Post 344: Apple’s Story, Canada’s Blind Spot, Japan’s Dilemma

• Apple is a pretty impressive business founded by a very impressive entrepreneur.
  • But its share price is way ahead of the business i.e. expensive.
    • We take a look back.
• After many quarters of negative comparable store sales growth, Best Buy’s sales are actually accelerating.
  • Strongest growth in over four years.
• Hewlitt-Packard adjusted sales have now grown for six straight quarters.
  • And we take a look back.
• Canada’s method of calculating inflation doesn’t capture the soaring prices of housing.
  • But the Bank of Canada didn’t need a properly constructed inflation number to warn them about a brewing housing affordability crisis.
• In Financial Ructions:
  • A look at rising interest rates in Japan.
    • And how the Bank of Japan is caught between a rock and a hard place i.e. rising interest rates and higher inflation.
  • US jobs grow in September, although one source has them negative in three of the last four months.
    • And job openings continue to fall.
  • Canada has had two good labour force survey monthly jobs prints in a row.
    • And jobs in the private sector increased for the first time since June.
    • However, the payroll survey shows that jobs have shrunk 133,200 so far this year.
• In our book review of Where Keynes Went Wrong,
  • We see how Keynes gave politicians the intellectual cover they needed for their profligacy.
    • And Hayek didn’t think Keynes knew much about economics.
  • And we look at the tight relationship between government and Wall Street.
    • And how that  led to taxpayer dollars being used to make investors whole on their toxic investments.