Rates are amazing because economic news is terrible. Today’s links explore just how terrible. Plus there’s a bTunes dedication to loan agents battling rebate recapture. So click play on James Brown’s The Big Payback and read up.

Awhile back I wrote that if Barry Ritholtz was a rapper, he’d be Gift of Gab from Blackalicious. His retort was that he’s all 3 Beastie Boys. I can dig that: the dude’s “got more stories than JD’s got Salinger.” So kicking off today with an inflation story originated on his blog—context for today’s PPI [...]

This great home price chart from VisualizingEconomics (via Barry Ritholtz) speaks for itself, but below chart is a description from VisualizingEconomics clarifying whether a home seller should be looking at inflation adjusted (real) versus not inflation adjusted (nominal) prices. Click for full size.

The National Association of Realtors reported today that existing homes sales were up 2.7% in January and up 5.3% from a year ago. Investors bought 23% of existing single family homes, condos, townhouses, and co-ops in January, and 32% of all existing home sales transactions were completed with all cash. NAR said the median existing [...]

There’s been lots of chatter about how the top dogs at HuffingtonPost will get rich from AOL’s $315m acquisition of the site, and how that trend may continue because all the content is sourced from bloggers for free. Top-dog financial blogger and money manager Barry Ritholtz has a great take on this model that’s followed [...]

A new year. Typically the time for a media technique as old as media: recapping last year or predicting this year. But instead of doing that today, below I’m re-posting The Day Journalism Died, a piece I wrote in 2006. It’s not about financial media, but it reminded me what consumer financial media is and [...]

A blog spat between TheBigPicture and ZeroHedge a few days ago is ancient history now, but seeing two heavyweights take shots at each other was rap battle-esque in its entertainment level. TheBigPicture author Ritholtz started it by asking, with his signature artisan curiousness, if ZeroHedge jumped the shark. ZeroHedge author Tyler Durden finished it, with [...]

Homes are most people’s largest investment so it’s not surprising NYT’s most read story the past 2 days is Housing Fades As A Means To Build Wealth. It cites 5 housing experts who all have similar bearish outlooks on housing. There will always be chatter about the demise of a certain asset class, so remember [...]

Saw this picture on Barry Ritholtz’s site which came originally from NYT. A useful diagram of Europe’s debt situation. According to NYT “Banks and governments in these five shaky economies owe each other many billions of euros (converted here to dollars) and have even larger debts to Britain, France and Germany. Arrow widths are proportional [...]

Anyone who’s got hardline opinions on the SEC’s case against Goldman Sachs should read The Big Picture’s “10 Things You Don’t Know (or were misinformed) About The GS Case.” As usual, Barry Ritholtz’s hardline opinions are better supported than most of the other chatter out there.