tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55650532597660454582024-03-13T04:46:45.918-07:00GuerlainGuerlainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09792345053131695545noreply@blogger.comBlogger343125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5565053259766045458.post-36353314959159562852011-01-03T19:15:00.000-08:002011-01-03T19:15:00.447-08:00Holiday Heist: CAA Signs James Franco & His Agent Kami Putnam-Heist From WME <div id="post-93525" readability="55.575221238938"><div class="post-content" readability="47"><img src="http://www-deadline-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/mike-fleming-thumbnail.jpg" class="c3" height="100" width="100" alt="Mike Fleming"/><p><a href="http://www.deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/franco.jpg"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-93527" title="franco" src="http://www-deadline-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/franco.jpg" alt="" width="186" height="270"/></a><strong>EXCLUSIVE</strong>: CAA has just hired Kami Putnam-Heist away from WME, and I'm told the talent agent will bring her longtime client James Franco. Putnam-Heist has been with WME for more than five years. She has repped Franco for six years, signing him while she was an agent at Gersh. Because this has just happened, it wasn’t immediately clear which other clients might be joining her. According to a client list on IMDB.com, she is aligned with some real up-and-comers and some vets. That list includes <em>The Social Network</em>’s Armie Hammer, <em>Percy Jackson and the Olympians</em>’ Logan Lerman, <em>True Blood</em> (and reported <em>Superman</em> candidate) Joe Manganiello, NBC <em>Chuck</em>'s Zachary Levi who just played the male lead in <em>Tangled</em>, and <em>Prom</em>’s Thomas McDonell. She worked on the WME team that reps <em>Spider-Man’s</em> Emma Stone, and vet clients include Kate Bosworth, Bradley Whitford, and Dennis Farina. Franco jumps in the midst of a career-changing year. He’s considered a strong candidate for a Best Actor nomination for playing Aron Ralston in the Danny Boyle-directed <em>127 Hours</em>. Late last year, Deadline broke the story that he’ll co-host the upcoming Academy Awards with Anne Hathaway.</p></div></div><p><em>This entry passed through the <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/">Full-Text RSS</a> service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php">fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php</a><br /><a href="http://fivefilters.org">Five Filters</a> featured site: <a href="http://sowhyiswikileaksagoodthingagain.com">So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again?</a>.</em></p><br /><p><a href="http://www.deadline.com/2011/01/holiday-heist-caa-hires-james-francos-longtime-agent-kami-putnam-heist-franco-jumps-too/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">View the original article here</a></p>Guerlainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09792345053131695545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5565053259766045458.post-73370304623579122142011-01-03T15:26:00.000-08:002011-01-03T15:26:00.102-08:00BEAT THE MARKET <div id="post-30318" readability="56.813386273398"><span class="breadcrumbs"><a href="http://pragcap.com/">Home</a> ? <a href="http://pragcap.com/category/mrs" title="View all posts in Most Recent Stories" rel="category tag">Most Recent Stories</a></span><p><span>2 January 2011 by Cullen Roche</span> <span>3 Comments</span></p><div class="entry clearfloat" readability="55.243895348837"><p>The first day of the month has been particularly rewarding to investors over the last decade.? CNBC <a href="http://www.cnbc.com//id/40878877" target="_blank">reports</a> on a S&P report that shows an investor who has been invested only on the first day of the each month since the year 2000 has outperformed a buy and hold portfolio by 68%:</p><blockquote readability="26"><p>“But a very simplistic form of market-timing has worked for the past 11 years. It involves owning the Standard & Poor’s 500 stocks, but only for the first day of every month.</p><p>An S&P report recently found that someone who invested $10,000 in the S&P 500 on Dec. 31, 1999, and left the money there until Dec. 1, 2010, would have just $8,209. An investor who was in the market only on the first day of every month over the same time — for example, buying at the close on Dec. 31 and selling at the close of the first trading day in January — would have $13,816.</p><p>That’s nearly 70 percent more than buying and holding the whole time. S&P didn’t include reinvesting dividends in either scenario because of the complications of figuring out which companies paid dividends on the first trading day of the month for 11 years. But even if you include all possible dividends for the buy-and-holders, the first-day trade strategy came out 33 percentage points ahead.”</p></blockquote><p>As I type, S&P futures are trading higher by 4 points as we head into the first trading day of 2011.? Looks like the trend is set to continue….</p><p>Source: CNBC<br/></p><blockquote readability="19.702463054187"><p>——————————————————————————————————————————————————</p><p><em>The content on this site is provided as general information only and should not be taken as investment advice. All site content shall not be construed as a recommendation to buy or sell any security or financial product, or to participate in any particular trading or investment strategy. The ideas expressed on this site are solely the opinions of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the opinions of firms affiliated with the author(s). The opinions of all guest authors or contributors can and will differ from those of Mr. Roche. These opinions do not necessarily represent the opinions or investment decisions of Mr. Roche. The author(s) may or may not have a position in any security referenced herein and may or may not seek to do business with one another or companies mentioned via this website. Any action that you take as a result of information or analysis on this site is ultimately your responsibility. Consult your investment adviser before making any investment decisions.</em></p><p><em>A brief note on comments – The increase in users in recent months has resulted in an increase in unproductive comments. Any user who engages in the use of racial epithets or uses the comment section as a place to insult other users will be banned from the site. The comment section is welcome to all readers who are interested in asking pertinent questions and/or engaging in thoughtful, intelligent, and productive debate. In short, just be nice. Thanks.</em></p><p>Post Footer automatically generated by <a href="http://www.freetimefoto.com/add_post_footer_plugin_wordpress" class="c1">Add Post Footer Plugin</a> for wordpress.</p></blockquote></div></div><p><em>This entry passed through the <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/">Full-Text RSS</a> service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php">fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php</a><br /><a href="http://fivefilters.org">Five Filters</a> featured site: <a href="http://sowhyiswikileaksagoodthingagain.com">So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again?</a>.</em></p><br /><p><a href="http://pragcap.com/beat-the-market-2" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">View the original article here</a></p>Guerlainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09792345053131695545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5565053259766045458.post-74292468238081076322011-01-03T12:17:00.000-08:002011-01-03T12:17:00.478-08:00CEBR’S 10 INVESTMENT PREDICTIONS FOR 2011 <div id=""><p><strong>1)</strong>Yet another eurozone crisis in the spring if not before, when Spain and Italy have to refinance in aggregate over €400 billion of bonds. The euro might break up at this point, though European politicians are normally able to respond to a crisis and I suspect that what will break up the euro will be the failure of most of the countries to take the tough medicine necessary to make their economies competitive over the longer term. We give it only a one in five chance of surviving in its present form for ten years. If the euro doesn’t break up, this could be the year when it weakens substantially towards parity with the dollar.</p><p><strong>2)</strong> Slower economic growth. As the boost from the end of destocking comes to an end, countries will have to rely on the fundamentals. And in the fast growing Eastern economies, growth will have to slow because of inflationary fears. For the UK, all this will combine with the effects of fiscal retrenchment as the government tries to bring borrowing under control. A double dip for the world economy is not likely because of the strength of the emerging economies. But it is well within the bounds of possibility for the UK.</p><p><strong>3)</strong> Germany to be the Western economic superstar again. German performance, in some sense subsidised by the euro which has the same effect for the German economy that the cheap renminbi policy has for the Chinese economy, is likely to continue to be stunning. With the costs of unification gradually absorbed and a highly competitive exchange rate, Germany is setting the pace in Europe. One of the interesting elements of Germany’s recent economic success has been the role of immigrants –primarily Turks but increasingly from other countries –who now seem to be boosting the German economy in the same way that their equivalents have boosted the British economy in the past 20 years.</p><p><strong>4)</strong> A serious economic crisis in Japan. Japanese debt is now 200% of GDP and if it grows will need foreign financing which may be difficult to achieve. It is likely that the government will have to embark on fiscal retrenchment. Meanwhile, growth in the main Asian export markets will slow and the aging population will force the government to raise the retirement age again, this time to 75!</p><p><strong>5)</strong> Inflation to be a bit lower than is conventionally expected. The end of the inventory turnaround and the prospect of more normal wheat and cotton growing weather should bring prices of commodities down. While interest rates –raised in China again on Christmas Day –should continue to rise in the fast growing Eastern economies, they could remain flat in the US, the eurozone and the UK.</p><p><strong>6)</strong> Another tough year for consumers. The VAT rise, combined with high commodity prices at the beginning of the year and depressed average earnings and falling employment mean that disposable income will fall. Whereas last year the fall was offset by consumers running down savings and by spending less on utility bills (at least until the cold December), this year there is not a lot of cushion left. So expect consumer spending to be flat at best and even that would be a result.</p><p><strong>7)</strong> Online retailing has had a tremendous year in 2010 and has really become a dominant driver of consumer spending. Two new technologies which I expect to start to grab attention in 2011 are cloud computing, which in effect is renting access to your server, and ‘telepresence’, the use of HD TV to provide teleconferencing that is such high quality that it seems as if the other people are in the same room as you.</p><p><strong><img src="http://pragcap.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_cool.gif" alt="8)" class="wp-smiley"/></strong> Banks in the UK to start lending again. UK banks have done a lot to get their capital bases restored after the problems of 2007/08. I expect them to lend more competitively in 2011 –either because they can afford to or because the government gets fed up with their monopolistic attitudes and start to adopt more aggressive policies to them.</p><p><strong>9)</strong> A year of two halves for the UK housing market. In the first half of the year, I expect a weak UK housing market and prices could even edge down, on the back of weak disposable income. But in the second half of the year, lending could become cheaper as competition to provide mortgages heats up and this should turn the market round. Prices may be much the same at the end of the year as at the beginning.</p><p><strong>10)</strong> Now for our infamous sporting predictions which for 2009 were 100% right and for 2010 were nearly 100% wrong. For 2011 ‐Manchester United for the league, New Zealand to beat Australia in the final of the rugby World Cup, India for the cricket World Cup. England to beat Sri Lanka but to lose to India in the two test series in the summer. Real Madrid for the European Champions League.</p></div><div id=""><p>——————————————————————————————————————————————————</p><p><em>The content on this site is provided as general information only and should not be taken as investment advice. All site content shall not be construed as a recommendation to buy or sell any security or financial product, or to participate in any particular trading or investment strategy. The ideas expressed on this site are solely the opinions of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the opinions of firms affiliated with the author(s). The opinions of all guest authors or contributors can and will differ from those of Mr. Roche. These opinions do not necessarily represent the opinions or investment decisions of Mr. Roche. The author(s) may or may not have a position in any security referenced herein and may or may not seek to do business with one another or companies mentioned via this website. Any action that you take as a result of information or analysis on this site is ultimately your responsibility. Consult your investment adviser before making any investment decisions.</em></p><p><em>A brief note on comments – The increase in users in recent months has resulted in an increase in unproductive comments. Any user who engages in the use of racial epithets or uses the comment section as a place to insult other users will be banned from the site. The comment section is welcome to all readers who are interested in asking pertinent questions and/or engaging in thoughtful, intelligent, and productive debate. In short, just be nice. Thanks.</em></p><p>Post Footer automatically generated by <a href="http://www.freetimefoto.com/add_post_footer_plugin_wordpress" class="c1">Add Post Footer Plugin</a> for wordpress.</p></div><p><em>This entry passed through the <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/">Full-Text RSS</a> service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php">fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php</a><br /><a href="http://fivefilters.org">Five Filters</a> featured site: <a href="http://sowhyiswikileaksagoodthingagain.com">So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again?</a>.</em></p><br /><p><a href="http://pragcap.com/cebrs-10-investment-predictions-for-2011" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">View the original article here</a></p>Guerlainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09792345053131695545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5565053259766045458.post-76073167024151686312011-01-03T08:38:00.000-08:002011-01-03T08:38:00.112-08:00ARE HIGHER INTEREST RATES PRICING IN USA DEFAULT FEARS? <div readability="115.15529526598"><p>Back in late August, with interest rates at all-time lows <a href="http://pragcap.com/what-will-be-the-prelude-to-higher-inflation" target="_blank">I explained</a> what would need to occur for interest rates to rise substantially:</p><blockquote readability="9"><p>“Inflation will likely occur during a recovery.? And by then all of this chatter of default and USD collapse will be long gone.? It might get the hyperinflationists hyperventilating again, but these same people fail to understand what hyperinflation actually is – it is the death of the currency that generally occurs due to a lack of faith in that currency.? And that my friends will not occur if we experience a booming recovery and a surge in loan growth.? The two simply do not go hand in hand.”</p></blockquote><p>Since then, interest rates have moved higher (<a href="http://pragcap.com/did-you-just-hear-the-bond-bubble-burst" target="_blank">though still very low in historical terms</a>).? This rise in rates happened to occur during the latest round of QE which has provided new fodder for the hyperinflation/default argument from the same pundits who have gotten that story wrong for as long as anyone can remember.? Of course, they’ve been claiming for years now that QE1 & now QE2 would result in hyperinflation and eventually some form of default.? But there is a a disconnect in their argument.? Uncle Sam’s prognosis has not deteriorated in recent months – it has in fact improved dramatically.? So what exactly is occurring here and do the higher interest rates spell impending doom for America?</p><p>When QE2 was initiated the Fed’s goal was to lower interest rates by purchasing government debt.? Some commentators said this would crash the dollar and cause runaway inflation.? It was described as “money printing” <a href="http://pragcap.com/bernanke-explains-why-qe2-is-not-money-printing-again" target="_blank">despite Ben Bernanke’s repeated efforts</a> to explain why he was not increasing the money supply.?? But a funny thing has happened since this new policy was initiated – rates have surged.? This is a remarkable event.? Can you imagine if the Fed announced a target rate on the Fed Funds Rate and rates move in the opposite direction?? That would be a market shattering event, but in the context of QE it is overlooked largely because most people still fail to understand exactly what QE is.? <a href="http://pragcap.com/qe-is-not-suppressing-interest-rates" target="_blank">As I’ve previously explained</a>, however, the Fed can’t control the long end of the curve under the current strategy.? They’ve essentially put an unloaded bazooka on the table and the market knows it.? In order to truly control the long end of the curve the Fed would have to specify a target rate and be a willing buyer at any size.? This inherent flaw in QE proves that it was destined to fail before it ever began.? But that hasn’t stopped the hyperinflationists and defaultistas from trying to scare everyone into believing that the USA is about to sink into the same black hole that now consumes Greece and Ireland.</p><p>With rates rising they have latched onto the argument that higher rates mean we are being exposed as the insolvent nation they have long argued we are.? Of course, that’s nonsense for anyone who understands how <a href="http://pragcap.com/resources/understanding-modern-monetary-system" target="_blank">the modern monetary system works</a>.? In a recent article Michael Pento of Euro Pacific (Peter Schiff’s firm) <a href="http://blogs.forbes.com/michaelpento/2010/12/30/rising-rates-reveal-debt-reality/?partner=contextstory" target="_blank">writes</a>:</p><blockquote readability="26"><p>“By 2015, our publicly traded debt is projected to be at least $15 trillion. Even if interest rates simply revert to their average level – not a stretch, given surging commodity prices and endless Fed money printing – the debt service expense could easily reach over $1 trillion, or about 50% of all federal revenue collected today. Just imagine what would happen if rates were to rise to the level of Greece, nearly 12% on a 10-year note, as opposed to our current 10-year yield of just 3.5%. I bet Athens, Georgia wouldn’t look much better than its namesake. Don’t forget: as interest rates rise, GDP growth slows, sending the debt-to-GDP ratio even higher.</p><p>Earlier this year, it wasn’t the nominal level of debt that suddenly sent euroland into insolvency, but rather a spike in debt service payments. Right now, the US national debt is the biggest subprime ARM of all time. Much like homeowners who thought they could afford a mortgage that was 10 times their annual incomes, Messrs. Krugman and Wesbury are blinded by deceptively low current rates of interest. These ostriches won’t poke their heads up to see the writing on the wall: low rates and quantitative easing cannot coexist for long. As rates continue to rise, the reality of US insolvency will be revealed.”</p></blockquote><p>This isn’t the first time Mr. Pento or Mr. Schiff argued that the US dollar was doomed and that interest rates were going to surge and expose the USA as being insolvent.? In fact, they’ve been making this argument for well over a decade and interest rates have continued to decline and the US dollar has remained remarkably stable over the same period.? Inflation, has been remarkably low.? But what about the most recent surge in yields?? Are the gentleman at Euro Pacific finally going to be right??? The evidence says no.</p><p>Since the rally in yields began in September we’ve actually seen the hyperinflation story deteriorate further.? The surge in yields are not a sign that Uncle Sam is becoming Greece.? To the contrary, the rise in yields are a sign that Uncle Sam is recovering.? Productivity is increasing, the much feared double dip appears to be a thing of the past and yields are accurately reflecting this higher level of economic output.? Yields are rising because the economic outlook has improved – not because the US government is on the verge of imminent insolvency.? Rising economic activity will almost certainly be accompanied by higher inflation, but let’s not confuse hyperinflation (death of the currency) with healthy rates of inflation.</p><p>The hyperinflation story can be debunked easily by looking at the data itself.? As the equity markets rally on hopes of a sustained economic recovery we have seen a coinciding rally in the US dollar and a decline in 5 year US credit default swaps.? This is not even remotely close to what might happen if the government bond market were in fact pricing in default or hyperinflation.? One need look no further than the recent action in Greece for evidence.? As yields in Greek debt surged throughout 2010 their equity markets have collapsed and their credit default swaps have surged to all-time highs.? If it were not for the flawed single currency system in Europe you could guarantee that the Drachma would be absolutely collapsing right now (although the Euro has declined significantly).? The situation in the USA is <strong>EXACTLY</strong> the opposite.? Rising yields are occurring during a period when 5 year CDS are flat or falling (see chart below), equities are surging and the US dollar strengthens.? That is in no way consistent with an environment in which default or hyperinflation are likely to ensue.</p><p class="c1"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-30258" title="5_yr_cds" src="http://pragcap.