Archive for the ‘economy’ Category
Thursday, August 4th, 2011
As our political leaders were patting themselves on the back for averting a crisis — albeit with both sides of the debate frustrated they didn’t get everything they wanted, even those who got almost everything — a strange thing was happening in the markets. Equity indexes continued to tank.
Perhaps some analysts and pundits breathed a big sigh of relief when equities rebounded after a huger sell-off on Wednesday to close higher. No relief was in sight today as the Dow dropped more than 500 points and the S&P 500 dropped 55 pushing both indexes into the red for 2011. (more…)
Tags: Congress, Dow Jones Industrial Average, economy
Posted in Debt ceiling, Markets, economy | No Comments »
Thursday, July 21st, 2011
Today is the one-year anniversary of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Funny as it only seemed like yesterday that we were trying to understand the various components of the massive legislation as Congress debated it.
There hasn’t been a piece of legislation so debated, maligned and blamed for negative consequences prior to most of the underlying elements of it going into affect since, well since the Obama Heath Care reform, the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or PPACA.
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Tags: bailout, CFTC, Financial Regulatory Reform
Posted in Credit crisis, Federal Reserve, Regulatory/actions, economy | No Comments »
Friday, June 24th, 2011
If you come to a fork in the road, take it. — Yogi Berra
Tags: dodd-frank, economy, Housing, regulation
Posted in economy | No Comments »
Thursday, June 23rd, 2011
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was subjected to journalists questions for the second time yesterday when he hosted the second post-FOMC press conference. As was expected going into the meeting, the Fed made no change to the Federal Funds rate or their plans to alter the second round of quantitative easing. This came as no surprise given the recent bout of bad economic numbers in nearly every sector.
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Tags: Ben Bernanke, Economic outlook, economy, Fed, Federal Reserve
Posted in economy | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 21st, 2011
The Big Bad Wolf got a lot of bad press in fairy tales — just look at the story of the Three Little Pigs. This guy has some lung capacity to go around blowing houses down. Nothing could stop him, until he came to the brick house built on a solid foundation. Based on what’s happening in the U.S. housing market over the last year, maybe we have our own big bad wolf at work. (more…)
Tags: economy, Housing
Posted in General, economy | No Comments »
Friday, June 3rd, 2011
Just as we began to have serious discussions regarding a Fed exit strategy, the economy gets hit with a series of very poor economic reports and we are hearing chatter about a double dip recession.
Today’s employment situation report showed growth in nonfarm payrolls of 54,000, about 120,000 fewer than were expected and that expectation was dropped this week due to other weak economic news. Namely Wednesday’s Institute For Supply Management’s (ISM) manufacturing index.
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Tags: Ben Bernanke, Economic outlook, Federal Reserve
Posted in Markets, Uncategorized, economy | 2 Comments »
Thursday, June 2nd, 2011
Amid a fresh wave of merger mania among the world’s exchanges, a new trend may be emerging that sees smaller as better. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, some entrepreneurs are hoping to do to stock offerings what local farmers’ markets do to grocery shopping. By creating a local stock market, Lancaster, Penn. is hoping to give companies the opportunity to raise money from local investors, rather than depending on institutionals and big banks with the creation of LanX. (more…)
Tags: exchanges, NYSE Euronext, stock exchanges
Posted in Markets, economy | No Comments »
Friday, May 20th, 2011
We sometimes get too busy to comment on some important issues as was the case with last month’s announcement that Standard & Poor’s revised its outlook on the long-term AAA rating of U.S. debt to negative from stable. It caused a stir especially from tea party folks and GOPers who only discovered the budget deficit recently.
What struck me most about the announcement was the source. Frankly, I can’t give much credence to any of the official ratings agencies who arguably are the most guilty entity in our current economic crisis. They are the ones that slapped AAA ratings on the toxic subprime assets behind the crisis and who had conflicts of interests with those that created those securities. Turns out their current analysis may not be much better. Jay Feuerstein talks about how they are off the mark in a recent op ed piece titled “S&P is dead wrong about U.S. debt.”
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Tags: bailout, Economic outlook, subprime
Posted in economy | 1 Comment »
Friday, April 29th, 2011
In pointing out the ongoing difficult with the economy, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke stressed high unemployment and foreclosure rates. The foreclosure rate comment is particularly disturbing in that the Fed had made a point with its various emergency liquidity actions during the crisis that returning a flow of credit to American families and businesses was a priority.
While the Fed made sure the banks got theirs, there has been no sign of diligence from the Fed on the rest. Why didn’t someone ask Ben specifically what have you done to “restore the flow of credit to American families and businesses” or more specifically, why didn’t you make the largesse you offered the banking sector conditioned on restoring that flow of credit.
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Tags: bailout, Ben Bernanke, Congress, Treasury, U.S. dollar
Posted in Federal Reserve, Housing, economy | No Comments »
Friday, April 29th, 2011
There seems to be some debate over whether Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke closed the door on additional quantitative easing or not during the Federal Reserve’s first ever press conference this week. The statement put out by the Fed prior to the press conference simply indicated that QE2 would be completed on schedule in June but added, “The Committee will regularly review the size and composition of its securities holdings in light of incoming information and is prepared to adjust those holdings as needed to best foster maximum employment and price stability.”
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Tags: Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve
Posted in Inflation, economy | No Comments »
