See Krugman Debate Murphy: Keynesian vs Austrian Business Cycle Theory

All proceeds go to buy food for poor in New York City. They are at $34,000 as I post this. Can Krugman have no heart and refuse the challenge? He still has neglected to address it. This is great, I wonder how Krugman will back out of this one...

UPDATE: Murphy is training hard by the looks of things.

Sparks Goes to the White House

Study Suggests Curveballs Break Only in Batters' Minds: Video

Off topic a little, but I found this to be very interesting:

Loud and Clear Buy Signal

World stocks gain as Fed notes signal more easing

Fed Mulls Raising Inflation Expectations to Boost Economy

Big Ben is telling you to buy gold/silver.   I think their fear of deflation, will cause massive inflation.  "protecting the recover" means adding more chips to the casino of the stock market?  More USD into the system = higher price of gold/silver in USD.

TV Shows and Set-top Boxes

If you look at the current line of set-top boxes like the boxee box, roku, apple tv and google tv that connect to your tv and connect to the internet are shaping the young generation of tv show watchers. We are no longer told when to watch a show. Just like playing mp3's in your car, you do not need the radio station choosing what music you can hear at that specific time. For word of mouth tv shows, the idea is you should be able to stream the first 2-4 episodes to get hooked and then pay x dollars for the rest of the season. A tivo device is not needed since you do not have a subscription to cable or satellite. All of the shows are in the "cloud" so you do not have worry about the nonsense of having enough hard drive space to store your shows. Hopefully the price will be cheap enough per season/show or have monthly cost of having access to all the shows. The next step is for these devices to steam sports in full HD.

Foreclosure Freeze

This will start to become a trend among the banks.

Bank of America freezes foreclosure sales nationwide

The way I see it, is if you are underwater or your mortgage payment, stop paying as now the process is going to take longer. This is 1-2 years of "free money" since there are no short term consequences of not paying your mortgage. As for the banks, they do not want to face the losses. All in all, just an ugly situation.

Non-gold holders

It seemed this past week when the price of gold hit $1366 USD overnight, the general public noticed. The funny part is when it dropped to $1325 that same day, those who do not own or follow gold started to celebrate that the price dropped. Is this envy? Can they not afford it? I am not sure. One said - how come you did not sell the top? Well, if your target is 3-5k, then there is no need to. I think 2 prices where gold will pull back to in the next 2 weeks are 1305 and 1265. After that, a run towards $1450. During the pull back in the next 2 weeks, the haters will celebrate, but I will tell them that gold is "on sale" and buy if you do not have a core position. If they think they know the markets better, than I will tell them to open a futures trading account to prove it.

Perception of % Gains

If you look at the % gains of gold vs. silver in the past 3 months, silver has outperformed gold by 17%. But, no one seems to care or notice silver.

During the run of the past 2 months, silver when from (rounded) $17 to $23 and gold from $1155 to $1355 an ounce. That is $6 for silver and $200 for gold.

1155/17 = 68 ounces of silver. 68 times 6 = $408 profit vs. gold's $200 Yet, everyone is focused on gold.

I guess it comes down to big/small number perception. A $1000 stock dropping 50% to $500 is more dramatic and noticeable than a $3 stock dropping to $1.50 when looking that the price alone and not percent gains.

The reason for writing this is, even today, I think silver will outperform gold in terms of % gains, but will go unnoticed for quite some time.