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/5_yr_cds.gif" alt="" width="589" height="422"/></p><p class="c2">So you can see that this is hardly an environment comparable to the one confronted by Greece, Ireland, Zimbabwe or Weimar.? This is not to imply that the US economy is without troubles (the still very low historical rates show that the USA has severe structural issues), but the most recent rise in yields should not be misconstrued as something that poses a risk of US default, dollar collapse or hyperinflation.? To imply as much is pure fear mongering and nothing more.? The rise in yields merely reflects a marginally higher rate of economic activity when compared to the severely depressed expectations of a few months ago.</p><p class="c2">In sum, the USA is not insolvent or on the verge of suffering a hyperinflationary collapse.? Anyone who argues as much simply does not understand how the modern monetary system actually functions in the USA.? Furthermore, the latest round of QE has been proven to be a failure as rates surge in the face of a Fed that has vowed to purchase $600B in government bonds, but failed to set a target rate on these purchases.? Make no mistake – this rise in yields is not a sign that Uncle Sam’s balance sheet is weakening.? It is a clear sign that Uncle Sam is recovering from a truly nightmarish economic situation.? Higher rates in the USA are not a sign that we are becoming Greece.? Rather, it is a sign that we are <strong>NOT</strong> becoming Japan (hopefully).? Let’s hope the recent trends truly do become sustained.? I still believe the USA faces extreme headwinds, but hyperinflation and default are not amongst them.</p><blockquote readability="20.096692111959"><p>——————————————————————————————————————————————————</p><p><em>The content on this site is provided as general information only and should not be taken as investment advice. All site content shall not be construed as a recommendation to buy or sell any security or financial product, or to participate in any particular trading or investment strategy. The ideas expressed on this site are solely the opinions of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the opinions of firms affiliated with the author(s). The opinions of all guest authors or contributors can and will differ from those of Mr. Roche. These opinions do not necessarily represent the opinions or investment decisions of Mr. Roche. The author(s) may or may not have a position in any security referenced herein and may or may not seek to do business with one another or companies mentioned via this website. Any action that you take as a result of information or analysis on this site is ultimately your responsibility. Consult your investment adviser before making any investment decisions.</em></p><p><em>A brief note on comments – The increase in users in recent months has resulted in an increase in unproductive comments. Any user who engages in the use of racial epithets or uses the comment section as a place to insult other users will be banned from the site. The comment section is welcome to all readers who are interested in asking pertinent questions and/or engaging in thoughtful, intelligent, and productive debate. In short, just be nice. Thanks.</em></p><p>Post Footer automatically generated by <a href="http://www.freetimefoto.com/add_post_footer_plugin_wordpress" class="c3">Add Post Footer Plugin</a> for wordpress.</p></blockquote></div><p><em>This entry passed through the <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/">Full-Text RSS</a> service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php">fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php</a><br /><a href="http://fivefilters.org">Five Filters</a> featured site: <a href="http://sowhyiswikileaksagoodthingagain.com">So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again?</a>.</em></p><br /><p><a href="http://pragcap.com/are-higher-interest-rates-pricing-in-usa-default-fears" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">View the original article here</a></p>Guerlainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09792345053131695545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5565053259766045458.post-70976064340438711842011-01-03T05:30:00.000-08:002011-01-03T05:30:01.599-08:00Fox Developing Comedy Starring J.B. Smoove And Produced By Shawn Levy <div id="post-93511" readability="69.054727272727"><div class="post-content" readability="65.678962302392"><img src="http://www-deadline-com.vimg.net/wp-content/themes/deadline/img/DH-TV_100x100_Final.jpg" class="c3" height="100" width="100" alt="Nellie Andreeva"/><p><a href="http://www.deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/JB-Smoove.jpg"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-93522" title="JB-Smoove" src="http://www-deadline-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/JB-Smoove.jpg" alt="" width="160" height="230"/></a>Fox has made a late comedy buy, a half-hour project from actor-comedian J.B. Smoove and <em>The Office</em> writer-producer Aaron Shure to star the <em>Curb Your Enthusiasm</em> standout. It hails from 20th TV and Shawn Levy and Marty Adelstein's studio-based company 21 Laps/Adelstein. The project was pitched by Shure, Smoove and Levy, with Fox brass buying it in the room with a script commitment. Co-created by Smoove and Shure, the untitled blue-collar comedy, which shares some aspects with <em>Roseanne</em>, centers on a husband and a father (Smoove) who has gotten divorced but, with the economy being as it is, can't afford to move out and instead moves into the family home's basement. It will revolve around the man's relationship with his family, his parents, his co-workers and a guy in a nursing home. "He’s trying to get his life back from the basement up, from the ground up," Levy said. "He is consistently trying to do the right thing but constantly trips over his feet."</p><p><a href="http://www.deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/shawnlevy.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-93523" title="shawnlevy" src="http://www-deadline-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/shawnlevy-300x195.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="195"/></a>The collaboration between Levy and Smoove stems from Smoove's small role in the Levy-directed feature <em>Date Night</em>. Following the April release of the action-comedy starring Steve Carell and Tina Fey, Levy said he received numerous comments about how hilarious Smoove sequence was. (The comedian played a cab driver whose car gets attached to Carell and Fey's when the two crash into his cab.) When Levy and Adelstein <a href="http://www.deadline.com/2010/06/shawn-levy-and-marty-adelstein-form-tv-company-sign-with-20th-century-fox-tv-and-tap-becky-clements-as-prez/">launched</a> their TV company in June, one of Levy's first calls was to Smoove who already had the seeds of an idea for a single-camera comedy largely centered on a family. Separately, Smoove had an existing relationship with 20th TV and Fox via a talent holding deal the two recently had with him.? The producers looked at several other writers before settling on <em>Everybody Loves Raymond</em> veteran Shure, now a co-executive producer on <em>The Office,</em> whom Levy knew through <em>The Office</em> star Carell. "I like that Aaron brings the sharp wit of <em>The Office</em> with the domestic comedy backdrop of <em>Raymond</em>." Shure, Levy, Adelstein and Becky Clements are executive producing the project, with Smoove serving as a producer. Smoove recently wrapped <em>The Sitter</em> opposite Jonah Hill, booked a role in Cameron Crowe’s <em>We Bought a Zoo</em> and signed on to voice a character in <em>Ice Age 4</em>.? Smoove, repped by WME and Rain Management, will also reprise his role as the fast-talking, foul-mouthed Leon Black in 10 episodes of <em>Curb Your Enthusiasm</em>'s upcoming eighth season.</p><p class="tagline">TV Editor Nellie Andreeva - tip her <a href="http://www.deadline.com/nellies-confidential-tip-line/">here</a>.</p></div></div><p><em>This entry passed through the <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/">Full-Text RSS</a> service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php">fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php</a><br /><a href="http://fivefilters.org">Five Filters</a> featured site: <a href="http://sowhyiswikileaksagoodthingagain.com">So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again?</a>.</em></p><br /><p><a href="http://www.deadline.com/2011/01/fox-developing-comedy-starring-j-b-smoove-and-produced-by-shawn-levy/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">View the original article here</a></p>Guerlainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09792345053131695545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5565053259766045458.post-2710362349791184342011-01-03T02:28:00.001-08:002011-01-03T02:28:10.199-08:00Exiting Governator Names His Flack To California Film Commission <div readability="83"><p><a href="http://www.deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/arnold-cigar.jpg"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-93516" title="arnold cigar" src="http://www-deadline-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/arnold-cigar-e1294013022806.jpg" alt="" width="275" height="250"/></a>It wasn't enough that the Guvernator <em>Ah</em>-nuld mucked up California.?On New Year's Eve,?Schwarzenegger made a slew of last-day political appointments and re-appointments in a smoke-filled room, and put his 3-year press secretary <strong>Aaron McLear</strong> on the California Film Commission. Others in the unsalaried positions include TV veteran <strong>Lindy DeKoven</strong>, former NBC Entertainment EVP, and <em>Moulin Rouge</em> producer <strong>Fred Baron</strong>, EVP of feature production for Twentieth Century Fox.</p><p>McLear, a Republican, previously?served as a regional press secretary for the Republican National Committee from 2005 to 2007 and was communications director for the 2004 Bush-Cheney Campaign in Ohio. Prior to that, he served Ohio Governor Bob Taft as a legislative liaison, assistant press secretary and communications assistant.?Baron, a Democrat,?since 1990?has overseen the productions of feature films that include: <em>Knight and Day, Date Night, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Live Free or Die Hard, Borat, Kingdom of Heaven, I Robot, The Day After Tomorrow, Last of the Mohicans, Grand Canyon, Edward Scissorhands, Hot Chicks, Broken Arrow, Romeo and Juliet, Alien Resurrection, Bulworth and Moulin Rouge</em>. Interestingly, few of those productions were filmed in California. DeKoven, a democrat,?has headed?DeKoven Entertainment?after she left NBC in?2000.?She is chair of the Commission on the Status of Women. Also appointed was?<strong>Hilary Rice Armstrong</strong>, another Democrat,?who since?2006 has been president of Fire of Life Films and executive producer for California State of Mind: the Legacy of Pat Brown. Additionally, she has been development director for My California Now since 2007.</p><p>Reappointed were <strong>Steve Dayan</strong>,?a business agent for the Teamsters Local 399 representing Drivers, Location Managers and Casting Directors;?<strong>Christine Essel</strong>,?CEO?for the Community Redevelopment Agency for the city of Los Angeles and a former?Paramount Pictures SVP of?government affairs;?<strong>Janet Knutsen</strong>,?a freelance TV and film producer and production manager who previously worked for Nickelodeon and Warner Bros;?<strong>Michael Miller</strong>,?division director of IATSE's?Motion Picture and Television Production Department since 2008 and served as eighth international vice president of the IATSE General Executive Board;?<strong>Gary Tobey</strong>,?chairman/CEO for Haworth Marketing and Media since 1995.</p></div><p><em>This entry passed through the <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/">Full-Text RSS</a> service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php">fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php</a><br /><a href="http://fivefilters.org">Five Filters</a> featured site: <a href="http://sowhyiswikileaksagoodthingagain.com">So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again?</a>.</em></p><br /><p><a href="http://www.deadline.com/2011/01/schwarzenegger-swan-song-appoints-his-gop-flack-to-california-film-commission/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">View the original article here</a></p>Guerlainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09792345053131695545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5565053259766045458.post-19141359892843022822010-12-24T23:50:00.000-08:002010-12-24T23:50:00.295-08:00SALES SEASON ROUNDUP <div readability="102.8427672956"><p><strong>By <a href="http://annaly.com" target="_blank">Annaly Capital Management</a></strong></p><p><span class="c1">Seasonally adjusted greetings to Annaly Salvos readers around the world!</span></p><p><span class="c1">In the commercial spirit of the season (and a day early for our blog post this week), we thought we’d go down a level from the headline retail sales numbers, which have been trending strongly of late. In November, retail sales rose 0.8%, and October and September were both revised upwards. Many economists are pointing to the relative strength of this three-month set to predict a decent 4<sup>th</sup> quarter GDP number. Macroeconomic Advisors has raised its estimate to over 3%. “The report on retail sales through November,” they write, “was much stronger than expected, and even with offsets to our assumptions for imports and inventories, we revised up our current-quarter tracking forecast of GDP growth by four tenths on this report.”</span></p><p><span class="c1">The results for selected line items were consistent with the theme that Americans are starting to spend a little bit more on things that fall more into the “discretionary spending” category, while cutting back on most purchases related to buying new houses. So to begin at the top, total retail sales (less food and autos) were approximately $338 billion at a seasonally adjusted rate in November, up 8.1% from a year ago and within shouting distance of the cyclical peak of $342 billion in November 2007. (All retail sales data are through November 2010.)</span></p><p class="c2"><span class="c1"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-29783" title="ann1" src="http://pragcap.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/ann17.jpg" alt="" width="584" height="426"/></span></p><p class="c3"><span class="c1">Sales at furniture and home furnishing stores, which rose along with the strong housing market, are still languishing below the cyclical peak and bumping along the cyclical trough.</span></p><p class="c2"><span class="c1"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-29784" title="ann2" src="http://pragcap.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/ann25.jpg" alt="" width="585" height="426"/></span></p><p class="c3"><span class="c1">Likewise, sales at electronic and appliance stores, which we would put in the same general “new home sales” category as furniture, are also skittering along the cyclical bottom.</span></p><p class="c2"><span class="c1"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-29785" title="ann3" src="http://pragcap.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/ann32.jpg" alt="" width="585" height="426"/></span></p><p class="c3"><span class="c1">In contrast, building materials, garden equipment and supply dealers, more reflective of the do-it-yourself category of housing-related consumption, are registering double-digit year-over-year sales growth. After the collapse in this category’s sales over the last two years, and with prospects for the housing market still weak, perhaps people have capitulated on maintenance and upgrades.</span></p><p class="c2"><span class="c1"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-29786" title="ann4" src="http://pragcap.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/ann4.jpg" alt="" width="585" height="426"/></span></p><p class="c3"><span class="c1">Recreational purchases are rising faster than the cohort. Sporting goods, hobby, book and music stores are rising impressively on a year-over-year basis, perhaps reflecting the trend towards staycations and the tentative beginnings of the resumption of discretionary spending.</span></p><p class="c2"><span class="c1"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-29787" title="ann5" src="http://pragcap.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/ann5.jpg" alt="" width="631" height="460"/></span></p><p class="c3"><span class="c1">Likewise for the “miscellaneous” category of retail sales, which encompasses stationery, gift, novelty, souvenir and used merchandise stores. They are rising at a double-digit year-over-year pace.</span></p><p class="c2"><span class="c1"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-29788" title="ann6" src="http://pragcap.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/ann6.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="465"/><br/></span></p><p><span class="c1">The lump of coal in the sales stockings is new home sales, which are still at generational lows after the mid-decade top. The population of the United States has about doubled since the 1960s, and yet new home sales are less than the run rate of that era. Moreover, it is the first time that new home sales have continued to decline after the official end of a recession. The question before the market is whether or not we can have a sustainable recovery without the important contribution of the housing sector.</span></p><p class="c2"><span class="c1"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-29789" title="ann7" src="http://pragcap.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/ann7.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="465"/><br/></span></p><blockquote readability="18.909698996656"><p>——————————————————————————————————————————————————</p><p><em>The content on this site is provided as general information only and should not be taken as investment advice. All site content shall not be construed as a recommendation to buy or sell any security or financial product, or to participate in any particular trading or investment strategy. The ideas expressed on this site are solely the opinions of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the opinions of firms affiliated with the author(s). The opinions of all guest authors or contributors can and will differ from those of Mr. Roche. These opinions do not necessarily represent the opinions or investment decisions of Mr. Roche. The author(s) may or may not have a position in any security referenced herein and may or may not seek to do business with one another or companies mentioned via this website. Any action that you take as a result of information or analysis on this site is ultimately your responsibility. Consult your investment adviser before making any investment decisions.</em></p><p><em>A brief note on comments – The increase in users in recent months has resulted in an increase in unproductive comments. Any user who engages in the use of racial epithets or uses the comment section as a place to insult other users will be banned from the site. The comment section is welcome to all readers who are interested in asking pertinent questions and/or engaging in thoughtful, intelligent, and productive debate. In short, just be nice. Thanks.</em></p><p>Post Footer automatically generated by <a href="http://www.freetimefoto.com/add_post_footer_plugin_wordpress" class="c4">Add Post Footer Plugin</a> for wordpress.</p></blockquote></div><p><em>This entry passed through the <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/">Full-Text RSS</a> service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php">fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php</a><br /><a href="http://fivefilters.org">Five Filters</a> featured site: <a href="http://sowhyiswikileaksagoodthingagain.com">So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again?</a>.</em></p><br /><p><a href="http://pragcap.com/sales-season-roundup" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">View the original article here</a></p>Guerlainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09792345053131695545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5565053259766045458.post-83399478216061429472010-12-24T20:22:00.000-08:002010-12-24T20:22:00.244-08:00INFLATION? WHAT INFLATION? <div id="post-29776" readability="59.591353996737"><span class="breadcrumbs"><a href="http://pragcap.com/">Home</a> ? <a href="http://pragcap.com/category/mrs" title="View all posts in Most Recent Stories" rel="category tag">Most Recent Stories</a></span><p><span>23 December 2010 by TPC</span> <span>34 Comments</span></p><div class="entry clearfloat" readability="53.252299972122"><p>Well, I think it’s becoming pretty clear where the commodity price inflation is coming from – China and genuine economic strength.? The entire inflationist argument in the United States has been pretty much dead wrong for over two years running – whether you believed in hyperinflation, high inflation or default due to “money printing” you have been <strong>well</strong> off the mark.? This morning’s PCE prices data was just one more sign that disinflation rules the day and deflation remains the greater risk in the United States (via the Cleveland Fed):</p><blockquote readability="12"><p>“The Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE) price index rose at an annualized rate of 1.1 percent in November, compared to a 2.0 percent increase in October. Excluding food and energy prices (core PCE), the index rose 1.0 percent during the month and is up just 0.8 percent on a year-over-year basis. After excluding non-market-based items—such as financial services furnished without payment—the core PCE price index rose 1.1 percent in November, offsetting a 1.1 percent decline in October, and is up 0.8 percent over the past year.”</p></blockquote><p class="c1"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-29777" title="PCE" src="http://pragcap.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/PCE.png" alt="" width="630" height="378"/></p><p class="c2">N.B. – Three’s still little to no sign that inflation is working its way into the system via QE2 (although I do believe inflation fears have contributed <em>somewhat</em> to the surge in commodity prices). Despite all of the incessant shrieking over “money printing” and other inaccurate descriptions of QE and its impact on the economy there is still almost no signs thus far that inflation is making any sort of sustained pick-up.? And that’s not surprising to anyone who actually understands that QE is a non-event.</p><blockquote readability="20.030518819939"><p>——————————————————————————————————————————————————</p><p><em>The content on this site is provided as general information only and should not be taken as investment advice. All site content shall not be construed as a recommendation to buy or sell any security or financial product, or to participate in any particular trading or investment strategy. The ideas expressed on this site are solely the opinions of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the opinions of firms affiliated with the author(s). The opinions of all guest authors or contributors can and will differ from those of Mr. Roche. These opinions do not necessarily represent the opinions or investment decisions of Mr. Roche. The author(s) may or may not have a position in any security referenced herein and may or may not seek to do business with one another or companies mentioned via this website. Any action that you take as a result of information or analysis on this site is ultimately your responsibility. Consult your investment adviser before making any investment decisions.