Criticism Of US Stimulus Gets Out Of Hand
Loose confederacies often come apart under pressure. There are now divisions forming in the European Union based on whether the countries in that alliance should put larger and larger sums of money into the…
Economy
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Newest first · Page 390Holy Smoke, The Durable Goods Game Continues
Durable Goods for the month of February has come in with a massive surprise this morning. These might get washed over because of revisions, but these are much better on the surface than what…
Another Important Vote Against The Geithner Plan
Economist Joseph Stiglitz’s outspoken opposition to the Treasury’s plan to fund the purchase of toxic assets from banks may be only be one vote, but since he is a Nobel prize winner, it is an important…
Finding A Job Trumps MySpace
In a world where thousands of US workers lose their jobs everyday, chatting and sharing personal feelings with friends is getting run over by the need to find employment. According to online research firm…
The Princes Of Anarchy
The members of The American Society of Half-wits were out in force on the weekend Washington talk shows. The regular guests must have been off celebrating the holiday that falls just after the Vernal…
Leading Indicators Actually Lagging
The Conference Board has just released the “Leading Economic Indicators” for the month of February. While these arguably don’t really lead, there was another drop to -0.4% for February. Both components, the “coincident” and…
Confidence May Be Too Low For Fed To Help
The news that the Fed would buy as much as $300 billion in long-term Treasuries and up to $1.25 trillion of mortgage-backed securities issued by Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) caused the stock…
February PPI Tamer
We just got the Labor Department data on producer prices as a measurement of wholesale inflation. PPI came +0.1% on the nominal PPI and +0.2% on the core PPI reading of an ex-food and…
Bernanke’s Trouble Forecasting The Future
“It now appears likely that real gross domestic product (GDP) will not grow much, if at all, over the first half of 2008 and could even contract slightly. We expect economic activity to strengthen…
Upside of Recession: Lower Trade Deficit
There appears to be an upside of the recession. The “International Trade” data, which is the US Trade Deficit, is shrinking. The report for January 2009 came in at -$36.03 billion. The consensus estimates…
China Admits US Debt Is Losing Favor
Analysts who watch the interest rates that the US must pay on its debt should have felt a little shiver yesterday. The Chinese government, the largest holder of Treasuries, expressed some doubt about the turnaround of the American…
In The Blink Of An Eye, The Economy Got Better
The market rally over the last few days based its activity on just a few events, but the press and investors have grabbed them and are holding on for dear life. The first trigger…
Betting The US Government Won’t Pay Its Debts
It is one thing when someone can’t make a mortgage payment or a company cannot cover the interest on capital it borrowed to build a new factory. In a recession, those kinds of events…
Bernanke Says “If”
The market is enthusiastic about Ben Bernanke’s comments that the economy could begin to rebound later this year or early next. People using the comments to press the idea that good times are just…
Bernanke: Regulator of Last Resort?
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has been giving a speech this morning at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington D.C. about financial reform and systematic risk. While Bernanke talked about additional steps being…