The press has focused on mortgage-based CDOs and the huge write-offs that investment banks and commercial lending companies have had to take because of the subprime market falling apart. Morgan Stanley (MS) said, when…
Most of the data lining up now say that a recession has either begun or will early in 2008. Alan Greenspan thinks the economy may be headed for stagflation. The credit markets may get…
"Stagflation" is a strange word. It sounds like a description of a bad bachelor party. Yet, it may be returning to the US economy with a vengeance. If corporate earnings do indeed slow and…
This morning we saw the release of the Producer Price index, or wholesale inflation. Inflation is the key word today. The headline PPI number for November came in at +3.2%. The core-PPI after you…
The first thing the price of oil did yesterday, when the Fed said it would do more to help the overall economy, was to move up 5% to $94. There were some data that…
Please give us back those shares we sold yesterday after the Fed announced that it would only cut rates a quarter point. The Dow dropped 294 points. Some financial stocks like Citgroup (C) and…
The FOMC did just come out and issue its discount on interest rates today. We saw a 0.25% RATE CUT FED FUNDS and we saw a 0.25% RATE CUT ON THE DISCOUNT RATE. That…
Over that last six months, the Dow is up 3%. But, it has been a "no stock market growth" kind of period. GDP was fairly strong, but any strength in tech shares and consumer…
Toll Brothers (TOL) had another bad quarter. No one will be surprised. In the2007’s fiscal fourth quarter, the TOL generated a net loss of $81.8 million, or $0.52 per share diluted, compared to the…
Peter Orszag, Director of the Congressional Budget Office, gave a presentation today before the committee of the budget in the U.S. House of Representatives. The end result is that his presentation noted that the…
PIMCO’s Bill Gross is still one of the top bond fund managers in the U.S., if not the world. But his tome of words that comes out each month is starting to become a…
Two pieces of information out today would indicate that the overall US economy is not being hurt by the housing and fuel cost problems. According to Bloomberg, ADP says that companies in the U.S.…
According to Reuters "the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates by 100 basis points before June to help the housing market, Citigroup’s (C) chief economist, Lewis Alexander, said on Monday." Douglas A. McIntyre
Fred Smith, the long-times CEO of FedEx (FDX) thinks that the global recession can’t be avoided. The American economy is not growing, and its multinational companies won’t find enough business outside the US to…
Reuters is reporting that "Gross domestic product climbed at a revised 4.9 percent annual rate instead of 3.9 percent reported a month ago. It was the strongest quarterly growth rate since the third quarter…