</em></p><p><em>A brief note on comments – The increase in users in recent months has resulted in an increase in unproductive comments. Any user who engages in the use of racial epithets or uses the comment section as a place to insult other users will be banned from the site. The comment section is welcome to all readers who are interested in asking pertinent questions and/or engaging in thoughtful, intelligent, and productive debate. In short, just be nice. Thanks.</em></p><p>Post Footer automatically generated by <a href="http://www.freetimefoto.com/add_post_footer_plugin_wordpress" class="c3">Add Post Footer Plugin</a> for wordpress.</p></blockquote></div></div><p><em>This entry passed through the <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/">Full-Text RSS</a> service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php">fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php</a><br /><a href="http://fivefilters.org">Five Filters</a> featured site: <a href="http://sowhyiswikileaksagoodthingagain.com">So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again?</a>.</em></p><br /><p><a href="http://pragcap.com/inflation-what-inflation-6" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">View the original article here</a></p>Guerlainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09792345053131695545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5565053259766045458.post-46825331472441644772010-12-24T16:49:00.000-08:002010-12-24T16:49:00.194-08:00Conan Issues Apology Over Rudolph Snafu <div id="post-92755" readability="39.529141104294"><div class="post-content" readability="36.525373134328"><img src="http://www-deadline-com.vimg.net/wp-content/themes/deadline/img/DH-TV_100x100_Final.jpg" class="c3" height="100" width="100" alt="Nellie Andreeva"/><p>Last night, we were the first to <a href="http://www.deadline.com/2010/12/conan-video-sarah-palin-shoots-rudolph/">point out</a> the striking similarities between a video on <em>Conan</em> last night about Sarah Palin shooting Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and a similar skit on <em>Jimmy Kimmel Live</em> 2 weeks ago. Now, Conan O'Brien has issued a video apology to the folks from <em>Jimmy Kimmel:</em><br/></p><p class="tagline">TV Editor Nellie Andreeva - tip her <a href="http://www.deadline.com/nellies-confidential-tip-line/">here</a>.</p></div></div><p><em>This entry passed through the <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/">Full-Text RSS</a> service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php">fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php</a><br /><a href="http://fivefilters.org">Five Filters</a> featured site: <a href="http://sowhyiswikileaksagoodthingagain.com">So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again?</a>.</em></p><br /><p><a href="http://www.deadline.com/2010/12/conan-issues-apology-over-rudolph-snafu/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">View the original article here</a></p>Guerlainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09792345053131695545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5565053259766045458.post-84689709447371904852010-12-24T12:30:00.000-08:002010-12-24T12:30:00.263-08:00Late-night Ratings: Leno & Fallon Hit Highs In Viewers, 'Nightline' Takes Season Lead <div id="post-92724" readability="60.074034902168"><div class="post-content" readability="58.842980705256"><img src="http://www-deadline-com.vimg.net/wp-content/themes/deadline/img/DH-TV_100x100_Final.jpg" class="c3" height="100" width="100" alt="Nellie Andreeva"/><p><a href="http://www.deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/leno-v-letterman.jpg"><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-51240" title="leno v letterman" src="http://www-deadline-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/leno-v-letterman-300x189.jpg" alt="" width="240" height="151"/></a>NBC won three nights in primetime last week, and its ratings gains also carried over to late-night. Both Jay Leno (4.2 million viewers) and Jimmy Fallon (1.9 million) hit season highs in total viewers. for the week of Dec. 13-17. Leno also topped Letterman and <em>Nightline</em>/Jimmy Kimmel in every key category and also prevailed over Conan O'Brien's TBS show (1.1 rating vs. 0.7) in adults 18-49 for a fourth straight week. Fallon too topped Ferguson and Kimmel in every major category.</p><p>Leno widened his margin of victory over Letterman in 18-49 to 22% in viewers (1.402 million vs. 1.149 million), up from a 3% win for the same week last year when Conan was the host of <em>The Tonight Show</em>. Similarly, Fallon topped <em>Late Late Show</em> for the week by 25% (861,000 vs. 689,000), up from last year's 3%.</p><p>Versus the first 13 weeks of last season, <em>Tonight</em> is matching its year-ago 1.0 rating in adults 18-49 and is 6% below its year-ago 18-49 viewership, while CBS' <em>Late Show</em> is down 10% in rating (0.9 vs. 1.0) and down 14% in 18-49 viewers. In total viewers, <em>Tonight</em> is up 52% versus last season, <em>Late Show</em> is down 15%.<br/><a href="http://www.deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/logo_nightline_mn.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-92733" title="logo_nightline_mn" src="http://www-deadline-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/logo_nightline_mn-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="168" height="126"/></a>ABC’s <em>Nightline</em> was second for the week among total viewers (3.87 million) and adults 18-49 (1.24 million). Season-to-date, <em>Nightline</em> ranks in first place among viewers and A25-54, the first time the newsmagazine has been in first place at this point in the season since at least the 1993-94 season when the <em>Late Show with David Letterman</em> began on CBS.</p><p class="tagline">TV Editor Nellie Andreeva - tip her <a href="http://www.deadline.com/nellies-confidential-tip-line/">here</a>.</p></div></div><p><em>This entry passed through the <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/">Full-Text RSS</a> service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php">fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php</a><br /><a href="http://fivefilters.org">Five Filters</a> featured site: <a href="http://sowhyiswikileaksagoodthingagain.com">So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again?</a>.</em></p><br /><p><a href="http://www.deadline.com/2010/12/late-night-ratings-leno-fallon-hit-highs-in-viewers-nightline-takes-season-lead/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">View the original article here</a></p>Guerlainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09792345053131695545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5565053259766045458.post-1694477726001858712010-12-24T09:05:00.000-08:002010-12-24T09:05:00.522-08:00FX OUTLOOK 2011 <div id=""><h3>US Dollar:</h3><p>2010 was what we called a year of 2 halves for the Dollar. In the first half of the year, the Dollar gained from strength to strength as investors sought a safe haven from the Eurozone debt crisis. At the height of the crisis, Dollar Index went above 88 on risk aversion flows. The second half of 2010 saw the reversal of the Dollar’s fortunes. Markets turned their focus on the Fed’s plan to carry out more quantitative easing and feared the easing measures would bring down the Dollar. In November this year, the Fed announced that it would repurchase $600 billion of long term treasuries for the next 8 months. These purchases would be financed by printing more money and investors started to flee from the Dollar. At the height of the Dollar dumping frenzy, Dollar Index fell to almost 76 levels. It has since rebounded on improving US economic data.</p><p>For the outlook in 2011, we think that this could be the year where we will see the steady devaluation of the Dollar. The easy monetary policy by Fed which boosted asset markets in short term, will come back to haunt in the mid-to-long term. Basic economics dictate that excess liquidity chasing a fixed supply of goods and services will bring about inflated prices and weaker purchasing power. While we hold a long-term view that the Dollar will weaken, we continue to see the Dollar being favored in the coming few months as market participants are still preoccupied on sovereign debt issues in other Euro-zone nations like Spain and Portugal. The recent rate cut sprees by rating agencies like S&P, Fitch and Moody’s on Eurozone nations would likely further improve demand for refuge currency like the Dollar. However, US is not free of problems. With the nation’s debt swelling to more than US13trillion (or 93% of GDP) and loose monetary policies, downside pressures on the Dollar might occur once the Eurozone’s problems become less glaring.</p><h3>Euro:</h3><p>If there was any award for the currency that hogged the limelight in 2010, the Euro would have won the award with ease. 2010 saw the bailout of Greece and Ireland as these nations struggled to stay solvent. Euro, the shared currency among 16-nations, suffered as the European Union (EU) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) struggled with solutions to stop the sovereign debt crisis from spreading to other nations. Yield spreads for 10-year Greece, Ireland and Portugal bonds against German bunds reached record levels, implying that investors are demanding a bigger premium to take on the risk of buying Greek, Irish and Portuguese debt. Even healthier nations like France were not spared. The cost to insure French government tripled in 2010, according to data provider CMA.</p><p>The outlook for Euro in 2011 may not be as bleak in 2011 as most investors have anticipated. While the PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain) nations continue to be in the media for possible sovereign debt defaults, we are cautiously optimistic that the combined efforts by EU and IMF will eventually receive some level of success and help contain the contagion. The Euro may continue to be weak in the first half of 2011 as investors will scrutinize Spain and Portugal closely for signs of sovereign debt default. Credit rating agencies will likely add fears in the markets by putting some of these troubled nations under downgrade review. However, we think that the funding mechanisms and experience the region have in handling Ireland and Greece bailouts could come in handy should other nations need an eventual bailout. Hence, Euro will probably see a better second half when investors regain confidence that the region’s crisis can be contained.</p><h3>Japanese Yen:</h3><p>In the battle between safe haven currencies, 2010 was the year where the Yen prevailed over the US Dollar. The Yen was preferred over the Dollar as the quantitative easing measures embarked by the Fed diminished the Dollar’s attractiveness as a safe haven currency. As such, we saw USDJPY reaching a 15-year low at the 80 levels during late October 2010. However, the surge of strength in the Yen was not viewed favorably by the Japanese government and export-based companies. As the profitability of major blue-chip companies in Japan depended on export demand, the strength in Yen eroded the profits derived from overseas operations. For the first time in 5-year, Bank of Japan (BOJ) intervened in the currency markets by unilaterally selling Yen into the market, in bid to weaken the currency. The impact of the intervention was limited as USDJPY consistently traded below 85 for the rest of the year.</p><p>For the outlook in 2011, we may not witness the repeat of Yen strength seen in 2010. USDJPY is positively correlation to US treasury yields. When US treasury yields drops, USDJPY tends to comes under downside pressures. US treasury yields drops when investors are not too optimistic about the global economic health. With the recent tax cuts bill signed by President Obama and the Fed’s QE measures, economic indicators show improvement in US labour, manufacturing and consumption. Yields have come off the lows and we see that the Yen’s strength is diminishing. Furthermore, with FOMC rates and BOJ benchmark rates similar, there is less motivation for carry trades to take place. Consequently, we could see further upsides to USDJPY (or Yen weakening against the Dollar) in 2011.</p><h3>Aussie:</h3><p>Aussie had a remarkable year in 2010 as it reached parity against the Dollar. The Australian currency was buoyed by very positive economic growth and healthy labour markets. The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) had to hike benchmark rates 4 times this year in bid to stem the red hot economy. Rich in natural resources, Australia is a major exporter of agricultural products, minerals and energy-related commodities. The Aussie, dubbed as a commodity currency, benefited from the meteoric rises in commodity prices this year.</p><p>For the outlook in 2011, we remain optimistic on the Aussie. We continue to see the currency benefiting from further commodity price increases. China, the world second largest economy, the main importer of Australian resources, is expected to continue importing large quantities of resources from Australia. Furthermore, analysts are anticipating further rate hikes by RBA in the year of 2011. The anticipated rate hikes would likely attract more foreign capital inflows and boost the currency’s strength further.</p><h3>Chinese Yuan:</h3><p>This year, we saw the de-pegging of the Yuan against the Dollar. On June 19, 2010, the People’s Bank of China released a statement indicating that they would “proceed further with reform of the Yuan exchange rate regime and increase the Yuan exchange rate flexibility.” Since then, the Yuan had a steady appreciation against the Dollar. China’s GDP for the latest quarter came in red-hot at 9.6%, while inflation was high at 5.1%. In bid to stem inflation, China has raised benchmark rates once and the bank’s reserve requirement ratio (RRR) 5 times.</p><p>For the outlook in 2011, we are anticipating continued preference of Yuan over the Dollar in the coming months. The Chinese government is very worried about the inflation in raw materials and food prices. To curb inflation, it can choose between quantitative or monetary tools. While it seems intuitive for Chinese government to allow the Yuan to appreciate freely against other currencies in order to curb import inflation, China is dependent on exports for its economic growth and employment levels. A strong Yuan will affect the affordability of its exports. As such, we are anticipating China to employ rate hikes and RRR hikes instead to shore up excess liquidity. Those actions may attract foreign capital inflows but we think that the Chinese government will employ capital controls to ensure that the appreciation of Yuan will be gradual and manageable. We are estimating China’s GDP to come in at 9% for 2011.</p></div><p><em>This entry passed through the <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/">Full-Text RSS</a> service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php">fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php</a><br /><a href="http://fivefilters.org">Five Filters</a> featured site: <a href="http://sowhyiswikileaksagoodthingagain.com">So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again?</a>.</em></p><br /><p><a href="http://pragcap.com/fx-outlook-2011" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">View the original article here</a></p>Guerlainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09792345053131695545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5565053259766045458.post-87198561310071188192010-12-24T04:15:00.001-08:002010-12-24T04:15:27.620-08:00Oren Aviv Meets For Fox Marketing Job, After Joining Digital Artists Board <div id="post-92765" readability="51.317567567568"><div class="post-content" readability="42.481407035176"><p>While we've been scattered to the winds today, reports have Oren Aviv possibly taking the co-president of marketing post at 20th Century Fox. Fox started a search after Pam Levine <a href="http://www.deadline.com/2010/12/pam-levine-leaving-fox-film-marketing/">stepped down</a> Tuesday after 16 years at the studio, but the job would be bigger than the one she held, more like chief creative officer. Insiders say that Aviv is by no means a sure thing. There is a "usual suspects" list of seasoned marketing execs that range from Valerie Van Gelder to Terry Press and Gerry Rich. After moving out of a marketing role to steer? production for Disney, will Aviv be content to step back into a marketing role and share the post with Tony Sella? Aviv has kept a low profile since leaving Disney early this year, but he resurfaced earlier this fall when he joined the Board of Directors of Digital Artists. Aviv has been advising them on digital content, production, creative, branding and strategy. He was brought in by CEO William Kendall and Chief Creative Officer William Kendall.</p></div></div><p><em>This entry passed through the <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/">Full-Text RSS</a> service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php">fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php</a><br /><a href="http://fivefilters.org">Five Filters</a> featured site: <a href="http://sowhyiswikileaksagoodthingagain.com">So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again?</a>.</em></p><br /><p><a href="http://www.deadline.com/2010/12/oren-aviv-meets-for-fox-marketing-job-already-is-on-board-of-digital-artists/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">View the original article here</a></p>Guerlainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09792345053131695545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5565053259766045458.post-63857079403585814772010-12-22T21:55:00.000-08:002010-12-22T21:55:00.574-08:00Weinstein Moves Up 'Blue Valentine' Release To December 29 <div id="post-92387" readability="52.634271099744"><div class="post-content" readability="43"><img src="http://www-deadline-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/mike-fleming-thumbnail.jpg" class="c3" height="100" width="100" alt="Mike Fleming"/><p><strong><a href="http://www.deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/blue_valentine.jpg"><img class="alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-88755" title="blue_valentine" src="http://www-deadline-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/blue_valentine-150x150.jpg" alt="" width="150" height="150"/></a><a href="http://www.deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/bluev.jpeg"/>EXCLUSIVE</strong>: I've learned that The Weinstein Company will move up the release of Blue Valentine two days to Wednesday, December 29. The goal is to get a two-day head start on that New Year's holiday weekend.?The film will start on one screen in New York and one in Los Angeles, with another theater added in Gotham on December 31. The pic will then expand into 10 markets on January 7.<span id="more-92387"/></p><p>The NC-17 rating that was slapped on the film MPAA and then rescinded on appeal has heightened awareness of the Derek Cianfrance-directed relationship drama. Also factoring in the decision is the performances of Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams getting Golden Globe nominations for their work playing a couple in a disintegrating marriage. It is fascinating that the film finally gets released in theaters, almost a full year after it debuted at Sundance Film Festival last January. TWC acquired it shortly after.</p></div></div><p><em>This entry passed through the <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/">Full-Text RSS</a> service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php">fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php</a><br /><a href="http://fivefilters.org">Five Filters</a> featured site: <a href="http://sowhyiswikileaksagoodthingagain.com">So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again?</a>.</em></p><br /><p><a href="http://www.deadline.com/2010/12/weinstein-moves-up-blue-valentine-release-to-december-29/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">View the original article here</a></p>Guerlainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09792345053131695545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5565053259766045458.post-49213706645251728832010-12-22T17:57:00.000-08:002010-12-22T17:57:00.504-08:00IF PAST IS PROLOGUE…. <div id="post-29714" readability="56.340481927711"><span class="breadcrumbs"><a href="http://pragcap.com/">Home</a> ? <a href="http://pragcap.com/category/chart-of-the-day" title="View all posts in Chart Of The Day" rel="category tag">Chart Of The Day</a>, <a href="http://pragcap.com/category/mrs" title="View all posts in Most Recent Stories" rel="category tag">Most Recent Stories</a>, <a href="http://pragcap.com/category/sl" title="View all posts in Strategy Lab" rel="category tag">Strategy Lab</a></span><p><span>22 December 2010 by TPC</span> <span>5 Comments</span></p><div class="entry clearfloat" readability="47.167576283801"><p>Past is prologue….At least that’s what strategists at CitiGroup are saying.? In a recent note they highlighted the 3 past market environments that most closely resembled the current environment.? If past is prologue then Citi is working under an incredibly contrarian framework.? Unlike just about every investor in the world right now (and every other analyst), they believe January and 2011 could have some surprises in store for us:</p><ul><li>Over the course of this year we have constantly referred to what are the only 3 overlays that we think fit with the present price action in the equity market.</li><li>Our favourite for some time has been the “spooky chart” of 1929-1939, which we have been watching since 2003.</li><li>A very close 2nd – but fast becoming a potential number 1 choice has been the overlay of 1966-1976.</li><li>A relatively distant 3rd has been the chart of the 1906-1909 period</li><li>It is these charts that have led us (As per our charts of Christmas) to surmise that 2011 will not be a good year for the Equity market, just as all 3 suggested that 2010 would not be a bad year.</li></ul><p><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-29716" title="c1" src="http://pragcap.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/c14.png" alt="" width="683" height="572"/></p><blockquote readability="9"><p><strong>Bottom line: Our favourite overlays suggest for the DJIA.</strong></p><ul><li>The peak may be posted as early as the opening days of January 2011 (possibly even 3rd January as per the other 3 examples) with a down month in the region of 5%.