This I could not resist, so in full I give you:
Barack Obama and 'Profit and Earnings Ratios'
The other day, in talking about the declining stock market, President Obama said: (emphasis added)

"... what you're now seeing is profit and earning ratios are starting to get to the point where buying stocks is a potentially good deal if you've got a long-term perspective on it."

The problem with this statement is that, up until now, there has never been anything called a 'profit and earnings ratio.'

The president's defenders argue that he simply misspoke, and meant to refer to 'price-to-earnings ratios,' while Obama's detractors argue that this statement simply shows the president's inexperience and lack of knowledge about the stock market.

I think both of the explanations are wrong.

When President Obama spoke of 'profit and earnings ratios,' he wasn't misspeaking and he wasn't showing his ignorance of the market. Instead, he was inventing a new stock-market measurement, proving to all who will bother to listen that he is a trendsetter and all about 'change.'

Divide profit by earnings and what do you get? More proof that Barack Obama is the one.  read more »

The opinion piece in the Wall St Journal makes the statement.
The Money Quote "On the growth effects of a large expansion of government, the European social welfare states present a window on our potential future: standards of living permanently 30% lower than ours."

Read the whole thing here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123629969453946717.html

Looks like the mask is finally off.

Whooohooo
Chris Masse has a post up explaining that he will cover the US Elections through the lens of prediction markets.
Go and take a look:
http://www.midasoracle.org/2008/10/23/2008-us-electoral-map-prediction/

Going to be wild until the 4th on November.

First off, thanks to Chris Masse for the pointer. Go and visit his site, here is the link:
http://www.midasoracle.org/

Chris has a link to a post that compares the current Intrade probabilities with the the state of the polls.
Roughly the polls are showing from a 3.5% to 6 % lead to Obama with a 1.67% standard deviation, and Intrade has the respective contracts at McCain 15% and Obama 85%. How is this explained?
Read the post here: http://www.scsuscholars.com/2008/10/oversimplifying-intrade.html

The Money quote:  read more »

I found this graph on the following blog: http://www.clubforgrowth.org/2008/10/obama_vs_sp_500.php
After following a link from Instapundit.
Correlation is not causation, and there may well be more going on here than the picture shows.
BUT the point I want to make is the usefulness in getting a price information out of Prediction Markets.