1) In Grad School, one of my Ph. D. fields was econometrics. In general, I agree with this piece by Jeff Miller on the payroll survey, but I have a few things to add. My main problem with the birth-death model is that they use an ARIMA model. We only use ARIMA models when we don’t have sufficient cofactors to try to explain something structurally. At best, an ARIMA model is the reduced form solution to the broader structural model for which we do not have data. Second, I would simply add that the true error bonds on the month-to-month change are large, and I would advise everyone to look at year-over-year changes to get a better sense of the trend in the economy. As Morganstern showed over fifty years ago, economic data has so much noise that noise swamps signal until you look at year-to-year changes.
2) From the ever excellent Daniel Gross at the NYT, comes his piece questioning how important the US is the US to the global economy at present. I have written about the same thing over at RealMoney. With the US accounting for a shrinking fraction of global trade, it is hard to see how the role of the US is not diminishing here. We need to get used to the idea that we are “first among equals,” and make our policy requests as a part of coalition building among the nations that trade.
3) In general, I like John Hussman; I have learned a lot from him. We even live in the same city. That said, his commentary on share buybacks needs some clarification. Once a buyback is completed, the economics of the buyback are reflected in the diluted EPS. One should not count it as a dividend; the increment to book value reflects the change in value. But after the announcement, but prior to the buyback itself, investors analyze whether a management team is credible on the announcement. Does management follow though? Can the balance sheet handle it? Credible management teams can make the stock price rise with the mere mention of a buyback.

4) Calling John Henry and his modern counterparts: can traders be replaced by computer algorithms? Average traders, yes. The best traders, no. Good trading relies on a variety of factors that are difficult to turn into math. I learned that as a corporate bond manager/trader. Sensing when the speculative nature of the market is turning is touchy. There are many aspects of that that I think would be difficult to teach to a machine. It’s one thing for a computer to beat us at chess, which is a relatively simple game, but when will one beat us consistently at poker?

I have more, but I will publish now, and bring the rest back tonight.