Panic is the New Black

It’s time to panic again. The first headline I saw this morning screamed “Bloody Friday,” it was in giant, bold blue letters on Marketwatch’s home page. The NY Times ran “Global Shares Plummet on Gloomy Data.” Blood and gloom? That’s no way to start a Friday. I thought those depressing headlines were meant for [...]

Bailout Wrapped in Chocolate

How do you get a quarrelsome, spoiled child to swallow a large, nasty pill? Wrap it in something delicious, like chocolate, and the screaming kid will wolf it, tasting only sweetness. Down will go the medicine and everyone will be happy. That’s what the Senate did with the financial bailout package today. They wrapped it [...]

Market Meets Reality

The stock market met reality yesterday – it did not go well. Record high oil prices and a warning about inflation form the Federal Reserve smacked sobriety into U.S. investors. Oil traded at $135 a barrel and the minutes from the Fed’s late April policy meeting implied that further interest rate cuts are unlikely [...]

Struggling Banks Get Foreign Investment

It seems as though xenophobia has an inverse relationship to the ebb and flow of the stock market. As stocks prices sink under the gathering economic gloom brought on by the collapsing housing bubble, paranoia  about sovereign wealth funds started to rise. These funds  are made up of the accumulated savings of  developing nations, such [...]

Computer Genius on Financial Rampage- by Greg Strid

It appears as if a 31-year-old rogue computer genius
named Jerome Kerveil is responsible for the staggering
$7.14 billion loss suffered by France’s once venerable
banking behemoth Societe Generale. Sheepish company
officials publicly disclosed the loss just this week to the
horror and dismay of shareholders and politicians.
Mr. Kerveil is thought to have circumvented the stately
bank’s less than impressive security [...]

The Dow Rocket- by Greg Strid

How about that stock market? In two days the Dow
Jones Industrial Average rocketed higher by over 500
points. On Wednesday alone it added 330 points, or 2.55
percent. That same wonderful day, the tech-heavy
Nasdaq rose by 3.18 percent, and the broader Standard
and Poor’s 500 index increased by 2.86 percent.
The catalyst for this explosive rise in prices [...]

The Fed to the Rescue!

Captain Ben, our rather green Federal Reserve Chairman, rode on his magnificent white pony named “Liquidity’ to rescue the panicking financiers on Wall Street, and, to be more accurate, the gambling dens, pits and crevices the world over. He valiantly slashed the discount rate – the rate charged by the Fed  to member banks for [...]

The End of Easy Money- by Greg Strid

The End of Easy Money
Stock markets around the world have been slapped
around the past few days, with the worst carnage
occurring today. The venerable Dow and S&P indexes
were each down by 2.3 percent, and the tech-laden
Nasdaq was off 1.8 percent. Losses of 2 percent were
the norm across continental Europe; the greatest pain
was experienced in Great Britain, [...]

The State of Housing- by Greg Strid

Housing starts clocked in at an annual rate of
1.474 million in May, down from 1.506 million
in April. And, this compares to a rate of 2.292
million at the peak of the construction boom in
January of 2006. That equates to a drop of 36%.
But, many in the investment community still
cling to the belief that the worst news [...]

Bears take cash…