credit-bubble
The Lost Decade Ahead
“The worst is behind for the economy, and we’re on the mend,” was the quote of the week, and it came from David Katz, chief investment officer of Matrix Asset Advisors. (Katz was interviewed for a piece on Bloomberg.com this morning.) This wonderful summation regarding the state of the economy came on the heels of [...]
Conventional Idiocy Takes Hold Again
It’s been another stellar week on Wall Street. Good news came from the housing front (prices rose for the first time in almost three years) and the labor market (the number of continuing jobless claims fell to the lowest level since the middle of April). And the profits reported by many large tech firms [...]
Investors Turn a Blind Eye to Commercial Real Estate Troubles
The Dow passes the 9,000 mark for the first time since January this week. The stock market’s big rally was fueled by optimistic Investors who are now firm in the belief that the worst financial crisis in 70 years is finally over and the recession that it spawned will soon fade away. The report of [...]
Goldman Thrives while CIT Dives
There were some big stories in the bizarre world of finance this week, and decent profit reports from some of America’s largest companies. The good news about earnings helped promote a sense of calm, as thoughts about last year’s financial crisis faded into distant memory. I will focus today on two developments that I [...]
The Debt Bomb Boogie
Yes, this country’s financial situation is abysmal. The federal deficit is set to hit $1.7 trillion for the 2009 fiscal year, hovering around 13 percent of GDP. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicts that the total federal budget could reach $13 trillion by the fall of 2010. The NY Times reported that the CBO puts [...]
Financial Regulation’s New Drapes
Not many in this country saw the financial crisis coming. Those who did were tarred as foolish and behind the times. Millions of Americans were becoming obscenely rich just by breathing as the credit and housing bubbles grew to monstrous proportions. Why question a good thing? That seemed to be the predominant refrain of the [...]
Watch Out for the Big Bad Fed
While the Iranian theocracy cracked down on mass dissent after they rigged the latest presidential election, the Obama administration announced major plans to revamp the regulatory architecture of the financial services industry. It seems as if the developments in Iran greatly overshadowed the American public’s interest in how the financial markets will operate in the [...]
What the Financial Pundits are Missing
As the stock market reaches positive territory for the year, and the pundits who were teetering on the ledges of their over-priced office suites scream for joy that the worst is over, the very real problems that face the U.S. economy have not gone away – they are just being ignored.
I found several useful articles [...]
Consumers High on Hope
Consumers are high on hope, choosing the drug peddled by politicians, mall operators and bankrupt car makers, over the dismal news coming from the housing and job markets. Consumer sentiment, the lifeblood of the American economy, climbed last month to the highest level since last year. The faint glimmers of good news in some areas [...]
Federal Budget Deficit Kills Spring Fever
Spring is finally here after a long, frightfully cold winter. And with it comes the delusions induced by spring fever. Both the Obama administration and investors are stricken with the heady optimism associated with this illness, classifying the trickles of less than horrible economic data as green shoots that will bring America out of the [...]
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