</li></ul><ul><li>We will see an intra year bear market next year (fall of over 20%).</li></ul><ul><li>We will close the year down double digit percentages (Plus/minus 16% down).</li></ul><ul><li>We could be waiting a further 6 to 8 years to eventually see the DJIA regain the 2007 highs on a yearly close basis.</li></ul><p><strong>What will the catalyst be???</strong></p><p>Our bias is likely 1 of 2 things.</p><ul><li>The bond market falling sharply as it did in 1977 sending yields higher and fuelling inflation or supply fears or both.</li><li>Europe imploding. While this could stress our view on the dollar fixed income and commodities, this dynamic still supports our bearish equity view.</li></ul></blockquote><p>Now there’s a contrarian analyst report from Wall Street for you….</p><p>Source: Citi<br/></p><blockquote readability="19.148148148148"><p>——————————————————————————————————————————————————</p><p><em>The content on this site is provided as general information only and should not be taken as investment advice. All site content shall not be construed as a recommendation to buy or sell any security or financial product, or to participate in any particular trading or investment strategy. The ideas expressed on this site are solely the opinions of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the opinions of firms affiliated with the author(s). The opinions of all guest authors or contributors can and will differ from those of Mr. Roche. These opinions do not necessarily represent the opinions or investment decisions of Mr. Roche. The author(s) may or may not have a position in any security referenced herein and may or may not seek to do business with one another or companies mentioned via this website. Any action that you take as a result of information or analysis on this site is ultimately your responsibility. Consult your investment adviser before making any investment decisions.</em></p><p><em>A brief note on comments – The increase in users in recent months has resulted in an increase in unproductive comments. Any user who engages in the use of racial epithets or uses the comment section as a place to insult other users will be banned from the site. The comment section is welcome to all readers who are interested in asking pertinent questions and/or engaging in thoughtful, intelligent, and productive debate. In short, just be nice. Thanks.</em></p><p>Post Footer automatically generated by <a href="http://www.freetimefoto.com/add_post_footer_plugin_wordpress" class="c1">Add Post Footer Plugin</a> for wordpress.</p></blockquote></div></div><p><em>This entry passed through the <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/">Full-Text RSS</a> service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php">fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php</a><br /><a href="http://fivefilters.org">Five Filters</a> featured site: <a href="http://sowhyiswikileaksagoodthingagain.com">So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again?</a>.</em></p><br /><p><a href="http://pragcap.com/if-past-is-prologue" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">View the original article here</a></p>Guerlainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09792345053131695545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5565053259766045458.post-84729103633358724262010-12-22T14:46:00.000-08:002010-12-22T14:46:00.247-08:00Is Avi Lerner Friend Or Foe To Indieprods? <div id="post-92020" readability="77.205019815059"><div class="post-content" readability="74.897091108672"><p><a href="http://www.deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Avi_Lerner1.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-91246" title="Avi_Lerner" src="http://www-deadline-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Avi_Lerner1.jpg" alt="" width="193" height="261"/></a>Two European sales companies -- British based Hanway Films (the sales company of British producer Jeremy Thomas) and Paris-based Celluloid Dreams -- are calling for Avi Lerner to step down as vice-chair of the Independent Film and Television Alliance. The problem stems from accusations that, at the same time he's helping run the organization pledged to be the "voice and advocate for?independents worldwide", some?companies which Lerner controls?are apparently exploiting those same indie filmmakers by allegedly owing them hundreds of thousands of dollars.?</p><p>Lerner is co-chairman of Nu Image,?which in 2007 bought the U.S. distributor First Look <a href="http://www.deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/ifta-logo.png"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-92452" title="ifta logo" src="http://www-deadline-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/ifta-logo.png" alt="" width="199" height="78"/></a>which is being sued by around 20 other film companies. Hanway Films' head of business affairs Richard Mansell?says his firm is owed nearly $500,000 by First Look,?and pledges to soon pursue Nu Image through the courts in Los Angeles.?Celluloid Dreams has won a court case against First Look for over $720,000 still owing from the U.S. release of Quentin Tarantino-starrer <em>Sukiyaki Western Django,</em> but?hasn't seen a dime yet.?CEO Hengameh Panahi, one of Europe’s most respected sales agents,?explains: “You can’t exploit somebody’s film and then not pay people.”?IFTA would not comment on what it says are legal matters involving its members.?Hanway Films' Mansell says: “How can he represent the interests of an organization which is meant to adjudicate on and penalize wrongdoing by distributors? It makes IFTA itself a joke. If the organization had any integrity it would ask him to step down. IFTA is not being asked to comment on a legal dispute between its members: it is being asked to comment on activity subject of a court decision.”</p><p>Here's what happened: First Look went bankrupt last month. But its movie assets are still controlled by Nu Image through its Millennium Entertainment subsidiary. Fears are that,?by having the related company Millennium Entertainment take over First Look’s assets, Nu Image will escape its obligations.?</p><p>As for Avi Lerner, whose company Millenium Films recently ran <a href="http://www.deadline.com/2010/04/exclusive-producers-guild-of-america-accuses-millenium-films-of-granting-producer-credit-to-teenaged-granddaughter/">afoul</a> of the Producers Guild of America,?tells me he’s unaware of any UK court judgments against him.?As for?anybody who has one stemming from First Look, Lerner tells me: “They’ve got a judgment against a company that doesn’t exist, so who cares? All I wish them is good luck and try to collect the money." Lerner stresses he never had any involvement in the day-to-day running of First Look, and what he discovered horrified him.?“I made a big mistake by buying this company. I am the first one to fight for the rights of the indie producer. If First Look or Nu Image has done wrong, I believe in honesty and I believe in putting all the facts on the table." Lerner says he decided to?put First Look in?bankruptcy?because he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life shuttling from court to court.?As for Hanway Films and Celluloid Dreams calling for him to quit the IFTA, Lerner says he's never heard of the pair. "Tell those two producers?next time there’s an election for the vice-chairman?not to vote for me.”</p><p>British producer Richard Holmes is still another?indieprod who says he’s been burned dealing with First Look. Holmes won a court judgment in London at the beginning of this year ordering the U.S. distributor to hand over $176,000 owing from the American release of his Irish comedy <em>Waking Ned</em>. He’s now trying to get that judgment enforced and calls the?situation?"a disgrace”. As Holmes?claims, First Look is?“still trading as Nu Image/Millennium and attracting other producers into their quagmire.”</p></div></div><p><em>This entry passed through the <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/">Full-Text RSS</a> service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php">fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php</a><br /><a href="http://fivefilters.org">Five Filters</a> featured site: <a href="http://sowhyiswikileaksagoodthingagain.com">So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again?</a>.</em></p><br /><p><a href="http://www.deadline.com/2010/12/is-avi-lerner-friend-or-foe-to-indieprods/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">View the original article here</a></p>Guerlainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09792345053131695545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5565053259766045458.post-18175310997969901612010-12-22T11:14:00.000-08:002010-12-22T11:14:00.516-08:00OSCAR: Critics Keep Friending 'The Social Network' While Picture Rivals Keep Fretting <div readability="109"><img src="http://www-deadline-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/pete_logo.jpg" class="c3" width="100" height="100" alt="Pete Hammond"/><p>In an era where review aggregation sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic have erased individuality and replaced it with a percentage statistic that can be <a href="http://www.deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/the_social_network_movie_poster2.jpg"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-76210" title="the_social_network_movie_poster" src="http://www-deadline-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/the_social_network_movie_poster2.jpg" alt="" width="265" height="389"/></a>quoted? more easily than the words of Roger Ebert or other?name reviewers, we are seeing a pack mentality emerge with critics groups come awards time. No matter which region of the country, they all seem to be moving in step with each other for the most part. For David Fincher this has to be especially sweet. Just two years ago he sat on the sidelines as nearly all these groups lined up?for Danny Boyle and <em>Slumdog Millionaire</em> against his highly touted <em>The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.</em> When Oscar time rolled around there was no question which film would win. Now it’s hard to find a single critics group that doesn’t want to friend <em>The Social Network --</em> and rivals in this still very fluid race are feeling the pain, no doubt trying to figure out how to counter it all before it’s too late.</p><p>While most Hollywood offices are shutting down for the holidays,?Sony Pictures'?awards campaign?crew are working overtime?for contender <em>The Social Network</em>?in advance of next week's mailing of Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences nomination ballots.?That’s why director?Fincher, who was supposed to be on a 2-week holiday break from shooting the studio’s?<em>The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo</em> in Sweden, actually?isn’t getting much of a break at all. Last week, he was in New York doing a Q&A moderated by?pal Spike Jonze. And now Tuesday and Wednesday he is on the Sony lot in Culver City for 3 more sessions?aimed at actors, editors, sound designers, cinematographers, and other various voting groups who are still in town and not preoccupied by the?holiday. I am told Fincher only agreed to do these Q&As in order to support various crew and cast members who will be appearing with him.</p><p>An evite "Save The Date" notice also went out? for a January 6th DVD/Blu Ray “launch event” for <em>The Social Network</em> -- although some voting groups already got a taste of it when Sony sent yet another For? Your Consideration DVD, this time featuring the movie <em>and</em> a 2-hour second disc full of supplementary features. Even though groups like the BFCA and HFPA have already received screeners, this seems like a smart move; it?freshens the film and adds extras to give it another whirl in the player over the holidays timed just before final voting gets underway. Sony can’t do the same for the Academy, however:?sending anything other than the movie is against the rules.</p><p><a href="http://www.deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/The_Kings_Speech_movie_poster_1.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-92388" title="The_Kings_Speech_movie_poster_1" src="http://www-deadline-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/The_Kings_Speech_movie_poster_1.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="400"/></a>Why such a hard?sell??While it made a huge splash when it opened?on October 1st, <em>The Social?Network</em>?maybe?faded a bit in Hollywood's awards firmament when other later entries like <em>The King’s Speech</em> and <em>The Fighter</em> hit the spotlight. Now it’s roaring back with help from the same critics groups who first championed?<em>No Country For Old Men, Slumdog Millionaire,</em> and <em>The Hurt Locker</em>?creating a consensus and perhaps influencing the vote?for the last 3 consecutive Best Picture Oscar winners. <em>Time</em> Magazine’s selection for 2010 Person Of The Year of Mark Zuckerberg, the real life inspiration for Aaron Sorkin’s script,?certainly also hit just at the right time for Sony’s?re-energized awards campaign.</p><p>No film has been honored more this season or won more critics groups' Best Picture awards than <em>The Social Network</em> in what has been the most wide-open race in years.?In fact, no other movie has won <em>any</em> Best Picture award from critics (okay, except the San Diego?reviewers who courageously broke ranks to give it to <em>Winter’s Bone</em>). Whether it? has been critics orgs in Boston,?Chicago, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Detroit, Florida, Houston, Indiana, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York,?San Francisco, St. Louis, Toronto, Washington DC, online, offline, or at the “Satellite” awards, the result is always the same: <em>The</em> <em>Social Network = Best Picture.</em> Of course not every friggin’ state or city with a “critics society” has weighed in yet. But how much do you wanna bet that Phoenix, Iowa, Kansas City, Oklahoma, and Vancouver??follow like lemmings. Anyone wanna guess which way Central Ohio and Utah are leaning?</p><p>It all started at the beginning of the month when the National Board of Review named?<em>The Social Network</em>?its Best Picture -- and they don’t even call themselves critics. We’re not sure <em>who</em> they actually are but they jumped on board first. Most recently,?the London Film Critics showered it with nominations. And of course?the high profile televised awards shows --?NBC’s Golden Globes from the?Hollywood Foreign Press Association and VH1’s?Critics Choice Movie Awards of the Broadcast Film Critics Association (I am a member there) --??also have it in contention big-time for their January ceremonies. Even the African American Film Critics Association which?handed out its main acting awards to Halle Berry, Michael Ealy, and Kimberly Elise and included films like <em>Frankie & Alice, For Colored Girls, Blood Done Sign My Name,</em> and <em>Night Catches Us</em> in its Top 10 list -- but <span class="c4">still</span> fell right in line when it came to naming <em>Social Network</em> its Best Picture?despite not much?diversity in its cast, as I recall.</p></div><p><em>This entry passed through the <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/">Full-Text RSS</a> service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php">fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php</a><br /><a href="http://fivefilters.org">Five Filters</a> featured site: <a href="http://sowhyiswikileaksagoodthingagain.com">So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again?</a>.</em></p><br /><p><a href="http://www.deadline.com/2010/12/oscar-critics-keep-friending-social-network-while-best-picture-rivals-keep-fretting/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">View the original article here</a></p>Guerlainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09792345053131695545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5565053259766045458.post-74822304599821581382010-12-22T07:43:00.000-08:002010-12-22T07:43:00.530-08:00RESERVE CURRENCY ROULETTE <div readability="102.6892118502"><p><strong>By <a href="http://annaly.com" target="_blank">Annaly Capital Management</a></strong></p><p><span class="c1">Following up on our post from Friday, in which we illustrated the currency reserve and GDP market share of a number of different countries, a kind reader asked a question: “I wonder what percentage of the world’s foreign exchange reserves the dollar had when it was redeemable among central banks in gold?”</span></p><p><span class="c1">Our source for the graph, the IMF, only showed data going back to 1995, so we dug a little more and found the answer in a paper written by Barry Eichengreen of the University of California in 2005. The answer: The dollar’s status as a reserve currency was even more dominant back then. In 1973 it accounted for 84.5% of the world’s foreign exchange reserves. (Today it stands at 62.1%.)</span></p><p><span class="c1">In Eichengreen’s paper, “Sterling’s Past, Dollar’s Future: Historical Perspectives on Reserve Currency Competition” (the paper</span> <a href="http://annaly.com/blog/ct.ashx?id=c7bbcae1-af92-4f0f-b035-574bd3efe665&url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.nber.org%2fpapers%2fw11336"><span class="c1">can be purchased here, and it’s worth the $5</span></a><span class="c1">), he argues that the hegemony of the dollar during the second half of the 20<sup>th</sup> century has some obvious roots: America’s dominance of global trade and payments in a period when Europe and Japan were still licking their wounds, the liquidity of the US financial markets and the capital controls put in place by other potential reserve-currency competitors. Britain’s sterling was the reserve currency of choice in the first half of the 20<sup>th</sup> century, largely for the same reason (between 1860 and 1914, according to Eichengreen, about 60 percent of world trade was settled in sterling), but this status waned as Britain’s economic prowess declined.</span></p><p><span class="c1">As his paper’s title suggests, Eichengreen is concerned about the future of the dollar’s status. He concludes that the dollar may end up sharing reserve status with another currency, likely the euro, but that the yen and the renminbi probably wouldn’t make the cut—the yen because of Japan’s poor demographics and the yuan because of China’s capital controls and its lack of credible political/financial infrastructure.</span></p><p><span class="c1">What could possibly tip the world away from the dollar? In a word, inflation. “[W]hether the dollar retains its reserve currency role depends, first and foremost, on America’s own policies. Serious economic mismanagement would lead to the substitution of other reserve currencies for the dollar. In this context, serious mismanagement means policies that allow unsustainably large current account deficits to persist, lead to the accumulation of large external debts, and result in a high rate of U.S. inflation and dollar depreciation. Clearly, this would make holding dollar reserves unattractive. This is a lesson of British history in the sense that an inflation rate that ran at roughly 3 times U.S. rates over the first three quarters of the 20th century, in conjunction with repeated devaluations against the dollar, played a major role in sterling’s loss of reserve currency status.” Absent sustained periods of inflation, says Eichengreen, the stability, liquidity and vibrancy of the US economy should enable the dollar to maintain its reserve currency status.</span></p><p><span class="c1">So, is the US engaged in prudent economic policies or “serious economic mismanagement”? We probably won’t know the answer to this question for some time. In the meantime, the market has been re-pricing the yield on sovereign debt around the world. The graph below looks at selected sovereign rates since Ben Bernanke’s speech in Jackson Hole last August, in which he first suggested the possibility of another round of quantitative easing. Ever since, market participants have been deliberating about the possible ramifications—including the inflationary prospects—of this policy decision.</span></p><p class="c2"><span class="c1"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-29712" title="ann1" src="http://pragcap.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/ann16.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="465"/><br/></span></p><blockquote readability="21.712589073634"><p>——————————————————————————————————————————————————</p><p><em>The content on this site is provided as general information only and should not be taken as investment advice. All site content shall not be construed as a recommendation to buy or sell any security or financial product, or to participate in any particular trading or investment strategy. The ideas expressed on this site are solely the opinions of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the opinions of firms affiliated with the author(s). The opinions of all guest authors or contributors can and will differ from those of Mr. Roche. These opinions do not necessarily represent the opinions or investment decisions of Mr. Roche. The author(s) may or may not have a position in any security referenced herein and may or may not seek to do business with one another or companies mentioned via this website. Any action that you take as a result of information or analysis on this site is ultimately your responsibility. Consult your investment adviser before making any investment decisions.</em></p><p><em>A brief note on comments – The increase in users in recent months has resulted in an increase in unproductive comments. Any user who engages in the use of racial epithets or uses the comment section as a place to insult other users will be banned from the site. The comment section is welcome to all readers who are interested in asking pertinent questions and/or engaging in thoughtful, intelligent, and productive debate. In short, just be nice. Thanks.</em></p><p>Post Footer automatically generated by <a href="http://www.freetimefoto.com/add_post_footer_plugin_wordpress" class="c3">Add Post Footer Plugin</a> for wordpress.</p></blockquote></div><p><em>This entry passed through the <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/">Full-Text RSS</a> service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php">fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php</a><br /><a href="http://fivefilters.org">Five Filters</a> featured site: <a href="http://sowhyiswikileaksagoodthingagain.com">So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again?</a>.