For the most part, I’ve avoided writing about politics on this blog, sharing my opinions instead in 140 character bursts on Twitter. But since tweets seem to be more ephemeral than blog posts, I’m preserving a few salient ones in amber by embedding them below.
This exchange occurred during the second Florida GOP debate last [...]

– I neglected to mention this at the time, but I picked up a few more shares of AYSI on Thursday at $0.75. No new news on it, but when I saw it hit .75 I entered a limit order which was partially filled. This was my most recent Seeking Alpha article on the [...]

Hedging costs after the debt deal
Last week, with the debt ceiling negotiations dragging on, we looked at the costs of hedging a handful of equity index, gold-, Treasury bond-, and dollar index-tracking ETFs. Below is a snapshot showing the current hedging costs of the same basket of ETFs.

Hedging against a >30% correction [...]

Credit Suisse on the consequences of a default
On Thursday, Credit Suisse’s global strategy team said that a U.S. default was still unlikely. However, they predicted that if the U.S. did default, stocks would suffer a 30% drop.

Hedging against a >30% correction in stocks
With that in mind, the table below shows the costs, as [...]

The chances of a debt ceiling deal
The Intrade prediction market enables participants to bet on whether Congress will approve an increase in the U.S. debt ceiling to $15.1 trillion on or before three dates: July 31st, August 31st, and September 30th. As of Tuesday evening, these were the chances of [...]

– Richard Florida was back this week, with another implausible job creation idea. My article about it on Seeking Alpha: “Richard Florida’s Latest Job Creation Idea“.
– In an earlier article (“Helping House Majority Leader Eric Cantor Hedge His Treasuries Exposure“), I mentioned a way to hedge against a U.S. default by using [...]

The Financial Times published this letter of mine today:
From Mr David Pinsen.
Sir, Larry Pierson (Letters, June 30) argues against the use of government spending as a form of economic stimulus, noting that Barack Obama’s fiscal stimulus failed to stem the rise in unemployment.
He then broadens his argument against fiscal stimulus by stating that only the [...]