxer?  Again?  Really?), but we take our wins gladly today and want them to mean something significant.  And they do mean something significant - they mean blockade and barricade and obstruction.  We won't say hopeful because the other rat bastards have ruined the meaning of that word.  There's a world of division approaching our land.  The Republic remains in jeopardy.  But we can't say Americans are disinterested or detached.  They have chosen their army.  Here's some hope:  let's hope our sappers are better than theirs.

One last thing: the simple fact that so much attention and hullabaloo has been devoted to this election, declaring it the lodestone for determining the direction this country will take for rest of the century - and that is true - is proof enough that the government and its presence in our lives is nearly beyond control.  We should be arguing about government on the margins of our lives, not our lives on the margin of government.

Boo . . . urp!

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Boo . . . urp!

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The Elections

Jabberwocky

by Lewis Carroll

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:

Long time the manxome foe he sought --

So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.

"And, hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'

He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

The Joy of UPS

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Oktoberfest for One

Knackwurst, sauerkraut, mustard, relish.  In this combination, forbidden from the household.  But!  She Who Must Not Be Around Foods That Induce Nausea is away, and when the cat's away, the spouse will play . . . and drink.  To wit, we cover three selections, drawn at random from the shelves of Rodman's in D.C., but each purporting to have some connection to the ancient drunken German festival.  No glasses tonight.  Drunk straight from the bottle, so you color and bouquet snobs will have to cream your head some other way.

The Starr Hill Festie Oktoberfest Lager.   Two of these were necessary to impose justice upon the wurst.  It's a decent beer.  Some hop and dance on the tongue, but really, what fair impression could I could draw with a tongue slathered in sauerkraut and mustard?  Let's put it this way:  it tastes like a fucking beer.  Alcohol below 5%.  What confounds about this beer is the packaging.  I'm pretty sure the official Oktoberfest motto isn't "Life is a Carinval", although "Das Leben ist ein Karneval" sounds pretty blond and blue eyed.  And the ferris wheel makes no sense.  I'm tempted to believe it's repackaged Summer Lager, with a hasty addition of "Oktoberfest Lager" printed onto the label.  Maybe it's an East German throwback Oktoberfest recipe, given the big Commie red star.  Whatever, there's four more left in the pack and those are the last four of this beer I'll ever consume.

The Hofbrau Munchen.  The principle purpose of this drink, as with almost all drink, is to convince you that you will end up with a busty blond at the end of the night.  As I am alone in the den watching television and digesting pork and veal sausage, I hate this beer and have limited intake to a single bottle, which at about 6.5 ABV is plenty.  Fuck the Germans and their goddamn blond busty babes.  It's good though.  The quaf is crisp.  And clean.  But not the thoughts regarding those busty Oktoberfelines.   It's just beer for fuck's sake and if I was in a big tent in Munich, it'd be just the oil to flash fry some fantasies about what the night holds.

The Flying Dog Brewery Dogtoberfest Marzen.   Apparently, I saved the best for last.  The only word I can pull from my ass on this one is: substantive.  This one pops like a malted milk ball in the mouth.  The packaging, though, reminds me that I miss my dog who passed this summer and that I have yet to shoot the shit with one of my buddies while wearing Lederhosen and smoking cigars and drinking beer out of a Big Gulp mug.  But that is being arranged.  Arrived home this evening to find a beautiful new JR Cigars catalog in the mailbox.  I immediately bought a box of Macanudos, each comes with a silver cigar ring (no clue why) and pretty box. Of course I also had to get the half priced Nicaraguan sampler and the $10 Montecristo sampler in a cool plastic case.  More vice to secret into the house somehow.  Still waiting for my Lederhosen catalog.  Maybe Vermont Country Store catalog will surprise me tomorrow.

Persian Medical Breakthrough: Women are Women Because of Brain Tumor!

From the Iran News Round Up:

Fatemeh Mir-Aboutalebi, wife of the Iranian ambassador to France: "I think ladies are more emotional. In my view it could be related to their physiognomy. Do you know why women become mothers? Because in their head, there is a certain tumor which is only for women, both in humans and among animals. This is part of the head of women which directs emotions among them. Because women are very emotional and caring and merciful, when they want to give testimony in courts their emotions may hinder them in doing so and they may not take correct decisions."

