Here at "A Dash" it seem like amateur hour in analyzing the stress tests and the various leaks. People who have little experience with government and policy making are rushing to judgment about the process. Let us consider a prominent example.  David Wiedner at the WSJ writes as follows: On the eve of the official announcement, the U.S. Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve are leaking stress-test results like pipes in a 100-year-old house. Out of the tens of thousands of readers of his column, we are probably the only ones who clicked through to all of the sources and tried to determine what the journalists said.  None of them are citing a "high government official" or a "well-placed government source."  Quite the opposite, and no support for the allegation. We had a similar experience today on RealMoney, TheStreet.com's site ...

Our own Jeff Miller was checking out a CNBC story on Bloomberg.com when he found some strong support for aggressive plans that Obama has in the works for the housing market. What follows below is his post from earlier today on TheStreet.com’s Real Money. Obama and Housing 12/16/2008 12:25 PM EST President-elect Obama is meeting with his economic team today. CNBC reported that they are contemplating the Hubbard-Mayer housing plan. Bloomberg stories suggest that Larry Summers has been talking with them and that Obama advisors have “embraced” the plan, already on a fast track at the Treasury. The proposal would provide a 4.5% fixed rate loan to just about anyone. It would address those under water, probably by “splitting the difference” with lenders. New home buyers could borrow up to 95%. The calculation of housing inventory is done by taking existing homes and ...

Jeff is traveling, so we are republishing his recent interview from the Kirk Report, one of our featured sources.  The Kirk Report is an excellent investor resource, with many specific stock ideas for members.  Charles Kirk also reads very widely and provides regular links to articles we might otherwise have missed.  He came up with some excellent questions for the interview, getting Jeff to discuss many topics he has not covered on "A Dash." Here is the Kirk Report interview: It is with great pleasure to have Jeff Miller, from A Dash Of Insight, to participate in this month's Q&A. Many of you know Jeff because I've linked to many (if not the vast majority) of his blog posts. In this Q&A we'll cover a variety of topics ...

The latest employment release was stunning, insofar as the NFP employment figure was far below consensus [0]. Net job loss was 240K, rather than 200K; in addition, September job loss was revised upward by 125K. In addtion to Jim's assessment, some additional reaction is summarized here. The acceleration in net job loss is depicted in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Nonfarm payroll employment, seasonally adjusted, various releases. Source: BLS, employment situation, various releases.

Note that Figure 1 highlights, by virtue of plotting the previous vintages of employment releases, the constant downward revision of payroll employment figures. While Dash of Insight's Jeff Miller has pointed that these revisions are small relative to the benchmark revisions will come our way, the latest revisions do seem to be getting bigger.

Justin Fox has correctly pointed out that quantitatively, net job loss in September and October is quite small, at 0.4%.

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Our writer, Jeff Miller, is also a columnist on Real Money - and through this we have access to the insightful commentary of his colleagues. Detailed below will be several observations by other Real Money writers as of November 5. James Altucher was the first to note that Asian markets were experiencing positive numbers “on the heels of an Obama win.” He also dug up a couple of Obama’s very own stock picks: AVII, a company developing cures for “diseases related to bioterror,” and Skyterra, a satellite company. According to Altucher, stem cell stocks are also likely to be sensitive, most notably STEM. Altucher later appeared on CNBC to discuss his favorite Obama sectors: Infrastructre (KBR and MTW), Healthcare (HMA), and Taxes (TYW); and overall he stressed stocks that were cheap and worthy of buying “regardless of policy.” Jim Gulbrandsen warned that trying to ...

Earlier in February we at Election Stocks covered the FDA’s regulation of the tobacco market and considered whether or not it would be beneficial to tobacco companies. Now Christopher Atayan from TheStreet.com writes in correspondence with our own Jeff Miller: Philip Morris is supporting the FDA regulation of tobacco because they believe it will freeze their market share at the current levels. RJ Reynolds is adamantly against it for practical reasons. I was at a recent RJ Reynolds customer event and they gave a very illuminating presentation on this issue and ramifications. Remember in the event the FDA does get control of tobacco they can oestensibly declare the product off the market any time they want. Or in the case of Lorillard they can declare menthol not an allowed product.That ability to decree an industry and company out of business is ...

As Jeff Miller on A Dash of Insight notes, Hillary and McCain are in favor of a plan that would make gas taxes go away for a while - just to help out the little people. How nice of them. Right? Not really. Barack Obama along with every reachable economic authority on the vast expanse of [...]