From Adafruit blog:
CNBC visited Adafruit and interviewed our founder and engineer
How one small business makes electrical engineering easy – Buzzing and humming filled the air at the Adafruit Industries factory in downtown Manhattan, where workers assembled kits for do-it-yourself electronics.
The kits, used by kids and adults alike, teach basic concepts of electrical engineering, with a reward at the end of each lesson: an original and functional item made by hand.
https://blog.adafruit.com/2015/08/30/how-one-small-business-makes-electrical-engineering-easy-by-altheadchang-cnbc/
Monday, August 31, 2015
Leveraged Financial Speculation to GDP in the US at a Familiar Peak, Once Again
From Jesse's Cafe:
"I believe myriad global “carry trades” – speculative leveraging of securities – are the unappreciated prevailing source of finance behind interlinked global securities market Bubbles. They amount to this cycle’s government-directed finance unleashed to jump-start a global reflationary cycle.
I’m convinced that perhaps Trillions worth of speculative leverage have accumulated throughout global currency and securities markets at least partially based on the perception that policymakers condone this leverage as integral (as mortgage finance was previously) in the fight against mounting global deflationary forces."
Doug Noland, Carry Trades and Trend-Following Strategies
The basic diagnosis is correct. But the nature of the disease, and the appropriate remedies, may not be so easily apprehended, except through simple common sense. And that is a rare commodity these days.
Like a dog returns to its vomit, the Fed's speculative bubble policy enables the one percent to once again feast on the carcass of the real economy.
'And no one could have ever seen it coming.'
Once is an accident.
Twice is no coincidence.
Remind yourself what has changed since then. Banks have gotten bigger. Schemes and fraud continue.
What will the third time be like? And the fourth?
Do you think that Jamie bet Lloyd a dollar that they couldn't do it again?
Should we ask them to please behave, levy some token fines, watch the politicans yell and posture in some toothless public hearings, let all of them keep their jobs and their bonuses? And then bail them out, wind up the old Victrola, and have another go at the same old thing again?
Maybe we can vote for one of their hired servants, or skip the middlemen and vote for one of the arrogant hustlers themselves, and hope they get tired of taking us for a ride before we all go broke.
This policy we have now is the trickle down stimulus that the wealthy financiers have been sucking on with every opportunity that they have made for themselves since the days of Andrew Jackson. Whenever the ability to create and distribute money has been handed over by a craven Congress to private corporations and banking cartels without sufficient oversight and regulation, excessive speculation, financial recklessness, and moral hazard have acted like a plague of misery and stagnation on the real economy.
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.kr/2015/08/leveraged-financial-speculation-in-us.html
"I believe myriad global “carry trades” – speculative leveraging of securities – are the unappreciated prevailing source of finance behind interlinked global securities market Bubbles. They amount to this cycle’s government-directed finance unleashed to jump-start a global reflationary cycle.
I’m convinced that perhaps Trillions worth of speculative leverage have accumulated throughout global currency and securities markets at least partially based on the perception that policymakers condone this leverage as integral (as mortgage finance was previously) in the fight against mounting global deflationary forces."
Doug Noland, Carry Trades and Trend-Following Strategies
The basic diagnosis is correct. But the nature of the disease, and the appropriate remedies, may not be so easily apprehended, except through simple common sense. And that is a rare commodity these days.
Like a dog returns to its vomit, the Fed's speculative bubble policy enables the one percent to once again feast on the carcass of the real economy.
'And no one could have ever seen it coming.'
Once is an accident.
Twice is no coincidence.
Remind yourself what has changed since then. Banks have gotten bigger. Schemes and fraud continue.
What will the third time be like? And the fourth?
Do you think that Jamie bet Lloyd a dollar that they couldn't do it again?
Should we ask them to please behave, levy some token fines, watch the politicans yell and posture in some toothless public hearings, let all of them keep their jobs and their bonuses? And then bail them out, wind up the old Victrola, and have another go at the same old thing again?
Maybe we can vote for one of their hired servants, or skip the middlemen and vote for one of the arrogant hustlers themselves, and hope they get tired of taking us for a ride before we all go broke.
This policy we have now is the trickle down stimulus that the wealthy financiers have been sucking on with every opportunity that they have made for themselves since the days of Andrew Jackson. Whenever the ability to create and distribute money has been handed over by a craven Congress to private corporations and banking cartels without sufficient oversight and regulation, excessive speculation, financial recklessness, and moral hazard have acted like a plague of misery and stagnation on the real economy.
"Gentlemen! I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the Bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the Bank.
You tell me that if I take the deposits from the Bank and annul its charter I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin!
You are a den of vipers and thieves. I have determined to rout you out, and by the Eternal, (bringing his fist down on the table) I will rout you out."
