In a way, it’s all the worse that it’s accurate, because you can only come up with something that technically-accurate-but-generally-misleading if you’re really, really trying to get away with something.

Did you know that on 9/11…

You know, I think that’s one of the things I can least forgive him for. That he turned a day of other peoples’ tragedies – tragedies he made worse – into something not much above a punchline.

In response to rwcole @ 71

If Bush inhaled nose candy but doesn’t anymore (heh heh) but has knowledge of nose candy, we should arrest him.

More life imitating art (Minority Report).

Soon, Uncle Sam will be able to arrest you for bad thoughts, and render you to a black hole in some third world county to make sure that you’re not a terrorist.

Bob in HI

Looks like a booby trapped house killed 6 today.

-G

From RGE mon:

http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog…..adcomments

@ alexcanuck

Index composition and methodology are proprietary to those who compile and publish the index.

From the Wikipedia on weighting of stock indexes. All the terms are defined in the wiki through links if you click through:

“An index may also be classified according to the method used to determine its price. In a Price-weighted index such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the NYSE ARCA Tech 100 Index, the price of each component stock is the only consideration when determining the value of the index. Thus, price movement of even a single security will heavily influence the value of the index even though the dollar shift is less significant in a relatively highly valued issue, and moreover ignoring the relative size of the company as a whole. In contrast, a market-value weighted or capitalization-weighted index such as the Hang Seng Index factors in the size of the company. Thus, a relatively small shift in the price of a large company will heavily influence the value of the index. In a market-share weighted index, price is weighted relative to the number of shares, rather than their total value.

Traditionally, capitalization- or share-weighted indexes all had a full weighting i.e. all outstanding shares were included. Recently, many of them have changed to a float-adjusted weighting which helps indexing.”

It has occurred to me, perhaps unjustly, that one reason why Murdoch might want to own the Wall Street Journal is so that he could do to the Dow Jones indexes what he has done to news at FOX – distort reality to bend perception to his masters’ political advantage. Because the methodologies are proprietary, he could massively distort public perceptions by changing the methodology. As so many derivatives are based on the indices, there may be huge amounts of money at stake, making manipulation very tempting for someone with the power and inclination to do great evil.
Written by London Banker on 2008-01-09 09:50:59

London Banker: thanks for your thoughtful comments here. You set a standard for deep and intelligent commentary on this blog. Best Nouriel
Written by Nouriel on 2008-01-09 10:07:31