</em></p><br /><p><a href="http://pragcap.com/reserve-currency-roulette" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">View the original article here</a></p>Guerlainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09792345053131695545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5565053259766045458.post-70377310765800165152010-12-22T03:54:00.001-08:002010-12-22T03:54:22.480-08:00THE “BERNANKE PUT” AND THE FED’S TRILEMMA <div readability="109.97033041133"><blockquote readability="9"><p><em>“When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done” – JM Keynes, General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money</em></p></blockquote><p>Now that the equity market has rallied back to its pre-Lehman Brothers levels it’s becoming fashionable to shower the Federal Reserve with praise for their actions over the last few years.? But let’s not forget that we’ve seen this movie one too many times before.</p><p>Over the last 15 years the Federal Reserve has essentially become a price fixing mechanism for an economy that has long struggled with severe structural problems.?? When problems have arisen in the economy the U.S. central bank has intervened to lessen the blow to the economy.? In theory, this was intended to reduce the volatility of the business cycle.? Unfortunately, many of their policies have simply exacerbated the problems or helped to generate even greater imbalances.</p><p>This all started well before the housing bubble or the Nasdaq bubble.? After the 1987 crash Alan Greenspan was quick to reassure investors that the Fed was there to bolster markets.? This “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspan_put" target="_blank">Greenspan put</a>” was mastered with the bailout of LTCM as the Fed intervened in markets to make sure that losers didn’t have to become losers.? LTCM was the epitome of failed economic theory at work in markets.?? A group of brilliant economists believed they had discovered the path to minting money in financial markets.? On paper their equations appeared flawless.? In reality, they were a disaster waiting to happen.? <a href="http://pragcap.com/the-uncorrelated-return-myth" target="_blank">In one fell swoop this collection of geniuses proved that EMH was flawed</a>.? And not two years later the Greenspan Put helped contribute to a market bubble like the United States had never seen.? In the words of David Tepper, it was a “win win” market – or so they believed.</p><p>For 18 years Alan Greenspan ran the nations central bank based on theories and beliefs that he later referred to as being “flawed”.? Despite this, much of his work influences the current central bank.? In fact, today’s Fed is more involved in markets than Greenspan ever was.?? To <em>some</em> extent this tinkering with markets is justified.? The role of lender of last resort is important, but the modern day Fed has taken its role to an entirely new level.? They are no longer just the lender of last resort – they have become the bailout mechanism of the capitalist system and ultimately a plaque build-up in a system that is increasingly unhealthy.? The Greenspan Put has become the Bernanke Put.? And so the financialization of our markets continue.? In fairness to Mr. Bernanke I can’t entirely place the blame on him.? Due to political ignorance of our monetary system the Federal Reserve has been given the overbearing responsibility of being lender of last resort while also attempting to establish full employment and price stability.? Talk about a trilemma if there ever was one….</p><p>What these men haven’t stopped to ponder is whether any of this intervention was actually healthy for the markets.? Perhaps the market crashed in 1987 because an irrational 40% climb in 8 months had created instability?? Perhaps the Nasdaq never should have approached 5,000?? Perhaps LTCM needed to fail?? Perhaps housing was never intended to be a speculative asset?? Perhaps these assets needed to be allowed to decline??? The result has been a slow deterioration in the foundation of the system with each and every bailout.? <a href="http://pragcap.com/howard-marks-understanding-the-impact-of-the-credit-cycle" target="_blank">I recently described</a> why these imbalances continue to pose such a serious risk to the economy as we weaken the foundation from which each subsequent boom is built upon:</p><blockquote readability="15"><p>“What I fear most about the current cycle is that we have not allowed the markets to sufficiently clear.? If that is the case you can think of the global economy like an obese man who fights to lose weight in an effort to fend off what is an almost certain heart attack.? After a multi decade binge he suffers a massive heart attack (think LTCM circa 1998).? The doctors save him by intervening, but they don’t actually help the man fix his inherent problems (dying internal organs and lack of discipline).? In the case of the economy this is global imbalances, structural flaws in the banking system and a lack of regulation.? The man vows to lose 50% of his total body weight, but after losing 20% of his total body weight he decides the process is too grueling and is taking too long.? A fast food restaurant opens up next door (hello government bailouts!).? He once again feels the need to stimulate his lust for food.? So, he binges again (think Greenspan 2001).? A new boom occurs before he ever becomes fully healthy.? Over the ensuing 7 years his body weight doubles.? He’s now 60% heavier than he was in 1998!? Of course, this is unsustainable.? His body begins to breakdown.? Before you know it he is suffering a total system failure (think Lehman brothers).? But again, thanks to modern medicine (or incessant Fed intervention) the man is once again saved.? Over the following year he loses 25% of his body weight.? It’s an arduous process and certainly not enjoyable, but it must be done.? The good news is he’s 25% lighter.? The bad news is he’s 20% heavier than he was in 1998 when he had his first setback.? Nothing has changed inherently.? He has the same failing internal organs and the same failing disciplines.?? But his next binge begins from a weaker starting point and a more dangerous level. You can imagine how this story ends.”</p></blockquote><p>By continually creating a “can’t lose” market we have instilled a belief in investors and speculators that prices will not be allowed to sustain any sort of decline.? In August Ben Bernanke panicked because jobless claims briefly hit 450K.? He implemented an emergency round of quantitative easing.? Since then, his attempts to control the long end of the curve have failed spectacularly and the economic data since has proven that QE2 was never necessary to begin with (<a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1655039" target="_blank">not that it would have done anything anyhow</a>).? But what Mr. Bernanke has reinforced is this David Tepper “win win” mentality.? And it’s nowhere more apparent than it is in the commodity markets today.? After all, with an equity market and real estate bubble in less than 10 years where else can these speculators reliably turn to implement their Bernanke Put?? Some people say the Fed is not creating imbalances again, but I beg to differ.? The following charts show the imbalances that have reemerged in recent months as the Fed ensures that there are no losers:</p><p class="c1"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-29701" title="crb" src="http://pragcap.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/crb.gif" alt="" width="526" height="339"/></p><p class="c1">(CRB Spot Index)</p><p class="c1"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-29702" title="crb2" src="http://pragcap.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/crb2.gif" alt="" width="526" height="339"/></p><p class="c1">(CRB Metals Sub-Index)</p><p class="c1"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-29703" title="crb3" src="http://pragcap.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/crb3.gif" alt="" width="526" height="339"/></p><p class="c1">(CRB Raw Industrials)</p><p class="c1"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-29704" title="crb4" src="http://pragcap.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/crb4.gif" alt="" width="526" height="339"/></p><p class="c1">(CRB Foodstuffs)</p><p class="c2">Of course, there is a component of economic strength here.? I am not attempting to downplay the recovery.? It’s real and it’s here.? But as the past has proven, a bubbly market combined with a Fed that won’t let losers be losers, is a potent mix and an environment ripe for imbalances and instability.?? It could take years for these imbalances to fully play out on the world stage, but they are building and the Fed’s constant interference in markets has only made matters worse.</p><p class="c2">QE2 has proven that the Federal Reserve can substantially influence market prices without creating the positive result? (in this case lower rates) that it so desires.? In my opinion, this is proof that the Fed’s interference is not furthering the prosperity of the private sector, but is merely interfering with natural market forces while creating market disruptions and imbalances.? In the end, this does not help to smooth the business cycle and only helps contribute further to its instability and volatility.</p><p class="c2">The Federal Reserve’s only true purpose in the marketplace should be to serve as lender of last resort at its target rate.? This rate should be <strong>permanently</strong> maintained at zero, <a href="http://www.cfeps.org/pubs/wp-pdf/WP37-MoslerForstater.pdf" target="_blank">the natural rate of interest</a>, so as to maintain price stability and reduce market interference.? This would not only reduce the Fed’s role in markets, but would help ensure greater output, price stability, eliminate the Bernanke Put and would substantially reduce the volatility/imbalances in the business cycle that have been largely generated by the Fed’s intervention.</p><blockquote readability="18.664147378366"><p>——————————————————————————————————————————————————</p><p><em>The content on this site is provided as general information only and should not be taken as investment advice. All site content shall not be construed as a recommendation to buy or sell any security or financial product, or to participate in any particular trading or investment strategy. The ideas expressed on this site are solely the opinions of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the opinions of firms affiliated with the author(s). The opinions of all guest authors or contributors can and will differ from those of Mr. Roche. These opinions do not necessarily represent the opinions or investment decisions of Mr. Roche. The author(s) may or may not have a position in any security referenced herein and may or may not seek to do business with one another or companies mentioned via this website. Any action that you take as a result of information or analysis on this site is ultimately your responsibility. Consult your investment adviser before making any investment decisions.</em></p><p><em>A brief note on comments – The increase in users in recent months has resulted in an increase in unproductive comments. Any user who engages in the use of racial epithets or uses the comment section as a place to insult other users will be banned from the site. The comment section is welcome to all readers who are interested in asking pertinent questions and/or engaging in thoughtful, intelligent, and productive debate. In short, just be nice. Thanks.</em></p><p>Post Footer automatically generated by <a href="http://www.freetimefoto.com/add_post_footer_plugin_wordpress" class="c3">Add Post Footer Plugin</a> for wordpress.</p></blockquote></div><p><em>This entry passed through the <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/">Full-Text RSS</a> service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php">fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php</a><br /><a href="http://fivefilters.org">Five Filters</a> featured site: <a href="http://sowhyiswikileaksagoodthingagain.com">So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again?</a>.</em></p><br /><p><a href="http://pragcap.com/bernank-put" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">View the original article here</a></p>Guerlainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09792345053131695545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5565053259766045458.post-3950407550606361652010-12-21T02:12:00.000-08:002010-12-21T02:12:00.091-08:00Broadcast Nets Are Going For Genre And Period Dramas This Development Season, But Can Such Series Work On The Big 4? <div readability="97.919175257732"><img src="http://www-deadline-com.vimg.net/wp-content/themes/deadline/img/DH-TV_100x100_Final.jpg" class="c3" height="100" width="100" alt="Nellie Andreeva"/><p><a href="http://www.deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/the-walking-dead-poster.jpg"><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-78579" title="the-walking-dead-poster" src="http://www-deadline-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/the-walking-dead-poster-202x300.jpg" alt="" width="146" height="216"/></a>Genre series are all the rage in cable with the success of AMC's <em>The Walking Dead</em> and HBO's <em>True Blood</em>, which have been breaking series records to rank as their network's top-rated series and become pop culture staples. A genre series, <em>The Vampire Diaries</em>, also is the highest-rated series on the CW, which has had continuous success in the sci-fi arena with veterans <em>Smallville</em> and <em>Supernatural</em>. But, with the exception of ABC's <em>Lost</em>, sci-fi, vampire, zombie and comic book-based series have struggled to attract sizable audiences on the major broadcast networks. That has not deterred the nets to heavily pursue such projects this development season. <a href="http://www.deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Joehilllockekey.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-62754" title="Joehilllockekey" src="http://www-deadline-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Joehilllockekey-197x300.jpg" alt="" width="138" height="210"/></a>The 2 drama pilots ordered so far by Fox are both in the genre category: <em>Locke & Key</em> is based on Joe Hill's comic, and <em>Alcatraz</em> features missing Alcatraz prisoners who reappear in present day. Genre projects have also attracted some of the biggest writer-producers in town: <em>Lost</em>'s J.J. Abrams is behind Fox's series <em>Fringe</em> and <em>Alcatraz</em>, David E. Kelley, who dabbled into sci-fi with <em>Life on Mars</em>, is developing a series adaptation of comic book icon Wonder Woman, Greg Berlanti co-created and is executive producing ABC's freshman superhero family drama <em>No Ordinary Family</em>, <em>Fringe</em> co-creators Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci are executive producing <em>Locke & Key</em>, and <em>Battlestar Galactica</em>'s David Eick is involved in a series adaptation of <em>The Hulk</em> for ABC and Marvel.</p><p><a href="http://www.deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/guillermo_lgl.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-84254" title="81679655FB009_LAFF_Screenin" src="http://www-deadline-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/guillermo_lgl-150x150.jpg" alt="" width="150" height="150"/></a><a href="http://www.deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/melissarosenberg.jpg"><img class="alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-91755" title="melissarosenberg" src="http://www-deadline-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/melissarosenberg-150x150.jpg" alt="" width="150" height="150"/></a>ABC, the network that had the most recent genre drama success with <em>Lost</em> and has 2 such series on the air, <em>No Ordinary Family</em> and <em>V</em>, is making big bets in the field. What's more, it is looking to translate the genre movies' big success at the box-office to the small screen by bringing in the auspices behind some of the biggest genre feature hits. Melissa Rosenberg, the writer of the hugely popular <em>Twilight</em> movie franchise, is writing <em>AKA Jessica Jones,</em> a drama about a former female superhero based on a Marvel comic. Oren Peli, the writer-director of the blockbuster <em>Paranormal Activity</em> franchise, is behind a paranormal drama set in the Amazon, and <em>Pan's Labyrinth</em> and the <em>Hellboy</em> mastermind Guillermo Del Toro is partnering with Eick on the adaptation of <em>The Hulk.</em></p><p>But can genre movies' box-office success be replicated on mainstream TV? For the most part, the answer seems to be no. The closest to a genre hit on the big broadcast networks these days is CBS' hit comedy <em>The Big Bang Theory</em>, which has geek overtones but is broad enough to attract wide audiences. But CBS' vampire drama <em>Moonlight</em> and horror drama <em>Harper's Island</em> and ABC's sci-fi series <em>Flash Forward</em> lasted a season each. The 4 genre dramas on the major broadcast networks right now, <em>Fringe, No Ordinary Family, Human Target</em> and <em>The Event</em>, attract the same average audiences of 5-6 million viewers as cable series <em>The Walking Dead</em> and <em>True Blood</em>. (<em>Fringe</em>'s viewership is even lower, 4.5-5 million and will probably go further down when the show relocates to Fridays, but the series is a major DVR gainer, which brings it up on par with the others.) Maybe this <em>is</em> the ceiling for genre series no matter what type a network they are on. For a cable net, that is a great number but for a major broadcaster, it is way too small. Of course, there are those lightning-in-a-bottle cases like <em>Lost</em> and the first season of <em>Heroes</em> that transcend the core sci-fi fan base and enter mainstream, but long-running hit genre drama series on the Big Four like <em>The X-Files</em> seem to be a thing of the past. It doesn't help that most of those series are serialized, a genre that has been struggling mightily on broadcast TV.</p><p><a href="http://www.deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/wildwildwest.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-83156" title="wildwildwest" src="http://www-deadline-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/wildwildwest-212x300.jpg" alt="" width="153" height="216"/></a>Along with genre projects, the often serialized period and costume dramas are also in fashion at the broadcast networks this development season. ABC is developing an Pan Am-themed drama set in the 1960s with Jack Orman and Tommy Schlamme and a <em>Romeo & Juliet</em> adaptation set in Renaissance Italy written by Andrea Berloff; CBS is working on a reboot of <em>The Wild Wild West</em> from former <em>CSI</em> co-showrunner Naren Shankar and <em>Battlestar Galactica</em> developer Ron Moore; while NBC is shepherding a drama set at a 1960s Playboy club penned by Chad Hodge. Just like genre series, period and costume dramas have become staple on cable with AMC's?<em>Mad Men and the upcoming Hell on Wheels</em>, HBO's?<em>Boardwalk Empire,</em> Showtime's <em>The Tudors</em> and the upcoming?<em>The Borgias</em>, and Starz's <em>Spartacus</em>. But all recent attempts to launch such series on the broadcast networks have fizzled: ABC's <em>Empire</em> and <em>Life on Mars</em> and CBS' <em>Swingtown</em> barely lasted a season. And the CW's 1980s <em>Gossip Girl</em> spinoff didn't go beyond pilot stage. So when it comes to historic projects, history is not on the broadcast networks' side. But just like with genre dramas, the Big 4 are looking to write new history by taking a page from cable networks' book.</p><p class="tagline">TV Editor Nellie Andreeva - tip her <a href="http://www.deadline.com/nellies-confidential-tip-line/">here</a>.</p></div><p><em>This entry passed through the <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/">Full-Text RSS</a> service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php">fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php</a><br /><a href="http://fivefilters.org">Five Filters</a> featured site: <a href="http://sowhyiswikileaksagoodthingagain.com">So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again?</a>.</em></p><br /><p><a href="http://www.deadline.com/2010/12/broadcast-nets-are-going-for-genre-and-period-dramas-this-development-season-but-can-such-series-work-on-the-big-4/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">View the original article here</a></p>Guerlainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09792345053131695545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5565053259766045458.post-42870176038478312362010-12-20T21:14:00.000-08:002010-12-20T21:14:00.294-08:00THE PROS AND CONS OF THE RECENT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS <div id="post-29636" readability="54.226378498199"><span class="breadcrumbs"><a href="http://pragcap.com/">Home</a> ? <a href="http://pragcap.com/category/mrs" title="View all posts in Most Recent Stories" rel="category tag">Most Recent Stories</a></span><p><span>20 December 2010 by TPC</span> <span>0 Comments</span></p><div class="entry clearfloat" readability="40.149054982818"><p>There have been many important economic developments in recent months – many good and fewer bad.? In a recent research note <a href="http://www.northerntrust.com">Northern Trust</a> nicely summarized the positive and negative developments in the last few months:</p><blockquote><p><strong>Positive developments:</strong></p><ul><li>Initial jobless claims show a distinct downward trend</li><li>Payroll employment continues to advance, albeit slower</li><li>Retails sales show widespread gains in November and the underlying trend is firming up</li><li>Net credit has risen in November, the third increase in the last five months</li><li>Higher Treasury market yields are a vote of confidence about the economy</li><li>Factory production has risen at a noticeable pace. Regional factory surveys in December were upbeat</li><li>Housing starts and permits for new single-family homes rose in November.</li><li>October Pending Home Sales Index posted a strong increase</li><li>The positive trend of the Index of Leading Economic Indicators supports forecasts of continued economic growth</li><li>The University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index rose in the early-December survey.</li></ul><p><strong><br/>Negative developments:</strong></p><ul><li>The 9.8% unemployment rate is a major source of concern for policymakers</li><li>Sales of homes, both existing and new, declined in October and the elevated level of inventories combined with pressures from home foreclosures is holding down home prices</li><li>Auto sales held steady in November, after increasing in three out of the four months ended October</li></ul></blockquote><p>Source: Northern Trust<br/></p><blockquote readability="19.304180682364"><p>——————————————————————————————————————————————————</p><p><em>The content on this site is provided as general information only and should not be taken as investment advice. All site content shall not be construed as a recommendation to buy or sell any security or financial product, or to participate in any particular trading or investment strategy. The ideas expressed on this site are solely the opinions of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the opinions of firms affiliated with the author(s). The opinions of all guest authors or contributors can and will differ from those of Mr. Roche. These opinions do not necessarily represent the opinions or investment decisions of Mr. Roche. The author(s) may or may not have a position in any security referenced herein and may or may not seek to do business with one another or companies mentioned via this website. Any action that you take as a result of information or analysis on this site is ultimately your responsibility. Consult your investment adviser before making any investment decisions.