From the original minutes of the Philadelphia bankers sent to meet with President Jackson February 1834, from Andrew Jackson and the Bank of the United States (1928) by Stan V. Henkels
I believe all of the above is entirely possible. Because we still have an unashamed cadre of quack economists and their ideologically blind followers blaming the victims, prescribing harsh punishments for the weak, laying all the blame on 'government' and not corrupt officials on the payrolls of Big Money, and giving the gods of the market and their masters of the universe a big kiss on the head, and expecting them to just do the right thing the next time out of the natural goodness of their unrestrained natures the next time. What could go wrong with that?
Genuine reform. It's too much work, and too much trouble.
Related: Comprehensive Tally of Banker Fraud
h/t Jesse Felder for the chart
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.kr/2015/08/leveraged-financial-speculation-in-us.html
Did Tim Cook Lie To Save Apple Stock: The "Channel Checks" Paint A Very Gloomy Picture
From Zero Hedge:
Is AAPL the next AOL, and is Tim Cook the next Thorsten Heins? It all depends on China: if the world's most populous nation can get its stock market, its economy and its currency under control, then this too shall pass. The problem is that if, as many increasingly suggest, China has lost control of all three. At that point anyone who thought they got a great deal when buying AAPL at $92 will have far better opportunities to dollar-cost average far, far lower.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-29/did-tim-cook-lie-save-apple-stock-channel-checks-paint-very-gloomy-picture
Is AAPL the next AOL, and is Tim Cook the next Thorsten Heins? It all depends on China: if the world's most populous nation can get its stock market, its economy and its currency under control, then this too shall pass. The problem is that if, as many increasingly suggest, China has lost control of all three. At that point anyone who thought they got a great deal when buying AAPL at $92 will have far better opportunities to dollar-cost average far, far lower.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-29/did-tim-cook-lie-save-apple-stock-channel-checks-paint-very-gloomy-picture
Friday, August 28, 2015
Michael Hudson: Killing the Host, With Reckless Disregard
From Jesse's Cafe:
"In Killing the Host, economist Michael Hudson exposes how finance, insurance, and real estate, also known as the FIRE sector, have seized control of the global economy at the expense of industrial capitalism and governments. The FIRE sector is responsible for today’s extreme economic polarization, the 1% vs. the 99%, via favored tax status that inflates real estate prices while deflating the “real” economy of labor and production.
Hudson shows in vivid detail how the Great 2008 Bailout saved the banks but not the economy, and plunged the U.S., Irish, Latvian and Greek economies into debt deflation and austerity. Killing the Host describes how the phenomenon of debt deflation imposes punishing austerity on the U.S. and European economies, siphoning wealth and income upward to the financial sector while impoverishing the middle class."
I have not yet read Michael Hudson's soon to be released book Killing the Host. However we do have some highlights of his thoughts coming out of his existing body of thought which I have followed, and also in this recent interview with Democracy Now which is included below.
I cannot agree completely with Mike Hudson's take on China in this interview. No surprise, since we are two different people with different viewpoints and perspectives. I think we also are from different economic schools of thought. However I see much merit in most of what he is saying.
There was and is still a very dangerous speculative bubble and misallocation of capital that has been going on in China, that is often due to mismanagement, regulatory weakness, a surfeit of easy money, speculative fervor, and flat out corruption. While China is working to correct many of those problems, their outlook is not all sunshine and rainbows.
And I would not say that they were just 'defending themselves' by building up enormous currency reserves that just happened to come there way. I have not gone into this recently, but China took some very aggressive policy moves, including devaluing their currency against the dollar and then controlling it, and spread quite a bit of money in the right circles with regard to trade policy around Washington, to enable a mercantilist system in which they were able to build up their economy to some degree at the expense of the American middle class. Although vast fortunes were also made by some of their all too willing partners in the West as well as their own emerging class of oligarchs.
But putting that aside, the outsized financial sector in the US, which was also enabled by a big money campaign for deregulation in Washington, marked by the overturn of Glass-Steagall, has certainly spawned a significant systemic problem of corruption and malinvestment, inequality reinforced by policy, and an eroding of democracy itself.
Until steps are taken to correct this, there will be no sustainable recovery. People are fed up, and angry, and reaching for solutions some of which appear to be some rather poor choices made in extremis.
And as for the wealthy, dumb, and distracted classes, busily keeping themselves out of any meaningful discussion with the amusing distractions of the triviata of their professions, while occasionally taking a fat stipend for spewing nonsense while nursing a steady share of the vig, the consequences of all this are going to roll over them like a tsunami at midnight.
And once again, 'who could have seen it coming.'
Related: Of Bubbles and Busts: Which Way For China (Oct 2009)
"In Killing the Host, economist Michael Hudson exposes how finance, insurance, and real estate, also known as the FIRE sector, have seized control of the global economy at the expense of industrial capitalism and governments. The FIRE sector is responsible for today’s extreme economic polarization, the 1% vs. the 99%, via favored tax status that inflates real estate prices while deflating the “real” economy of labor and production.
