The World Economic Forum says that the United States is no longer the world’s most competitive economy. Switzerland has taken that role. The culprits for the weaker US position are its weakened financial markets and…
Hiring in the US may not be recovering, at least not soon, to the extent that it will help the economy in the fourth quarter. New data from Manpower shows a labor market in America…
The annual Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations report from the Congressional Research Service shows that the US is still by far the world’s leading arms merchant. A summary of the document in The…
The press and a number of economists believe that GDP will improve at the end of this year and that the improvement will accelerate into 2010 and 2011. Unemployment improvements will lag, but that…
Reuters: Richard Fuld defended his actions at Lehman. Reuters: Manpower says the outlook for hiring is US is weak. Reuters: Gold futures topped $1,000. Reuters: Kraft (KFT) will probably up its bid for Cadbury.
Markets in Asia were higher. The Nikkei rose .7% to 10,393. Toyota (TM) traded higher. The Hang Seng was up 1.5% to 20,941. The Shanghai Composite was higher by 1.7% to 2,930. At the…
Kraft (KFT) has made a $16.7 billion bid for Cadbury. The offer is about 30% above Cadbury’s current price. Not surprisingly, the offer is based on due diligence and financing, which may give Cadbury’s…
Reuters: Markets in Asia and Europe were mostly higher with many up over 1%. Cadbury rose on an offer from Kraft (KFT). Rio Tinto (RTP) rose. Reuters: Kraft (KFT) bid $16.7 billion for Cadbury.…
The finance ministers of the G-20 nations blame most of the collapse of the credit system and a portion of the failure of the global economy on the world’s largest banks. Whether that is…
It is the weekend, albeit a long three-day weekend for Labor Day. Earnings season is done, gone, bye-bye, but this coming week there are going to be some key events and key stocks to…
Tivo (TIVO) has moved further down the road in collecting huge penalities from Dish Network (DISH) and Echostar (SATS) for violating the little DVR company’s patents. The United States District Court, Eastern District of…
Facet Biotech Corporation (FACT) confirms that it is in receipt of Biogen Idec Inc.’s (BIIB) letter dated September 4, 2009 offering $14.50 per share for all of the outstanding shares of Facet. Facet shares…
Baker Hughes, Inc. (NYSE: BHI) issued its weekly rig counts and the counts are still going in the right direction overall if you like to see increased drilling activity. This is also showing up…
Cobalt International Energy Inc. has now filed to come public via an initial public offering. While terms were not disclosed, it said it would sell up to $1.15 billion worth of common stock. Shares…
Because this is a Friday ahead of a 3-day weekend and because this is Labor Day, the “volume spikes” and the relative trading will be more muted than most trading days. We have the…
Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) made an announcement that the troubled mortgage giant and GSE received notice yesterday from the New York Stock Exchange that it has regained compliance with the NYSE’s minimum price standard…
The unemployment and change in non-farm payrolls data for August is out, and despite some positive trends seen during the weekly data it just isn’t pretty. The change in nonfarm payrolls was -216,000 versus…
It is looking pretty thin in analyst calls ahead of the 3-day weekend, but these are some of the top research upgrades, downgrades, and initiations we have seen this Friday morning: Abercrombie & Fitch…
by Christopher Flavelle and Amanda Michel, ProPublica – September 3, 2009 Vice President Joe Biden marked the 200-day point of the stimulus package today with a speech at the Brookings Institution, where he spent…
What was being described by many economists just a few weeks ago as a robust recovery has become hardly any recovery at all. Economist Joseph Stiglitz recently said that improvement in global GDP may not…