</em></p><p><em>A brief note on comments – The increase in users in recent months has resulted in an increase in unproductive comments. Any user who engages in the use of racial epithets or uses the comment section as a place to insult other users will be banned from the site. The comment section is welcome to all readers who are interested in asking pertinent questions and/or engaging in thoughtful, intelligent, and productive debate. In short, just be nice. Thanks.</em></p><noscript><p><a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/invc.pragcap/agora;kw=;kval=agora;tile=4;sz=500x55;ord=123456789?" target="_blank"><img src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/invc.pragcap/agora;kw=;kval=agora;tile=4;sz=500x55;ord=123456789?" width="300" height="250" border="0" alt=""/></a></p></noscript><p>Post Footer automatically generated by <a href="http://www.freetimefoto.com/add_post_footer_plugin_wordpress" class="c1">Add Post Footer Plugin</a> for wordpress.</p></blockquote></div></div><p><em>This entry passed through the <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/">Full-Text RSS</a> service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php">fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php</a><br /><a href="http://fivefilters.org">Five Filters</a> featured site: <a href="http://sowhyiswikileaksagoodthingagain.com">So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again?</a>.</em></p><br /><p><a href="http://pragcap.com/the-pros-and-cons-of-the-recent-economic-developments" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">View the original article here</a></p>Guerlainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09792345053131695545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5565053259766045458.post-7024759823528778172010-12-20T17:32:00.000-08:002010-12-20T17:32:00.261-08:006 THEMES FOR 2011 <div readability="56.276276276276"><p>As the new year rolls in it’s important to organize and plan for the important themes and events that could impact 2011.? Credit Suisse recently detailed their 6 dominant themes for 2011 and how they’re likely to influence markets:</p><blockquote readability="36"><p><strong>(1)</strong> The rise and rise of the emerging market consumer remains the most dominant macro theme – for the third year in a row.</p><p><strong>(2)</strong> Investors should focus on corporate spend areas in the stock market, one of our key themes since mid-2009. Corporate free cash flow, profitability and investment intentions are all abnormally high, while corporates have seldom been as under-leveraged. We believe corporates will want to focus on non-discretionary or short-cycle areas, i.e. areas where there is a relatively quick pay-back.</p><p><strong>(3)</strong> Plays on abnormally low real interest rates: we believe that the monetary authorities in the developed world will keep real rates artificially low to facilitate the deleveraging of $6.3tn of G4 excess leverage. If real yields rise too far and threaten the economic recovery (which they would if QE2 ended, in our judgement) or if the fiscal authorities over-tightened, we believe QE would be renewed in the US – and via a weaker dollar would force other developed market central banks to respond.</p><p><strong>(4)</strong> M&A is set to increase sharply</p><p><strong>(5)</strong> Investors will pay more of a premium for both growth and pricing power. Growth will be at premium because the discount rate is likely to remain abnormally low (increasing the value of long duration earnings), while it is hard to see how this will be a normal recovery, with $6.3trn of excess leverage in the developed world, making growth more valuable. Companies with pricing power deserve a premium, given excess capacity of around 4% of GDP in the developed world on our estimates, increasing Chinese competition and rising input costs.</p><p><strong>(6)</strong> Investors should avoid companies exposed to increased competition from Chinese companies.</p></blockquote><p>Source: Credit Suisse<br/></p><blockquote readability="19.326800587947"><p>——————————————————————————————————————————————————</p><p><em>The content on this site is provided as general information only and should not be taken as investment advice. All site content shall not be construed as a recommendation to buy or sell any security or financial product, or to participate in any particular trading or investment strategy. The ideas expressed on this site are solely the opinions of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the opinions of firms affiliated with the author(s). The opinions of all guest authors or contributors can and will differ from those of Mr. Roche. These opinions do not necessarily represent the opinions or investment decisions of Mr. Roche. The author(s) may or may not have a position in any security referenced herein and may or may not seek to do business with one another or companies mentioned via this website. Any action that you take as a result of information or analysis on this site is ultimately your responsibility. Consult your investment adviser before making any investment decisions.</em></p><p><em>A brief note on comments – The increase in users in recent months has resulted in an increase in unproductive comments. Any user who engages in the use of racial epithets or uses the comment section as a place to insult other users will be banned from the site. The comment section is welcome to all readers who are interested in asking pertinent questions and/or engaging in thoughtful, intelligent, and productive debate. In short, just be nice. Thanks.</em></p><noscript><p><a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/invc.pragcap/agora;kw=;kval=agora;tile=4;sz=500x55;ord=123456789?" target="_blank"><img src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/invc.pragcap/agora;kw=;kval=agora;tile=4;sz=500x55;ord=123456789?" width="300" height="250" border="0" alt=""/></a></p></noscript><p>Post Footer automatically generated by <a href="http://www.freetimefoto.com/add_post_footer_plugin_wordpress" class="c1">Add Post Footer Plugin</a> for wordpress.</p></blockquote></div><p><em>This entry passed through the <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/">Full-Text RSS</a> service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php">fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php</a><br /><a href="http://fivefilters.org">Five Filters</a> featured site: <a href="http://sowhyiswikileaksagoodthingagain.com">So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again?</a>.</em></p><br /><p><a href="http://pragcap.com/6-themes-for-2011" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">View the original article here</a></p>Guerlainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09792345053131695545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5565053259766045458.post-3580483270766397072010-12-20T13:10:00.000-08:002010-12-20T13:10:00.131-08:00THE COMING MUNICIPAL BOND CRISIS <div id="post-29640" readability="64.919035846724"><span class="breadcrumbs"><a href="http://pragcap.com/">Home</a> ? <a href="http://pragcap.com/category/headline" title="View all posts in Headline" rel="category tag">Headline</a>, <a href="http://pragcap.com/category/mrs" title="View all posts in Most Recent Stories" rel="category tag">Most Recent Stories</a></span><p><span>20 December 2010 by TPC</span> <span>3 Comments</span></p><div class="entry clearfloat" readability="57.095846645367"><p>The following segment on 60 Minutes this evening is a must see.?The segment covered the state and local funding crisis in the USA. Meredith Whitney was a special guest and predicted that the crisis would unfold in the “next 12 months”. Whitney says the states are susceptible to hundreds of billions in losses and local insolvencies could be widespread.</p><p>This is a particularly interesting development if it were to materialize.? Of course, municipal bonds have been very jumpy in recent weeks and as revenue constrained entities (unlike the federal government) the states have been hit particularly hard by the crisis.? The states are exactly like the nations of Europe so solvency is a very real concern here.? Their bloated budgets and out of control spending has created severe balance sheets concerns.? With a government that is leaning more and more towards small government it will be interesting to see if austerity impacts the US economy through the state funding channels.</p><p>We appear to have dodged a bullet in the form of maintaining a $1.3T deficit during this balance sheet recession (and through the coming calendar year), however, the risks at the state level remain largely unknown and difficult to quantify.? If the shortfalls are as large as Whitney believes it’s likely that we won’t have the political will for more bailouts.? Whitney believes the issues are potentially more frightening than the banking crisis:</p><blockquote readability="21.712589073634"><p>——————————————————————————————————————————————————</p><p><em>The content on this site is provided as general information only and should not be taken as investment advice. All site content shall not be construed as a recommendation to buy or sell any security or financial product, or to participate in any particular trading or investment strategy. The ideas expressed on this site are solely the opinions of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the opinions of firms affiliated with the author(s). The opinions of all guest authors or contributors can and will differ from those of Mr. Roche. These opinions do not necessarily represent the opinions or investment decisions of Mr. Roche. The author(s) may or may not have a position in any security referenced herein and may or may not seek to do business with one another or companies mentioned via this website. Any action that you take as a result of information or analysis on this site is ultimately your responsibility. Consult your investment adviser before making any investment decisions.</em></p><p><em>A brief note on comments – The increase in users in recent months has resulted in an increase in unproductive comments. Any user who engages in the use of racial epithets or uses the comment section as a place to insult other users will be banned from the site. The comment section is welcome to all readers who are interested in asking pertinent questions and/or engaging in thoughtful, intelligent, and productive debate. In short, just be nice. Thanks.</em></p><noscript><p><a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/invc.pragcap/agora;kw=;kval=agora;tile=4;sz=500x55;ord=123456789?" target="_blank"><img src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/invc.pragcap/agora;kw=;kval=agora;tile=4;sz=500x55;ord=123456789?" width="300" height="250" border="0" alt=""/></a></p></noscript><p>Post Footer automatically generated by <a href="http://www.freetimefoto.com/add_post_footer_plugin_wordpress" class="c1">Add Post Footer Plugin</a> for wordpress.</p></blockquote></div></div><p><em>This entry passed through the <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/">Full-Text RSS</a> service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php">fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php</a><br /><a href="http://fivefilters.org">Five Filters</a> featured site: <a href="http://sowhyiswikileaksagoodthingagain.com">So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again?</a>.</em></p><br /><p><a href="http://pragcap.com/the-coming-municipal-bond-crisis" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">View the original article here</a></p>Guerlainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09792345053131695545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5565053259766045458.post-40870486499013298502010-12-20T09:18:00.000-08:002010-12-20T09:18:00.346-08:00OSCAR: Danny Boyle Q&A On `127 Hours' <div readability="333"><img src="http://www-deadline-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/mike-fleming-thumbnail.jpg" class="c3" height="100" width="100" alt="Mike Fleming"/><p><em><a href="http://www.deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/boyle.jpg"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-91852" title="boyle" src="http://www-deadline-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/boyle.jpg" alt="" width="183" height="276"/></a>While</em> Slumdog Millionaire <em>is remembered for its cache of Oscars and cast dancing through the end credits Bollywood-style, Danny Boyle’s real achievement was? drawing a global mainstream audience for a film that depicted such brutal moments as the mother of the young protagonists being beaten to death, and a child blinded to make him a more productive panhandler. That was a walk in the park compared to</em> 127 Hours<em>, Aron Ralston's harrowing tale of survival after being pinned for five days under an 800-pound boulder. Given the opportunity to follow</em> Slumdog <em>by taking a multi-million dollar paycheck for James Bond or another big studio film, Boyle instead got paid $666,000 and gambled his Oscar currency on the bet he could get an audience to sit through a grueling survival story for a rich spiritual payoff.</em> <em>Here, Boyle provides the logic behind the most daring creative leap he has made in an exceptional career.</em></p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE</strong></em><strong><em>:</em></strong> <em>Early in</em> 127 Hours<em>, Aron Ralston takes an exhilarating free-fall through a chasm and into a pool of blue water far below. Isn’t there a parallel to the creative leaps you take, the way you jump from one genre to another and take on improbable premises that could easily end up going splat?</em></p><p><strong>BOYLE</strong>: There certainly is that possibility of going splat. One of the things I believe in is to be extreme. I don’t mean do things for shock value, but to tell a story as extremely as possible. People go to the cinema to see the whole screen stretched and pushed to the sides, up and down and across. I love when you can get that image to pulsate. When you get those moments, or watch them, that’s what I love most in cinema. You do transport people in that moment. Beyond persistence, the only advice I ever give to young filmmakers is, don’t be shy in the way you tell a story. Be bold. There is that great quote, boldness has genius in it. People forgive you many things, if you remember that.</p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE</strong>:</em> <em>When you have a hard-sell premise like</em> 127 Hours <em>or</em> Slumdog Millionaire<em>, is part of the appeal proving you can pull it off?</em></p><p><strong>BOYLE</strong>: You learn things about yourself over time. I learned that I am at my best when my project is under $20 million and I’m trying to make it look like $100 million. Chris Nolan can take $160 million and make it feel like $320 million and I love and admire him for it, but I’m not that guy. Give me the $20 million. But that’s only the arithmetic. The truth for me is in the story, the trip you’re going on. It has to capture you. My interest in this story predated <em>Slumdog Millionaire</em>, and it survived everything that happened on <em>Slumdog</em>. I knew we had something because of the way Christian Colson was immediately very interested when I introduced him to it. It was tricky. What do you follow <em>Slumdog</em> with? Scorsese said the genius is in the choices. Even if nobody saw it, I knew at least we were sure in ourselves when we chose it. The other thing was how the story did flower when we told it. Sometimes you work on films and they don’t flower in your hands. You can just feel it. They don’t get more profound, richer or more rewarding as you go into telling them. There’s nothing you can do at that stage, you have to keep going and compensate. But you know when they open up. I could feel <em>Slumdog</em> open up, I just got lost in it because it was so wonderful. This one did, as well. You could just feel the story ripen.</p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE</strong>:</em> <em>How long from your magical</em> Slumdog <em>Oscar night you decide to invest that currency in</em> 127 Hours<em>?</em></p><p><strong>BOYLE</strong>: It wasn’t instantaneous. <em>Slumdog</em> was so overwhelming, it was hard to think clearly. We spent a lot of time setting up charity trusts in India. You become a bit of public property in the wake of something like that, especially in Britain, where people wanted to celebrate what they saw as a big home win. You can avoid that, but I felt it was right to go along with it, and raise some money for charities. All that takes up space in your brain. I flirted a bit, talked to Duncan Kenworthy about a musical, stuff like that. But it was this story, really, that we settled on. It really fell into place as a lovely film we could use the trajectory <em>Slumdog</em> had given us to tell it the way we wanted to.</p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE</strong>:</em> <em>After</em> Slumdog<em>, I’m told you could have directed the next James Bond, or taken a huge check for some studio tent pole. What was that post-</em>Slumdog <em>courtship period like?</em></p><p><strong>BOYLE</strong>: It was very flattering. If I was 27, it would have been very dangerous. Fortunately I’ve made a few films, some very successful and some very unsuccessful. That does help guide you. I remember thinking about Sam Mendes, when he won an Oscar with this first film. Bloody hell, it would be tough to handle that fresh out of the block. The town, the whole industry…distortion is the wrong word, but a warping happens in front of your vision, how people regard you. You need a good bit of perspective. I have grown kids who will not take any bullshit off me at all. If I start talking about myself in the third person, or saying things like ‘My film, my oeuvre,’ anything like that, they are merciless with me. That helps.</p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE</strong>:</em> <em>After Fox Searchlight rescued</em> Slumdog <em>from a direct to DVD fate, you then pitched them</em> 127 Hours <em>as an action movie where the lead character is pinned under a boulder. What was their reaction?</em></p><p><strong>BOYLE</strong>: [Laughs]. Well they were cautious, rightly so, but in the end, courageous. You can look now and see the film has a wonderful performance, and on a certain level it is a visceral and engaging thrill ride. Back then, the prospect must have looked dangerously like a vanity project, something insane that only one person in the world—me—could ever watch. But I knew it wasn’t that. The point of a good partnership is the ability to flesh it out together. The pitch is so important in that regard. Sometimes you can feel it crumble, that it won’t work. But every time I pitched this, it felt solid to me. Then it was a matter of them making sure they didn’t give us too much money, which is one of their important functions. Honestly, giving me too much money could have turned it into a vanity project.</p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE</strong>:</em> <em>Though screenwriter Simon Beaufoy wrote the first draft of</em> Slumdog Millionaire<em>, you wrote the first draft of</em> 127 Hours<em>. Why? Was it that hard to verbalize how you’d turn the unpalatable into something spiritual?</em></p><p><strong>BOYLE</strong>: Christian and I thought it was a slam dunk that Simon would want to do it and we were shocked when he didn’t. He was a climber. We’d lived like a family on <em>Slumdog</em> and had all been amazingly rewarded and we wanted to work together again. And did I say he’s a climber, and so the one thing we can’t bring to the story, he can? But he’s wise and has been through this a few times. He knew I had this locked in my head, really, and I think he felt that I had to get it out or any draft he did he would disappoint me. He thought I had to go through that writer’s process and get it on paper. It’s such an important testing ground for a story. They sent me off to do a couple drafts last summer, and it was brutal. I’m not a writer and saw the truth in all those stories writers tell you. Wandering around the house, doing nothing all day, just waiting for that 20 minutes when the writing finally comes. It’s all true. It’s a curse and a gift. It eludes you and then suddenly something comes and you go, that’s it! And you get up the next morning and say, fucking hell! How did I write that?</p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE</strong>:</em> <em>What was Aron Ralston’s biggest fear entrusting his story to you?</em></p><p><strong>BOYLE</strong>: That he would lose his voice. Not only had he written a book, he was running a motivational speaking business. He’s told his story 1000 times, embellished it and organized it, the way we all do when we tell stories. Suddenly, he’s being asked by a guy from Britain who is not a climber, let me become the voice of your story. I wanted him to understand I would tell his story through an actor like James Franco, and the audience will experience it through that actor’s voice. That must have been very tough for him. We joked about him being worried that Hollywood would change the ending, and he was distrustful of Hollywood. The real fear was he was going to lose control of telling the story with his own voice. That control instinct is one of the things that helped him survive in the first place. He is a controlling man who was sent spiraling out of control by nature, deliberately. But he wouldn’t give up control when I first met him in 2006. I think the reason he did in 2009 was the influence of his wife. He’d changed as a person by the time I met him again. Also, getting ready for a child, these are important steps in which a man gives up control by assuming more responsibility. We all know that feeling of giving up that narrow focus we have, to get on with something a bit more complicated.</p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE</strong>:</em> <em>What was the biggest challenge in not making the audience feel claustrophobic and isolated?