Hudson shows in vivid detail how the Great 2008 Bailout saved the banks but not the economy, and plunged the U.S., Irish, Latvian and Greek economies into debt deflation and austerity. Killing the Host describes how the phenomenon of debt deflation imposes punishing austerity on the U.S. and European economies, siphoning wealth and income upward to the financial sector while impoverishing the middle class."
I have not yet read Michael Hudson's soon to be released book Killing the Host. However we do have some highlights of his thoughts coming out of his existing body of thought which I have followed, and also in this recent interview with Democracy Now which is included below.
I cannot agree completely with Mike Hudson's take on China in this interview. No surprise, since we are two different people with different viewpoints and perspectives. I think we also are from different economic schools of thought. However I see much merit in most of what he is saying.
There was and is still a very dangerous speculative bubble and misallocation of capital that has been going on in China, that is often due to mismanagement, regulatory weakness, a surfeit of easy money, speculative fervor, and flat out corruption. While China is working to correct many of those problems, their outlook is not all sunshine and rainbows.
And I would not say that they were just 'defending themselves' by building up enormous currency reserves that just happened to come there way. I have not gone into this recently, but China took some very aggressive policy moves, including devaluing their currency against the dollar and then controlling it, and spread quite a bit of money in the right circles with regard to trade policy around Washington, to enable a mercantilist system in which they were able to build up their economy to some degree at the expense of the American middle class. Although vast fortunes were also made by some of their all too willing partners in the West as well as their own emerging class of oligarchs.
But putting that aside, the outsized financial sector in the US, which was also enabled by a big money campaign for deregulation in Washington, marked by the overturn of Glass-Steagall, has certainly spawned a significant systemic problem of corruption and malinvestment, inequality reinforced by policy, and an eroding of democracy itself.
Until steps are taken to correct this, there will be no sustainable recovery. People are fed up, and angry, and reaching for solutions some of which appear to be some rather poor choices made in extremis.
And as for the wealthy, dumb, and distracted classes, busily keeping themselves out of any meaningful discussion with the amusing distractions of the triviata of their professions, while occasionally taking a fat stipend for spewing nonsense while nursing a steady share of the vig, the consequences of all this are going to roll over them like a tsunami at midnight.
And once again, 'who could have seen it coming.'
Related: Of Bubbles and Busts: Which Way For China (Oct 2009)
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
The Ghost Of 1997 Beckons, Can Asia Escape? Morgan Stanley, BofA Weigh In
From Zero Hedge:
The similarities between the current crisis and that which unfolded in 1997/98 were so readily apparent that many analysts began to draw comparisons and that may have added fuel to fire over the past week. Now, there seems to be a concerted effort to calm the market by explaining that while there are similarities, there are also differences. And while some of the world's imperiled EM economies may be in better shape to defend themselves this time around, when attempting to cope with a meltdown it may be more important to look at where things are similar and on that note, here’s some color from Morgan Stanley and BofAML.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-24/ghost-1997-beckons-can-asia-escape-morgan-stanley-bofa-weigh
The similarities between the current crisis and that which unfolded in 1997/98 were so readily apparent that many analysts began to draw comparisons and that may have added fuel to fire over the past week. Now, there seems to be a concerted effort to calm the market by explaining that while there are similarities, there are also differences. And while some of the world's imperiled EM economies may be in better shape to defend themselves this time around, when attempting to cope with a meltdown it may be more important to look at where things are similar and on that note, here’s some color from Morgan Stanley and BofAML.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-24/ghost-1997-beckons-can-asia-escape-morgan-stanley-bofa-weigh
Sunday, August 23, 2015
16 Startup Metrics
From Business Insider:
#1 Bookings vs. Revenue
#2 Recurring Revenue vs. Total Revenue
#3 Gross Profit
#4 Total Contract Value (TCV) vs. Annual Contract Value (ACV)
#5 LTV (Life Time Value)
#6 Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) vs. Revenue
#7 Unearned or Deferred Revenue … and Billings
#8 CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) … Blended vs. Paid, Organic vs. Inorganic
#9 Active Users
#10 Month-on-month (MoM) growth
#11 Churn
#12 Burn Rate
#13 Downloads
#14 Cumulative Charts (vs. Growth Metrics)
#15 Chart Tricks
#16 Order of Operations
http://www.businessinsider.com/andreessen-horowitz-startup-metrics-2015-8?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
#1 Bookings vs. Revenue
#2 Recurring Revenue vs. Total Revenue
#3 Gross Profit
#4 Total Contract Value (TCV) vs. Annual Contract Value (ACV)
#5 LTV (Life Time Value)
#6 Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) vs. Revenue
#7 Unearned or Deferred Revenue … and Billings
#8 CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) … Blended vs. Paid, Organic vs. Inorganic
#9 Active Users
#10 Month-on-month (MoM) growth
#11 Churn
#12 Burn Rate
#13 Downloads
#14 Cumulative Charts (vs. Growth Metrics)
#15 Chart Tricks
#16 Order of Operations
http://www.businessinsider.com/andreessen-horowitz-startup-metrics-2015-8?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
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