Sovereign wealth funds are now so large that they have passed the annual economic output of the United Kingdom, Germany or France. According to Global Insight, the value of the funds could pass US…
Inflation in Europe rose 3.6% in March, the highest rate in 16 years. In China, inflation moved up 8.1%. According to The Wall Street Journal, the Communist government’s target was 4.8%. Pretty big miss.…
According to Bloomberg "U.S. foreclosure filings jumped 57 percent and bank repossessions more than doubled in March from a year earlier as adjustable mortgages increased and more owners gave up their homes to lenders."…
Import prices surged in March and some of the price jumps are a record for modern trading history. Even the Labor Department’s reputation for under-reporting inflation statistics can’t mask the high inflation. Oil is…
The report from Business Roundtable’s first quarter "2008 CEO Economic Outlook Survey" has been released today. This was completed between March 10th and March 27th by 100 of the Roundtable’s 160 member CEOs. We…
There is plenty of cash available to be invested in the markets and financial institutions. It is simply too frightened to come out and play. According to Reuters "A steady move into cash is…
The World Bank says that food prices will stay above 2004 levels until 2015. Over the next two years they will rise from current levels. Wheat prices have almost tripled in a year. The…
It is spring on Wall St. With the warmer weather comes hope that the big financial crisis which seems to have engulfed everything in the world over the last three quarters is losing its…
The International Monetary Fund came late to the mortgage crisis, but they bought the worse news. The IMF said that "Total losses, including the securities tied to commercial real estate and loans to consumers…
Today’s March 18 minutes from the FOMC meeting, which already gave us a rate cut and comments about a weak economy, included comments that fed governors were more worried than they led on. The…
If Alan Greenspan was a visionary at any point in his life, those days are behind him. According to Reuters, the aging former Fed chairman says there is more than a 50% chance that…
A decade ago, when there were big problems in the financial markets a very small group of people came in for the fix. E. Gerald Corrigan, a man of massive girth and intellect, ran…
Sometimes it takes experts a quarter or two to catch up with the real world. The American Bankers Association reports that during the fourth quarter of last year consumer credit payments fell behind more…
Rally caps were out in force yesterday with the Dow moving up almost 400 points. How and why it did that in a day of predominantly bad news is hard to fathom. The FT…
Commentary by A.W. Bodine and C.J. Nagel, faculty at Concordia College–New YorkMarch 26, 2008 With world markets off 20%, Bear Stearns imploding and public companies having lost US$5 trillion in value, politicians and regulators…