</em></p><p><strong>BOYLE</strong>: The challenge was to maintain momentum in that isolation. There was an engine, still burning, still moving the story forward and that was partly his own industry, and the fact he never gave up and had to occupy himself constantly. Editing accentuated that. But it was also the story we uncovered that wasn’t so obvious in the book. There was an emotional journey that was right for a great actor. Aron had to learn to change. We never called them flashbacks, but those images and scenes he sees in his mind are keys for him to unlock a part of himself. He needed to let go of his previous life. The thing that will unlock it isn’t cutting his arm off, though that’s the obvious physical manifestation. It’s like he is putting in the right combination that will allow him to step back, free. That’s something we found that connected things emotionally and made this story universal. It made it, weirdly, our story, me and Simon. We’ve both been guilty, like Aron was as a character, of dealing with the emotions of other people and not being as respectful as we might have been. We’ve learned better, with the passage of time, over decades. He’s learning it in <em>127 Hours</em>, because of those circumstances. It felt like a personal story to us as filmmakers, a classical story. It’s weird how that happens. You highlight the things that matter to you, tell it with a passion and it becomes personal to you. That’s the process we went through.</p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE</strong>:</em> <em>What about James or his work made him right?</em></p><p><strong>BOYLE</strong>: <em>Pineapple Express</em> was key. When I saw it, I wasn’t thinking about casting him. I was just a punter watching a good film but I remember thinking, that’s a major actor, a proper actor, good on you. I’d seen his other stuff that was quite intense, and moody. A lot of people can do that. But when they can turn their hand to comedy and occupy that soul expertly? I’m not comparing him to De Niro, but I love actors and remember thinking the same thing when he did <em>The King of Comedy</em>. I grew up with him playing those heavy roles for Scorsese. I loved them and was in that fan club. Then you <em>see King of Comedy</em>, when all the fans drop away and you become part of a more exclusive club, appreciating a really great actor. When we were casting, you meet all these guys and then you think about their work. I knew James would be able to bring a range to this performance that would sustain the shape of the film. I can shape things a bit as the director, but with an experience like this, the major shaping is your experience of living it with him. Simon could provide things, like that amazing speech with him on the chat show, but James had to be able to do most of this. And subtly, he had to be able to show despair. There’s a terrible moment where he…it’s a wonderful bit of acting…he can’t get to the girl’s door to talk to her. It’s obviously a dream in his head but he starts crying in the canyon. I remember it was one of the few moments where the camera literally pulled away from him. That was instinctive, because it had become too much to bear, too intrusive. It’s one of the few moments in the film where you had to pull away and give him space. There were all kinds of shapes he found. A young actor, when they have some experience, they should be looking for things to do like that, ways to flex their muscles.</p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE</strong>:</em> <em>Franco is an NYU student, he’s directing a feature and a short, playing a menacing performance artist on a soap opera, doing the</em> Planet of the Apes <em>prequel. Simuntaneously.</em> <em>It would be easy to label him a flake. How do you sum up that constant motion and curiosity?</em></p><p><strong>BOYLE</strong>: The flake thing. He’s looking at what flake-dom is, it’s part of his process. As a modern actor, he’s thinking that soap operas are part of the language now. He’s said, you can sneer at them, but they influence everything we do, down to where the sofa goes in our living room and what IKEA sells. We don’t realize we’re being affected by these things. He’s really into this, and he’s right of course. It’s pervasive, beyond which reality star is going to be thrown off next, for us to have a look at, then destroy, and follow them through drug addiction and rehab. ?It’s acting in other ways that we don’t fully understand. That’s what he’s exploring. Whether he sustains that for a very long time, I don’t know. Maybe he’ll specialize and become a major actor. Or dip in and out and take a few years off from acting to try something else. He’s super bright. I could give him a long list, which you shouldn’t do with an actor. It’s one of the rules, you tell an actor no more than one thing, because they’ve got their own agenda running. I’d give him 10, and he would accommodate them. I remember DiCaprio being the same. I didn’t direct him as well, but he was hungry. Anything you could give him, he was like, more. These are thoroughbreds. They want challenge and stimulation. You find yourself running out of ideas. You’re like fucking hell, and you’re running to keep up. You’ve got to be on your game, because he’s going to turn around and say, what else? And you haven’t got anything else.</p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE</strong>:</em> <em>The audience escaped claustrophobia in the way you shot the film. Franco had intense scenes in a confined space. What role does a director play in keeping him on point?</em></p><p><strong>BOYLE</strong>: You mainly keep his spirits up. You don’t really need to keep him on point. It was very rare where I felt he was off-key. He was loving the challenge of doing it on his own, but sometimes he must have wished for some other actress to fool around with, all those normal things you feel. Jealousy, an affair coming on. There was none of that here. He couldn’t even relate to the crew, really. They could only go in one at a time and I’d limit the amount of time they went in there. I tried to keep his spirits up, which I like doing with actors, anyway. I don’t like isolating them or playing psychological games. But I do try to act it out sometimes and he used to find that entertaining. He’s quite confident as an actor and he could see that I’m quite a poor actor. He would get me to act something out and then he’d just smile. I think I entertained him. Those great actors have a filter and it tells them why certain lines in a script just don’t work. He’d say, I don’t care how much you need that information, a character would not say that, Danny. They filter out bullshit while bad actors can get bullied into it by a director or a writer. And when they say that shit, you go, who is that shit actor?? And it’s not their fault.</p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE</strong>:</em> <em>At the Toronto premiere, I felt that the audience was so invested in Aron, we collectively felt relief when he freed himself. When you labor to get that just right, how troubling is it when the media harps on people fainting?</em></p><p><strong>BOYLE</strong>: My worry, funny enough, was that we’d get people walking out at that moment. It’s a tribute to James that, even though people don’t find that scene easy, you can see people making an effort to stick it out. But when you read that, it doesn’t sound like much of a recommendation for seeing the film.</p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE</strong>:</em> <em>So what's in it for the audience?</em></p><p><strong>BOYLE</strong>: You’re on a journey, and the things that are going on are tough. It is important that people know they’ve been through something, and that there is a reward attached to that. That reward is a profound sense of well being. It’s not the thrill sense of well being you got from watching <em>Slumdog</em>, with a feel-good ending and a dance song. This is a more serious, proper sense of well-being that you deserve after going through that with James. We don’t do a dance, but I wanted to celebrate that feeling with music and a sense of completion. You feel like you really have earned the sense of belonging again. I profoundly believe in that, in my own life. It’s very important that it’s not easy, not some Christmas jingle. It’s deeply earned. That will always toss some people off and I don’t blame them. You work hard all week, and you don’t want to spend your Friday night in a canyon. That’s fine. But there will be people who will want that, and it’s what I love about movies. Finding that special experience that moves you.</p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE</strong>:</em> <em>What’s your best memory of that</em> Slumdog <em>Oscar night?</em></p><p><strong>BOYLE</strong>: It was looking down my row and seeing all the people I’d worked with, in profile, all holding Oscars in their hands. They gave speeches but who can remember what they said? You don’t remember much of your own moment. But that lovely feeling, the profiles and the Oscars, because you only see photographs of famous people holding Oscars, from the front.</p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE</strong>:</em> <em>You are choreographing the Olympic opening ceremonies in Britain. The last one in China exploited the acrobatic precision. What is it that the British do better than anybody that you can showcase?</em></p><p><strong>BOYLE</strong>: We’re a slightly awkward bunch, and idiosyncratic. I don’t think we could organize games like the Chinese. When it comes to a war or something, we can get ourselves organized. But in peace time, we won’t put up with organization. It’s that kind of Sex Pistols thing, we’re not having any of that. That contrariness is something I like very much. I’m hoping we’ll be able to figure out a way to celebrate it.</p></div><p><em>This entry passed through the <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/">Full-Text RSS</a> service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php">fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php</a><br /><a href="http://fivefilters.org">Five Filters</a> featured site: <a href="http://sowhyiswikileaksagoodthingagain.com">So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again?</a>.</em></p><br /><p><a href="http://www.deadline.com/2010/12/oscar-danny-boyle-qa-on-127-hours/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">View the original article here</a></p>Guerlainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09792345053131695545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5565053259766045458.post-67114615322674038712010-12-20T04:54:00.000-08:002010-12-20T04:54:00.178-08:00OSCAR: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu Q&A On 'Biutiful' <div readability="520"><img src="http://www-deadline-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/mike-fleming-thumbnail.jpg" class="c3" height="100" width="100" alt="Mike Fleming"/><p><em><a href="http://www.deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/inarritu1.jpg"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-91883" title="inarritu" src="http://www-deadline-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/inarritu1.jpg" alt="" width="372" height="135"/></a>After Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s electric feature directing debut Amores Perros, the Mexico-born filmmaker became the toast of a specialty film circuit dominated by studios willing to overspend for prestige and Oscars. Top actors lined up to work with Inarritu in</em> 21 Grams <em>and</em> Babel, <em>the latter a picture that personified the excess that would haunt the prestige film business. Paramount paid $25 million to license the US and a handful of other territories and the film was wildly profitable for its makers before Inarritu shot a frame, I'm told. Those days are long gone. Studios fled the prestige game, and survivors are cautious, especially when subtitles are involved. How else to explain why it took four months to get US distribution after a Cannes debut of</em> Biutiful <em>that won Best Actor for Javier Bardem?</em></p><p><em>Bardem plays a street hustler in Spain who deals in undocumented African street peddlers and Chinese sweat shop workers. Dying of a terminal disease, he can’t face leaving his children to the mean streets, especially since their bipolar mother is too unreliable to care for them. The film is bleak, but behind the darkness, there is light and redemption. Will Oscar voters bother to look? So far, Bardem and Inarritu have been ignored in the critics’ awards, except in the Foreign Film category. Who better to dissect the condition of foreign language films than Inarritu, who worries about the current climate where wary distributors rely on festival reviewers who evaluate complex films in 140 character Twitter posts filed moments after screenings end.</em></p><p><strong><em>DEADLINE:</em></strong> <em>Though Javier Bardem won Best Actor at Cannes,</em> Biutiful <em>sat for months without US distribution. In hindsight, was that festival the right place to unveil the film?</em></p><p><strong>INARRITU</strong>: Cannes or any other major festival is basically an animal in its own nature, creating very specific perceptions of films in a moment. That creates an incredibly stressful situation for every journalist there. It’s like being in a bar and seeing a girl you find to be incredibly beautiful. You’re a little drunk, and she is just so beautiful and attractive, and the next day, when the lights are up and you meet her again, you feel differently. Cannes can be very much like that, this neon atmosphere where perception becomes reality. And then things can change dramatically, there can be this pendulum swing. That makes it possible that three guys booing in a screening can become a story. Or a bubble can be created that bursts. And now it’s very viral. In the cast of <em>Biutiful</em>, the film was portrayed at Cannes as being very bleak, very intense in such a way that guided people to that expectation. Then in Toronto, everything changed. When they saw it again, they realized the film was much more human.</p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE</strong></em><em>: How much does the rush to judge foreign language films hurt the kind of ?movies you make?</em></p><p><strong>INARRITU</strong>: That incredible bubble and high expectations built at festivals can work against a film. When you have critics filing on Twitter, it leaves no time for thought and perspective. ?How can you rely on this? But the fact that people came in with lower expectations when they saw <em>Biutiful</em> helped. Everything has changed. I can’t tell you how incredibly well this film has been reviewed in France, I’ve never had a film of mine received like this, or seen these kinds of adjectives, especially after Cannes. A second viewing of this film really helps. It has weight and emotion and it disturbs you, initially. With time and perspective, it’s completely another story.</p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE</strong>:</em> <em>There are a handful of maverick guys like yourself, Terrence Malick and Paul Thomas Anderson, who tell auteur stories that have carried budgets in the $30 million range. PTA has had difficulty pulling together his next film,</em> The Master, <em>with Universal pulling out because of a $35 million budget. Is that $30 million art film dead?</em></p><p><strong>INARRITU</strong>: I love PTA’s work. Here’s a guy who every time out makes films that are original ideas, incredible works of art. We are not machinery. These things are individual expression, themes with original ideas. We may fail sometimes, but we attempt to move things forward. Now, we are being pushed two ways. As an act of resistance, we can still make original ideas and try to find ways to finance them. We understand the financial situation and can help financiers and adjust somewhat to the idea that these films can only be made for a certain amount of money. But we need the excitement and extra effort of distributors to support that. We have to find ways to challenge people to see original material. What good is making a jewel if nobody see it? But cost depends on the story. To get those performances in <em>Biutiful,</em> you need that time. You need 60 takes in a scene, and a year to edit. It’s not realistic to do it any other way. This is very sophisticated, handmade, aged coffee, not Starbucks. That takes time and time means money, unfortunately. That is the tragedy of filmmakers, we depend on money. Quality will suffer. The other course for these filmmakers is to accept work as a craftsman, like a carpenter being hired to build a table. Filmmakers have to pay rent, school, they have to live. I will never criticize anyone for doing that.</p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE</strong></em>: <em>Is getting the budget your biggest hurdle?</em></p><p><strong>INARRITU</strong>: The problem is less about finance than distribution. That’s the bottleneck. Let’s say Malick, me or PTA get money from different countries. In France<em>, Biutiful</em> is doing great, and in other territories, it’s more incredible. In the US, it’s more challenging now. I believe there is cultural curiosity of the audience. We get money to put films together, but the problem comes when you finish. Exhibitors might not take the risk and I understand the dilemma. You have to make millions on Friday night, because there are another 600 films waiting behind you, with explosions and everything. That’s where these films are being hit, and what happens when you call them bleak art films. We are being branded even by distributors and media, instead of encouraged. There are reasons you have to see these kinds of films, especially the ones that really work. It would be nice if media and distributors tried to cultivate and encourage, instead of calling them bleak, small independents, or other adjectives that hurt and create a ghetto. What makes a film smaller, is it just budget? PTA is just one of the incredible directors fighting this fight, and it’s getting more difficult. It has me worried.</p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE</strong></em><em>: About the future?</em></p><p><strong>INARRITU</strong>: How many people are there in this country, 300 million? And how many are moved to see these films? You have kids studying master class visual arts, who are pushed to make films that will be successful economically, that’s what they focus on. So they work for corporate interest instead of artistic expression. And now, they don’t have chance to observe the alternative. ?Where are all the thousands who should be interested in these films? That is where the call should go. There has to be more than just finding a book that some film company will buy. This is a little terrifying, this dark moment we are in. But I’m sure we will come back, or at least that is my hope. It cannot be all black and white, you need to leave room for some gray.</p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE</strong>:</em> <em>Javier Bardem’s character worked in the streets with illegal businesses involving African street peddlers, Chinese working living in sweat shop conditions. And yet he was a loving father of his own children, and seemed to care for his workers who were being exploited. Did you see him at all as a villain?</em></p><p><strong>INARRITU</strong>: No, not at all. When I started writing the character, he appeared to myself full of contradictions. The title is a contradiction, in the sense that our nature is complex. We are not bad or good. I think one of the things I hate most in films, and Western films especially, we tend to think of the world as having a lot of Manichaeism. It’s black or white, good or bad. The characters are very well established, in a very childish way. I think that when we are children, we need stereotypes, archetypes, to understand the world. But when we grow up, we understand that things are not that easy. We are not good and we are not bad, we do good things and bad things simultaneously. We are angels and devils. These contradictions appeared for me since the very early beginning. I found that Uxbal is a character that was very primitive. He had to have a physical strength to survive in tough circumstances. He’s a street guy. But at the same time, it needs to be a very sensitive spiritual character in a way. Javier, who I met nine years ago, is that way as a person. He has this very physical strong presence, but at the same time, he has a fragile, vulnerable poet’s soul. That’s how I think about him.</p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE</strong>:</em> <em>You dedicated</em> Biutiful <em>to your father, and called him The Old Oak. In his life, your father made and lost a fortune. Like all your movies,</em> Biutiful <em>has characters who experience sudden swings in fortune. How did he or his life influence this film?</em></p><p><strong>INARRITU</strong>: ?This film is at its core a love story between a father and his kids. To me, that spirituality sustains this film. My father and I have a strong relationship. He told me things without never telling me nothing. He never preached. I never saw my father…he struggled a lot, economically, we lived in a kind of tough, poor neighborhood. We were five kids. My father never have a lot. Often, there was no fruit, and the milk maybe was old. He’d wake up in the morning, 4 AM, and bought fruits in the market to sell to restaurants, hotels. It was a very tough business and he was a fighter. He was always ready to listen, always very open, never criticized nobody. Very tender and compassionate. Even now, when he’s 80 years old and sick, he sustains himself. I relate him a lot with Uxbal. When I dedicate it to my father and said, old oak, when we were kids or teenagers we would measure ourselves against him and he would always be higher, and say he was still the old oak. I saw Uxbal as an old oak, a big noble tree with strong roots, and everybody depends on him. But this big tree is falling.</p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE</strong>:</em> <em>Compared to when</em> Babel <em>was shopped with every studio-backed arthouse distributor chasing it, the market for prestige films has contracted dramatically. Then, you had Brad Pitt and part of the film was in English, while</em> Biutiful <em>is Spanish language. Describe the difference.</em></p><p><strong>INARRITU</strong>: It was just a couple years ago, but thinking back on it, it feels like we are talking about a prehistoric period. It’s funny. Back then, the United States bought those films first, and the foreign distributors waited to see who bought it in the United States and then they were the followers. Now, it’s the contrary. This was financed first, completely sold around the world first, and then the United States is the last one to bet on it. That’s very sad, how the United States has become the follower that waits and sees how a film plays in other territories. That is the big change. I doubt that many people feel proud about what they are distributing or producing, the stories they are telling. A revival, or a movie based on a series of comic books, comfortable comedies, and explosions. You can tell nobody is very proud of it, but there’s this conglomerate mindset is defeating the meaning of what we used to do. All of us are concerned individually, but in the mass, it seems things are moving into a direction that is getting people blind. I worry that the foreign language audience hasn’t been educated and growing. Nobody is really getting into that market, and the ones there are reducing. A filmmaker who was used to being in so many theaters is now reduced to being in 25%. That’s because a new generation is not being educated and that’s sad. It is creating a narrow vision of what film can be. Or it’s that other sickness, that a great film can come from whatever country, and everybody loves it in that territory, but few people go here and nobody really distributes it very well. And then it is a remake in the United States. They can’t stop seeing past the obvious and that’s a sickness, I think.