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Yearly Archives: 2014

An Anxious Spring

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It was a long hard Winter. It’s not letting go too easily here in the heartland, with Spring coming in short fits just long enough to give us all hope. But the transition is as bright as the green carpet of grass that covers the park, as pervasive as the smell of rain in the air, and as loud as the excitement along West Seventh Street. Each moment finds its own pace.

My daughter Thryn will graduate from High School in less than a month. Her dreams of hitting the road and finding a life beyond childhood color everything in her attitude now. The dark senioritis that wants to laze the last few moments collapses into anxiety in unpredictable fits of realization. Soon enough it really will be all about her, the desires of every teen made starkly real.

For her doting Dad it’s time to let go. As a parent, I can’t be good at everything.

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Credit Where It’s Due

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Part of the problem with the news today is that nearly everything in the world is interconnected. Stories have a tendency to bleed into each other for a variety of reasons, such as their equal usefulness as political tools or because the actors are involved in many different things at once. A good conspiracy theorist can link two stories together in ways that they probably shouldn’t be.

This may be one of those moments. Caveat Lector, let the reader beware.

There is little doubt that the theft of credit cards from Target last Winter could be traced to Ukraine – and, in so doing, the network of organized crime we might call the “Russian Mafia”. It is more accurate to refer to them by their own name for themselves, Bratva (Ukrainian for “Brotherhood”) because they are an international syndicate based in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine and operating nearly everywhere.

An estimate of their take from credit card fraud puts into perspective the scale of the problem in Ukraine,  We can estimate the resources they have as well as the stake they are fighting for as they resist the introduction of order and the rule of law. It also points to the US role in Ukraine – which is to say without sending in troops.

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Whither, Twitter?

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The question always comes up in about the same way whenever I have a new client seeking social media advice.

Client: “I don’t get Twitter. Can you explain it to me?”
Me: “It’s like a personalized news ticker and public chatroom.”
Client: “That’s it? That’s all there is to it? Why is there all the hype?”

At this point, we have less dialogue and more handwaving. People who aren’t on twitter already don’t “get it” and will probably never become users. That’s reflected in their falling growth rate, down to 4% each quarter. And it’s starting to show up in their stock price now that the six month lockup period is over, allowing insiders a chance to sell. It’s below $33 a share, down 25% from the first day of the IPO last November. It’s worth about $19B total, about the same as Facebook’s tab to buy WhatsApp.

Is Twitter dead? No, MySpace and AOL are still around – but that’s where it’s headed at this rate.

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Pick a Number, Any Number

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With so much economic data showered on us every month, about the last thing anyone needs is another number. It’s hard enough to keep track of what’s going on as it is, so more measures of the economy are not helpful. That is, they aren’t helpful unless they give us a particular insight that can’t be gained anywhere else.

This is probably why the more comprehensive U6 unemployment hasn’t caught on against the headline U3 unemployment figure, despite the latter’s obvious deficiencies. Two numbers causes confusion, one gives us clarity. Still, with the changes that are taking place in the economy and the slowness of the recovery, it’s worth taking at least a passing glance at anything that might help us understand where things are going in the future. More to the point, with wonderful tools provided by the St Louis Federal Reserve we can run a lot of custom charts to see what makes sense.

Let’s give it a go.

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The Check is … Against the Boards?

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With a 5-4 win in overtime, the Minnesota Wild beat the Colorado Avalanche, achieving more than the trophy for teams that don’t end in “s”. They advanced to the next round of the playoffs, against the defending Stanley Cup holders Chicago Blackhawks in the resumption of an intense Midwest rivalry.

They also made a great stride towards the team actually breaking even this year.

As any true fan of the game knows, the playoffs bring out the fair weather fans – a term that in the hockey season applies far too literally. But there is a lot more to the game than who wins on the ice. There’s a lot of money flowing through the NHL, and I do mean flowing. Hardly any stays. It’s a great benefit to the city of St Paul, or at least my neighborhood on West Seventh Street, but how does a team stay on the ice? It’s almost amazing.

Let’s talk about the future of the NHL as the Wild has a pretty decent chance at bringing the Stanley Cup to St Paul for the next year.

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