Submitted by CARPE DIEM
The mortgage-interest deduction is the backbone of American housing policy. It exits to encourage widespread homeownership. In its favor, it doesn’t actually do that. But it does have consequences: It’s been one of the quieter causes of the housing bubble. The mortgage-interest deduction deserves special recognition for the stupidity with which it […]

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Submitted by A Dash of Insight
Traders and investors alike are checking out how they did when several days of selling ended with a stunning reversal. Did anything really change?
Our Approach
At ‘A Dash’ we are mostly concerned with major themes for the individual investor. We hope that our work provides a useful […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

From early October through last week, the NASDAQ Bank Sector Index (^IXBX, composed of 520 bank stocks traded on NASDAQ, blue line above in the chart) dropped by about -12%, about twice the -12% drop in the overall market (DJIA, red line above).
Since last week, bank stocks have recovered nicely, registering an […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

Thanks to Larry Kudlow for another nice mention of Carpe Diem (this post and the graph above) on tonight’s “Kudlow and Company” show on CNBC. Here is a link to the 14:38 segment titled “Goldilocks Is Golden” (go to about 13:24 for CD part).
The discussion was about how Goldman Sachs’ stock […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Here is the link to the full Treasury study “Income Mobility in the U.S. From 1996 TO 2005″ and here is an excerpt:
Using three different measures of income mobility that track changes in the incomes of a large sample of individual taxpayers over time, this study presents new evidence on income mobility […]

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