</p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE</strong>:</em> <em>Considering those new realities, did you consider, or were you nudged to make</em> Biutiful <em>in English?</em></p><p><strong>INARRITU</strong>: Never did I think it, and never would anyone have been brave enough to even suggest it. I would have been insulted. I would have betrayed the whole film, turned it into a perverted version and robbed it of its truth. As an artist, you have to honor the truth of the universe that you are presenting. So if you do that, you are completely poisoning and betraying the whole thing.</p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE</strong>:</em> <em>So you make</em> Biutiful<em>, when when you come to Cannes, it is the film everybody is dying to see. ?Javier wins the Best Actor. And not one U.S. distributor bites. How did that make you feel?</em></p><p><strong>INARRITU</strong>: That’s what was shocking. I think two things, because of course I don’t have the truth. But what I saw was the perception, the way that this film was perceived in the new period of the blogs. The ?immediacy of reactions, where you have to get it on Twitter, 20 seconds after the film ends. And the fact that this new immediacy leaves no time to assimilate or metabolize anything. It has changed things completely. Add the fact that the few distribution companies that exist now take fearing out of those results that are based on opinions coming from an immediate response. I think those messages unfortunately create damage with the few people now dealing with art house films. Fear is spread in a couple of fast opinions and it affects those few people still in this business, because they have to explain results to conglomerates. The territory is fragile already because of the economy. The result is a kind of blindness, a fragility in understanding things that are complex. It’s a disrespectful thing to filmmakers, but exhibitors and distribution companies feel that people need easy things to consume, and not have challenges brought to their tables. That, in its extreme, is killing any possibility to do a film that is more interesting. That’s what I think, but I’m curious about what you think?</p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE</strong></em><em>: I think it’s extremely hard to quickly judge</em> Biutiful<em>, because you would tend to focus on the tragedies. A little distance would allow anybody with kids to relate to Uxbal’s love for his children, which redeems him. But it is hard to get past the dark places in this film to see the redemption. I’ve also seen how buyers get rattled or excited by rushed reviews in the trade and blogs, even though who knows how many of these people are qualified to render an opinion worth respect?</em></p><p><strong>INARRITU</strong>: These could be people who might not have anything going for them, but unfortunately these executives are listening. I understand they have to be interested in results but how can they be terrified by some guy who does not have the profundity, the knowledge of film. <em>Biutiful</em> is about people who are not bad guys or good guys. In my view, this is my most compassionate film, and there is a reality that ?hits every part of the world. It’s not only the United States and Mexico, but the South border of Mexico, and Europe, which is also hit by all of these immigrants who start their journey from very sad origins. The reality in these countries is they are treated as though they are invisible. That is a growing problem that will cover not only Europe but all parts of the world. We are acting like they are invisible and trying to find easy, radical and xenophobic solutions. I wanted to make a point here about these people, who are human beings, survivors. From the Chinese to the African woman who befriends Uxbal, all of them? have a reason to struggle and survive, and they struggle with the same fear. How can I feed my kids? Those are beautiful, universal problems. Uxbal redeems himself in that manner. He gives love, he forgives. It was something for me to play with a tragedy, to show how someone who falls so low can purify himself with dignity and with love and compassion and forgiveness. And give everything to others. That for me makes a beautiful love story. Some people can’t see it. A guy who saw the movie in Cannes told me he was very disturbed because there was a wave of pain he didn’t know what to do with. He saw it again and said he felt no pain this time, and so he saw the beauty behind the pain. He said that Uxbal is such a big character, and the pain and the emotions are so big and vivid that sometimes they can blind you to what I see now, which is micro-layers of beauty. The architecture of the film is much more complex than any film I have done, in my point of view.</p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE</strong>:</em> <em>You’re an artist, but also a savvy businessman and probably not a lot of companies have lost money betting on your films. When no US distributor jumped, did you find yourself having to sell or defend your vision?</em></p><p><strong>INARRITU</strong>: No. In terms of business, the film had been sold, in every territory. And the reviews around the world have been amazing. The natural countries for <em>Biutiful</em>, like Spain and Mexico, I hope they will be huge. I think most of the distributors around the world have worked with me before and were all completely satisfied. The problem was the United States. And that made me sad. Why? Because the United States is full of immigrants, people who form a complex social network, and there should be understanding. In terms of business, it was shocking to see the United States’ response. Because the whole world was completely booked. In one day. Boom, done. Why? I don’t know. I’ve given you a couple of possibilities, but there is more to explore, in what’s happening anthropologically in business and society. Everybody has the same concern and I think everybody is not proud of what happened here.</p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE</strong>:</em> <em>When you construct a business plan for an expensive foreign language film like this, how important is the United States?</em></p><p><strong>INARRITU</strong>: With this film, it was only a part because we knew this was going to be a foreign language film. It was different from <em>21 Grams</em>. But <em>Babel</em> was also a foreign language film, only a quarter was in English. This time, we knew we’d be confronting a different period. I was so lucky to make the film. It was produced two months before the collapse of the economy in 2008, so I think if I would be dreaming about doing a film like this today, it would never happen. This is the Last of the Mohicans. Guillermo del Toro tells me that this was the last gem, the last foreign language film with this kind of scale. It would be impossible now to do something like this. We always knew that for our business strategy, the United States would fortunately be just a part. So we are not sad, businesswise. This deals with more of an issue of how we don’t want to see struggle. But I’m excited that Roadside came, and they are really enthusiastic about it. That made me feel good.</p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE</strong>:</em> <em>Considering how important the US has been for breakout specialty films, is it really possible we are on our way to becoming an afterthought?</em></p><p><strong>INARRITU</strong>: How else could you explain a film like last year with <em>The Prophet</em>, or <em>White Ribbon</em>, great films that did maybe $2 million or $3 million? It’s incredible. What is that, 100,000 people, in a country of 350 million, in a very decent economy? And 100,000 people saw the Cannes Film Festival winner by Michael Haneke, or <em>The Prophet</em>? That is very sad. That doesn’t mean only .0001 percent of the population likes these kind of things. They are curious to see things beyond the United States, but nobody has cultivated that. If you see TV, see what kids are exposed to, it’s depressing. They don’t have any visual culture. I went to see <em>Enter the Void</em> by Gaspar Noe. There were only two shows, Monday and Tuesday. There were 45 people there. 45 people! And yes, maybe there are ways the film could be better narratively, but it was an amazing visual experience, an unbelievable, visceral journey. A powerful cinematic experience. As a filmmaker, it’s so refreshing to see something like this. You say, wow. It’s an injection of fire! And there was 50 people, and it is gone in two days. This is LA, the city of film. You have to wonder, what’s going on? What’s going on in the schools with the kids? What are we showing them? How to do explosions? Only black and white characters and explosions? What’s going on? Humanity, real emotion is prohibited now, it’s not cool. What’s going on? There are more to fucking human beings, what’s in the eyes, emotions, the complexity of the human machine. It’s just gone now. I’m not saying I don’t like those other films, and I’m not a bitter guy. But when everything is hamburger…</p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE:</strong></em> <em>After you made a splash here with Amores Perros, you must have been courted to transfer your visceral style to Hollywood films. Your colleagues, Alfonso Cuaron and Guillermo del Toro have played successfully in that big budget sandbox. Why haven’t you?</em></p><p><strong>INARRITU</strong>: It’s not that I resist it. I don’t have nothing against it. It’s just that what I have been offered. It has been a lot over 10 years, honestly, some big films, and they would have been fun and I would have gotten a lot of money and attention. But I am always working in my own projects that are based on my own ideas. And I have never found something up to now that is more interesting than what I am doing, or which speaks to me more urgently than what I’m doing. That’s why I have always decided to keep doing what I’m doing. But I really pray, and hope, that someday I will find a script I didn’t have to write, and that it will be great and powerful, because that will save me two or three years of writing. That would be a fantastic present! I haven’t found that. I’m open to work in a project that isn’t mine, but so far am left with an urgency to do the thing that I’m developing.</p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE</strong>:</em> <em>Doesn’t sound like you’ll be a director for hire anytime soon, even though your road is harder.</em></p><p><strong>INARRITU</strong>: I have discussed this with Guillermo and Alfonso, and they’ve said that sometimes the best experience is when they are hired and work as craftsmen, a carpenter. By the end, every film becomes yours in one way or another. Maybe it would be fun, and maybe I’d want to kill myself right in the middle of that process. It might be less painful. But my films are an extension of myself and I feel very proud and blessed to have made each one. But in the world we live in, you can be punished by being stubborn. I did a commercial for Nike for World Cup soccer, and I didn’t want to. My kid was the one who convinced me. He said, father, that’s not cool to say no. This is cool. I did it because of him, and it for me was an experience I loved so much. My kid took me out from this other thing I was writing, and I spent almost two months on this commercial I was hired to direct. I didn’t regret it and I had a good time. I just don’t know if that will happen with a feature.</p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE</strong>:</em> <em>Since the film takes place in Spain, how surprised were you that Mexico submitted</em> Biutiful <em>for Best Foreign Language Film consideration?</em></p><p><strong>INARRITU</strong>: ?I was really surprised by the nomination. There were a lot of good films this year. The Academy has reacted powerfully to this film, they felt the emotional impact. I’ve received beautiful responses from them, very nice letters, on how much the film stayed in their heads for a week after they saw it. I felt very honored by this. Mexico is going through the worst crisis. Since I’ve been alive, I have never seen a crisis like this, an historical crisis of violence, sadness and pain. It’s a very tough, almost unimaginable situation we are going through. Institutions are corrupted and collapsing and it’s a country where we have to reinvent ourselves, literally. We have to go to a bottom we haven’t hit yet, but we will be born again. I’m sure this crisis will result in something great, I just don’t know how long and how much blood and pain it will take. To the people, I feel responsible to represent them to the Academy, that they trust in me and this work. I’m honored and happy but I feel burdened. I hope that this film can be appreciated by the Academy and its members and they can understand where I come from, a visceral culture and this is why I do the kind of films I do. My films are not decoration pieces. Art should provoke. It should be about love, emotion, catharsis and I hope the Academy can get this film, get behind the scheme of pain and see the light behind it. I hope we can get nominated, that would be good news that I would love to bring to my country.</p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE</strong>:</em> <em>The brisk sales of independent films at the Toronto International Film Festival gave reason to be cautiously optimistic that the specialty business was rebounding. But what will happen to the foreign language film?</em></p><p><strong>INARRITU</strong>: Both specialty films and foreign language films are in a down cycle. I think the much more punished ones are foreign language films. If it’s not an action film, or has monsters, or is a genre film, I think right now it’s an impossible dream for foreign language films. Some art films and some good filmmakers—I am one of them, or at least I was—are able to get financing for challenging films, human films and some films that are more than cookie cutter kind of thing. Most filmmakers are in big trouble. Just take a look how many people used to see films by talented directors like Pedro Almodovar. And now, it’s completely something other. What happened? How did we get into this thing of narrow vision, of not being couriers of other visions, viewpoints and talents? It’s what this country was built on. That is really what worries me. What is the future for all the young filmmakers who will not have the opportunity to see films like <em>White Ribbon</em>, or <em>Into the Void</em>? There is nothing made here you can compare those films to. People that will be making films 10 years from now won’t have that cultural knowledge. That is what really worries me. I have two kids. What will they be able to draw inspiration from? That’s a crisis.</p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE</strong>:</em> <em>Anything in your experience at the festivals that made you feel optimistic?</em></p><p><strong>INARRITU</strong>: Oh, my God, of course. I went to Telluride, I went to Toronto, and it was such a release. The industry and the people who operate the business is one side of things. I’m not judging them and don’t want to come off as the bitter guy. I know what they’re up against and that they answer to conglomerates. People were blown away by the film in Telluride and Toronto. The first time I showed it was 8:30 in the morning in Telluride. I thought it was suicidal, but it was a standing ovation like I never had in my life. People said it was a love requiem. Same thing in Toronto. Audience reaction has been the same way since. I never had this, not with <em>Babel, 21 Grams,</em> even <em>Amores Perros</em>. Never. Standing ovation, and 90% of people staying for Q and A’s, with smart questions. I felt so good. The reviews are better and the energy is building. It gives me hope. Toronto and Telluride changed completely the energy of the film. If people don’t intellectualize or block themselves emotionally, and they allow their emotions to flow, they will get it. It’s like classical music. Everybody loves it, but they have to listen to it, to give it a chance, to hear it.</p><p><em><strong>DEADLINE</strong>:</em> <em>After a mostly numbing summer, it has been nice to see fall films like</em> Biutiful<em>,</em> 127 Hours<em>,</em> The King’s Speech<em>, and feel something.</em></p><p><strong>INARRITU</strong>: Thank God for these festivals, where you feel that pulse, you feel that it’s alive. And you feel like, we need to keep doing this. Industry people are few, the world is larger and I have high hopes for this film. I hope we can encourage people to see films like this. I was left feeling optimistic and positive. This is a love story. It’s funny you mention the idea of feeling something, because feelings now are not cool. To show emotion isn’t cool and we are acting like machines in a way. Bono, the singer, I showed him the film in Barcelona awhile ago. He was really hit by it. After 10 minutes, he stand up and say, ‘Alejandro, this is one of the most intimate experiences I’ve had in my life. I felt close to the character in his bed, at the last moment of his life, when does it get more intimate than that?’ He said a line I thought was great. He said, ‘I have discovered one thing. Intimacy is the new Punk.’ I love that line. It’s true. Intimacy is transgressive. I completely believe that. If people, instead of texting and tweeting, allow themselves to be intimate, I think the film will be okay.</p></div><p><em>This entry passed through the <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/">Full-Text RSS</a> service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php">fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php</a><br /><a href="http://fivefilters.org">Five Filters</a> featured site: <a href="http://sowhyiswikileaksagoodthingagain.com">So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again?</a>.</em></p><br /><p><a href="http://www.deadline.com/2010/12/oscar-alejandro-gonzalez-inarritu-qa-on-biutiful/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">View the original article here</a></p>Guerlainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09792345053131695545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5565053259766045458.post-39171672580972671472010-12-20T01:53:00.000-08:002010-12-20T01:53:00.226-08:00VIX ROLLING OVER <div id="post-29612" readability="61.80973209404"><span class="breadcrumbs"><a href="http://pragcap.com/">Home</a> ? <a href="http://pragcap.com/category/mrs" title="View all posts in Most Recent Stories" rel="category tag">Most Recent Stories</a></span><p><span>18 December 2010 by Surly Trader</span> <span>0 Comments</span></p><div class="entry clearfloat" readability="56.158167553937"><p><strong>By <a href="http://surlytrader.com" target="_blank">Surly Trader</a></strong></p><p>It is pretty easy to say that on a quiet trading day a week before Christmas (S&P flat at a +.08%), the big news was the 10% decline in the VIX without any relevant news. ?Maybe the VIX thought the passage of the tax extension was?phenomenally?good for lower volatility going forward, but I highly doubt it. ?I received some interesting speculation from some investment banks, but nothing noteworthy. ?One thought it was a lack of gamma hedging after option expiration and another thought that implied was finally compressing towards realized. ?I highly doubt either of them. ?If I remember correctly, I asked the same questions back in April and then the VIX quickly shot up to 40%. ?Amnesia is a common market and investment bank trait.</p><p class="c1"><img title="VIX 20101217" src="http://www.surlytrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/VIX-20101217.jpg" alt="" width="502" height="323"/></p><p class="c1">Why collapse today?</p><p>Because the VIX and the front part of the VIX futures curve have fallen off, the VIX futures curve has a record steepness to it:</p><p class="c1"><img title="VIX Futures 20101217" src="http://www.surlytrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/VIX-Futures-20101217.jpg" alt="" width="506" height="302"/></p><p class="c1">Nearly 10 vol points between the VIX and the furthest future?!</p><p>There are a few ways (and many iterations) to play this vol market in anticipation of a future spike in vol:</p><ol><li>Buy the short end of the VIX futures curve or the ETF VXX</li><li>Buy the front part of the futures curve and sell the back half (buy Jan and sell a few Jun or Jul 2011)</li><li>Buy puts/calls one month out at low implied volatility, delta hedge if needed</li></ol><p>Maybe volatility is really coming down to “normal” levels, but I really get suspicious when reversion to the mean happens a bit too quickly for my comfort.<br/></p><blockquote readability="18.855635491607"><p>——————————————————————————————————————————————————</p><p><em>The content on this site is provided as general information only and should not be taken as investment advice. 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Thanks.</em></p><noscript><p><a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/invc.pragcap/agora;kw=;kval=agora;tile=4;sz=500x55;ord=123456789?" target="_blank"><img src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/invc.pragcap/agora;kw=;kval=agora;tile=4;sz=500x55;ord=123456789?" width="300" height="250" border="0" alt=""/></a></p></noscript><p>Post Footer automatically generated by <a href="http://www.freetimefoto.com/add_post_footer_plugin_wordpress" class="c2">Add Post Footer Plugin</a> for wordpress.</p></blockquote></div></div><p><em>This entry passed through the <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/">Full-Text RSS</a> service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at <a href="http://fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php">fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php</a><br /><a href="http://fivefilters.org">Five Filters</a> featured site: <a href="http://sowhyiswikileaksagoodthingagain.com">So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again?</a>.</em></p><br /><p><a href="http://pragcap.com/vix-rolling-over" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">View the original article here</a></p>Guerlainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09792345053131695545noreply@blogger.com0