Yikes!
Financial Underwriting
Pizza Delicious Bought An Ad On Facebook. How’d They Do? : Planet Money : NPR
Those ads went viral. They got twice the usual number of click-thrus, on average. The ad showed up more than 700,000 times. Basically, everyone in New Orleans on Facebook saw it. Twice. Pizza Delicious got close to twenty times the number of Facebook fans they usually get in two days. The guys were stoked.
via Pizza Delicious Bought An Ad On Facebook. How’d They Do? : Planet Money : NPR.
I’ll cut to the chase so you don’t have to read or listen to the entire article. It didn’t work.
After a long night of asking every single customer where they found out about Pizza Delicious, not one said it was through Facebook.
Maybe at some point, the new Pizza Delicious fans will show up and buy some pizza. But social advertising is so new that nobody knows for sure. It’s still unproven, untested and largely unstudied.
Update –
I read the article first, then listened to the podcast. Listen to the podcast, it’s funnier than hell.
One of the scariest charts I’ve seen.
This is what you get when a society allows financial oligarchs to take over the economy and rape and pillage at will with zero repercussions.
Frontline’s Astonishing Whitewash of the Crisis « naked capitalism
The SEC Identifies Inadequate Disclosures in Sales of Structured Notes :: Investment Fraud Lawyer Blog
Structured notes are essentially bank bonds bundled with derivatives. Derivatives are contracts whose value is derived from stocks, bonds, currencies and commodities. Thus, structured notes are complex products with no pricing transparency.
Financial underwriting just got a whole lot more complicated.
Scary Charts – Labor Force Participation At Lowest Since 1984
The NFP report confirms the picture we have all known to grow and love – the people “entering” the labor force are temp workers, those with marginal job skills, and making the lowest wages. For everyone else: better luck elsewhere: the number of people not in the labor force has soared by 7.5 million since January 2007, and the average duration of unemployment is 40.8 weeks – essentially in line with last month’s record 40.9. Bottom line – if you are out of a job, you are out of a job unless you are willing to trade down to an entry level “temp-like” position with virtually no benefits or job security.
Click the link for the charts. In prior posts I’ve reproduced Scary Charts on my website. For these charts I’d like my readers to go to the source, especially if you have never read Zero Hedge.
I spend a lot of my “free” time catching up on the news. Saturday mornings are my favorite time to catch up on news, think, and reflect. We all need time to think deeply.
Scary Chart of the Day 10.21.11
Economist’s View: “First Look at US Pay Data, It’s Awful”
The median paycheck — half made more, half less — fell again in 2010, down 1.2 percent to $26,364. That works out to $507 a week, the lowest level, after adjusting for inflation, since 1999.
A VERY Scary Chart
I had gotten away from posting Scary Charts. There were just too many to pick from. But when I came across this graphic, well I just had to post it.Thought for Today – 09.18.11
New Economic Perspectives: William Black: Why Nobody Went to Jail During the Credit Crisis
We have known for centuries, that if you don’t underwrite loans, or if you don’t underwrite insurance, you’ll get something called “adverse selection”.
This interview answers the question of why nobody went to jail for our recent financial crisis.
For this underwriter, it’s all about prudent underwriting and strong internal controls.
Prescription Drug OD Deaths Up in Florida
Deaths in Florida involving prescription drugs in 2009 were four times as common as those related to illicit drugs, with alprazolam (Xanax) joining opioids among the top killers, the CDC reported.
From 2003 to 2009, the death rate in Florida from overdoses of prescription drugs increased 84.2%, from 7.3 to 13.4 per 100,000 population, according to data from the Florida Medical Examiners Commission analyzed by the CDC in the July 8 issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Time to tighten up your anxiety/depression underwriting guidelines? How about script checks at lower amounts? Can you differentiate between the applicant who wants to off himself versus plain vanilla anxiety?
Down 33% Since 2006 (no Scary Chart)
Case-Shiller: Current Slump in US Housing Market Worse Than Great Depression
No scary chart needed for this awful number.
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