Indy Telecom & Industrial Media

You can download a copy of Obama’s budget blueprint here.

It’s a rather interesting read, but my only bone to pick is that the estimates seem a little too optimistic (e.g. the assumed 3+% growth rate). Turns out that I’m not the only one who feels that way – the WSJ econ blog also talks about this.

There are also a lot of pretty graphs on a variety of things, but there is no mention of any of the important ones (e.g. treasury bond performance or inflation).  While it could be argued that it is not the place of a budget to talk about these things, in these perilous times, it becomes necessary.  More so given all the money that is being printed.

Two great pieces by the wonderful folks at PIMCO -

•  Hairy Lips Sink Ships by Bill Gross
  
• Saving Capitalistic Banking From Itself by Paul McCulley

(via Paul Kedrosky)

This day, last year, people were predicting the DJIA to hit 20,000.

Now I think we’d be lucky if we did not go into the 6,000s.

Check out the yields for inflation indexed bonds issued by the treasury.  We’re almost down to half of where we were at just a few months ago.

Look at the data above, and then look at the inflation data.

Even a quick look at the data shows that breakeven inflation that’s embedded in TIPS yields would be at least 1% per year. This effectively means that the market is literally burning through all the money that we are printing.

The data can be downloaded here: Inflation Data (source) and TIPS Yield Data (source).