Limited Government

What with near revolution at our doorsteps to limit the power of the Federal Morass and return the People's Power to local simplicity, Sydney Brillo Duodenum finds himself fantasizing about a run for local representative.  And what would the Duodenum Adminstration bring to the people?  In no particular order, this:

• All bicycle's would be banned from all major roadways during rush hour.  No longer would hard working citizens in a rush have to suffer the raised jackass of the right curb, there only to make a point about their moral superiority.
• The municipal budget will be cut 20 percent right off the bat.  First year out, there will simply be 20 percent less spent on everything. 
• Every municipal employee would spend every third Friday filling potholes throughout the city, and they would do it between 10 pm and 5 am so as not to gum up the rush hours.
• A total ban on weekend parades, block parties, triathalons, 5K Runs, or any event that involves the rolling closure of any road that citizens might require to get around the damn city or to the bloody airport.  You want to hold a party, rent a hotel ballroom or run in the park.
• All uniformed police officers will wear strapped to themselves a video camera recording their every word and interaction with the public.  This video will be automatically uploaded to a publically assessible website.
• No uniformed officer will dress like a para-military fascist.  No jack boots.  No black camo. No black baseball caps.  No velcro.
• Sports teams seeking bonds and breaks and boondoggles will be told to go suck eggs.
• Tax rates will be reduced for the only reason that people can do better with their money than the government.
• All garbage collection will be by private contractor.
• Not one penny of tax revenue will be used to fund any art project anywhere in the city.  And any public pieces of art will be sold.  It's not the government's business to buy or promote art.  If you want to display something, you can rent a public space for a period of time and put whatever you want in it, up to and including steaming piles of shit heaped onto a Koran.
• Teachers incapable of producing functionally literate and numerate teenagers will be fired.  Failing schools will be closed and sold to charter outfits.  The entire budget for the failee schools will be placed in escrow and each student assigned to that school can withdraw their share and use it to buy an education from the private sector.
• Moratorium on building moratoriums and green codes.
• Top to bottom review of the local tax code.
• Elimination of sweet heart business licensing.  In other words, if you want to open a business attaching braids to people's real hair, you do not need a certification/license from the city attesting to your having completed 18 months of braidery with continuing education credits to remain in good standing.  And if you are a hair salon that seeks to petition the government to impose such a certification requirement on your prospective competitors, you will be tarred and feathered and marched to city limits.
• All smoking prohibitions will be lifted.  Every business, office and property owner will decide whether to allow smoking on their premises and they will assume all liability for allowing it.
• All food nanny rules will be suspended.  If you prefer salt and lard for dinner, the city will do nothing, put no roadblocks up, nor in any way interfere with any restaurant or food truck that is prepared to sell it to you.
• All government owned beer/liquor outfits will be sold. 

And that's just the first week of the Duodenum Adminstration.

Today's Nutshell

James Taranto, WSJ Best of the Web:

By now it should be clear that the only new idea Obama introduced into American politics was the idea of Obama: Obama the voice of a new generation, Obama the brilliant technocrat, Obama the postracial leader.

The reality of Obama has been quite the opposite. The fresh-faced young leader has governed according to stale old ideas. The dazzling intellect has proved inadequate to basic managerial challenges. We haven't even been able to enjoy the achievement of having elected a black president, because so many of Obama's supporters (though not Obama himself, to his credit) won't shut up about how every criticism of the president and his policies is "racist."

Yet in America's current predicament, there is ample reason for optimism. We'd like to think that the failure of Obama's policies will discredit the bad economic ideas on which they're based, that his incompetence will discredit the notion that the cognitive elite should run the lives of everyone else, and that the phony charges of racism will discredit the long-outdated assumption of white guilt, at last bringing America closet to the ideal of a colorblind society.

This is not to deny that the Obama presidency has been ruinous. But sometimes the costliest mistakes are those from which we learn the most.

I Want A Pin!

Neidermeyer: [to Kent] Redo those buttons! Dress that belt buckle! Straighten that cap! And goddamn it, tuck up those pajamas! Attention! Eyes front! What's that on your chest, mister?

Kent: It's a pledge pin, sir.

Neidermeyer: A pledge pin! On your uniform?

Meh

Chart of the Day:

Today's chart illustrates rallies that followed massive bear markets. For today's chart, a 'massive' bear market is defined as a decline of greater than 50%. Since the Dow's inception in 1896, there have been only three bear markets whereby the Dow declined more than 50% (early 1930s, late 1930s until early 1940s, and during the very recent financial crisis). Today's chart also adds the rally that followed the dot-com bust during which the Nasdaq declined 78%. The current Dow rally has followed a path that is fairly similar to that of post-massive bear market rallies. The initial surge of the current rally lasted nearly 300 trading days and has been trading flat/choppy ever since. If the current rally were to continue to follow the post-massive bear market rally pattern, the current choppy phase would continue for another 200+ trading days.

The Googleopoly

Precursor:

There’s no net "economic" growth or net "job" creation in a “free” Internet sector model -- only: a deflationary price spiral; net negative growth, property devaluation, job losses, and monopolization. Over 20 industries, 200+ US/EU companies, and hundreds of thousands of jobs are at risk from Googleopoly’s anti- competitive price deflationary spiral.

[...]

