Quotable Wednesday

I am running way late tonight so just a few items I found today.

In Communist China, Data Not Needed to be Seen by You
I wrote the other night about China changing their basket of weightings for the CPI as food prices are making it run too hot. I read around and saw that many felt lowering the food component made sense, as China is a maturing as a society and thus food becomes a lower part of the basket. I get the logic, but seems to me like this could have been done 3 years ago, or three years from now. Why right this very minute when prices are rolling higher? Exactly.

Not one to learn from my own mistakes, I saw today that China will now scrap a national housing price index that is closely watched because, well they did not say but I think you can guess. As a society matures they use less housing and all after or something. In any case, here is Trader Mark's take:

As the world leaders, other countries look up to us. We have taught them well... the Chinese are getting very inconvenienced by the data coming out of their property index reports. Now let's be honest, just about anything coming out of China has to be taken with a dump truck worth of salt, unless you are a CNBC commentator. Or HFT computer which must react to data in 1/4000th of a second. So in no way am I implying this report was very accurate.... even with the best of intentions trying to measure a country so vast, with such variances in development would be difficult. But it was watched by both the masses of people (who apparently were getting frustrated with what they saw) and outside observers, considering the genesis of the Chinese economy is "property building".

Solution to a report where you don't like the answers?

No more report. That will teach the statisticians to put out data the central command does not like.

Epic.

Limited Attention Spans
Monopoly Live gets a special treatment by Kid Dynamite today. The new game uses, what else, automated game runner so you don't have to be too involved in the game. Nice. Here is Dynamite letting it rip:

Oy vey – indeed – because American ingenuity, financial awareness and reinforcing capitalism would be terrible things to teach our children these days. (Sarcasm alert again!) Monopoly Live is indeed perfect for our times – press a button and watch as things are done for you. You don’t even need to strain yourself rolling the dice. What will the kids do when they Mighty Tower runs out of batteries or malfunctions? Complain about it on Facebook I guess…

-KD (Angry Old Man – all of 34 years old)

I have been saying this sort of thing for a long time.

Be the Burger, not the Bun
Over at iBankCoin, The Fly has the leading "quote of the year" candidate going in my book. Here he is:

The only logical thing to do, when faced with such egregious forms of “non-inflation,” is to milk the farmer, ahead of the planting season. Farmers will be spending money like rappers this spring. Count on that. Just going off the back of a napkin here, I reckon the shares of AGU, MOS, DE, CF, TEX, CAT, BG, MON, ANDE, LNN, VMI, just to name a few, are going a lot higher. Ya’ll fuckers need to recognize this shit right here and stop thinking you are outside the bun. You stupid motherfuckers: you are the bun and Bernanke is hungry for some burger. All of you are simply afterthoughts in the big scheme of things.

WINNER!

Market News
I played some names on Monday, here is where I sit:
JASO +8%
YGE +7%
COCO +3.7%
PRSP +4%
I am looking to unload JASO and YGE ahead of earnings lotto on Friday. COCO is doing just ok. PRSP looks like it may run a bit.

I have decided to play earnings lotto with AMRC tomorrow! Wish me luck, but you know these things tend to end badly.

Have a good night.