Google has systematically assembled all the building blocks in the “stack” of necessary capabilities to become the dominant platform of the consumer Internet media ecosystem: a winner take all dynamic; omniscient mission and omni-directional ambition; omnivorous info collection; Internet omnipresence; Internet scalable infrastructure; omnifarious products, services & info types; Internet behavior omniscience; and omnivorous ecosystem share.

[...]

There is more at stake than competition from a global information access bottleneck; Googleopoly threatens economic growth, jobs, privacy, intel. property, a free press, fair elections, cyber-security, & sovereignty.

In other words, er picture . . .

Today's Nutshell

The Wall Street Journal:

To put it another way, the real roots of Mr. Obama's economic problems are intellectual and political. The Administration rejected marginal-rate tax cuts that worked in the 1960s and 1980s because they would have helped the rich, in favor of a Keynesian spending binge that has stimulated little except government. More broadly, Democrats purposely used the recession as a political opening to redistribute income, reverse the free-market reforms of the Reagan era, and put government at the commanding heights of economic decision-making.

Mr. Obama and the Democratic Congress have succeeded in doing all of this despite the growing opposition of the American people, who are now enduring the results. The only path back to robust growth and prosperity is to stop this agenda dead in its tracks, and then by stages to reverse it. These are the economic stakes in November.

Kibbles and Bitch

The President of the United States:

They talk about me like a dog. That's not in my prepared remarks, but it's true.

Well, you have been acting like a whiny bitch lately.

But really, all seriousness aside, let's look at the real dogs:

United States foreign policy
United States immigration policy
United States economic policy
United States education policy
United States Department of Justice
United States health insurance policy
United States housing policy
United States unemployment policy
United States tax policy
United States energy policy

That's your kennel, Mr. President. Those are your dogs. And you are an out of control breeder.

Labor Day

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Haiku Triptych

First Day of School

With wife on blacktop

Good morning Principal Rose

Monsignor, "Bless you!"

Mothers to and fro

Some looking down and around

Kids demand distance

Drive away, the years

I stood on that blacktop once

At work, find fly down

Keep an Extra Pair of Undies Ready

Chart of the Day:

Except for a brief counter-trend rally in July, the stock market has struggled since peaking in late April. Investors are concerned. For some perspective, today's chart presents the Dow's average performance for each calendar month since 1950. As today's chart illustrates, it is not unusual for the stock market to underperform during the May to October time frame with a brief counter-trend rally occurring in July. It is worth noting that the worst calendar month for stock market performance (i.e. September) is fast approaching.

First Taste: Rickard's White

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Brew: Rickard's White

Brewer: Molson Canada

Sydney Brillo Duodenum's little bitch, and second official reader, Waldie Duester, recently returned from his century or so old family haunt on a crisp green speckled Canadian lake, the kind created by God to house that flawless creature the loon so He could give real purpose to the human sense of hearing and allow the human soul to be haunted by the divine. Because he is ever in SBD's debt, Waldie is under orders to fetch beer whenever on travel. Not just any beer, but local craft beer or beer of a national origin that is unavailable in the United States. Duester usually returns empty handed with some sorry ass excuse about not being near a package store or having to have his pubes waxed or some such pussy bullshit. But yesterday Duester arrived with a large travel cold bag clutched securely under his arm like some bank truck monkey moving a money bag through a bank lobby. SBD could only imagine the liquid delights within; perhaps a Schleimhammer Roggenbier from Toronto's Mill Street Brewery or the newly born Lake of Bays Pale Ale from Muskoka. Ever the dramatician, Waldie mindfreaked the bag with his hands and withdrew a Rickard's White, affecting a worried grimace as the Rickard's clinked against bottles of Molson EX and Labatts 50, in false fear of one jostle too many compromising the delicate chemistry captured in amber. Rickard's - a "wheat ale brewed with orange peel and coriander." Sound familiar? Your host played along, although he was not played by this charlatan, for the Rickard's White is nothing less than (or more than) Blue Moon, created by Coors back in 1995 and upon the merger of Coors with Molson, offered in Canada as Rickard's White. So Mr. Duester Bitch has brought back from Canada what SBD could procure from the Montgomery County, MD liquor nanny, and in a much prettier bottle, and thus Duester goes deeper into debt to Bank SBD.

There's no need to review the Rickard's White. As said, it's Blue Moon. It's much like a bowl of oat bran watered down with orange juice and left on the counter overnight so a mouse can cross over it at 2:34 am to add a bit of its urine, which in the right quantities instills a lemony citrus effect such as might be imparted by cooking with crushed coriander seeds.

There was more in Mr. Duester's bag of tricks but reviews of those brews will have to wait while SBD works to flush this trauma from his system with coffee and diuretics.

Update:

SBD has been informed that he is an ungrateful dick. He agrees. Amends are in the offing.