Back in 2009, the Fed was harshly criticized for its inability to handle the looming economic crisis.  Some, like Senator Chris Dodd, were calling for a vast reduction in the poser of the Federal Reserve.  However, that has all changed.  “Far-reaching bank reform legislation has been approved on Capitol Hill that will be signed into [...]

The cost of the US bail out was 700 billion in the last year and overall the cost totals some 3.7 trillion of taxpayer dollars according to the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program.  He stated that: “the increase was due largely to the government’s pledges to supply capital to Fannie Mae [...]

Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke has written a manual on preventing deflation and has been implementing the steps contained therein.  “Entitled ‘Deflation: Making Sure It Doesn’t Happen Here’, it is a warfare manual for defeating economic slumps by use of extreme monetary stimulus once interest rates have dropped to zero, and implicitly once governments have [...]

Monthly sales of new homes has fallen and is now (on an annualized basis) at a record low.  “The Commerce Department said sales dropped a record 32.7 percent to a 300,000 unit annual rate, the lowest level since record keeping started in 1963, from a downwardly revised 446,000 units in April. The fall unwound two [...]

One author has reported that if the US economy experiences a precipitous drop, the trigger for such action could be some event seemingly unrelated event in a smaller European country.  “If the trouble starts — and it remains an “if” — the trigger may well be obscure to the concerns of most Americans: a missed [...]

One of my favorite columnists, Ed Wallace, explains in a recent article that America is a plutonomy, which CitiCorp defined in 2006 as: “A political economy, in which economic growth is powered and consumed mostly by a wealthy minority; as such, the economic growth of that society becomes dependent on the fortunes of that same [...]

As we know, the real job loss figures are worse than those that typically make the headlines in two ways.  Primarily, the numbers reported do not include those people who have jobs, but are way underemployed (the PhD. waiting tables) or those who have given up on looking for a job.  Second, there is a [...]

“Stock markets sank Thursday in Greece, Portugal and Spain amid worries over the European Union’s debt woes, with Greek customs and tax officials walking off the job in opposition to cutbacks aimed at digging the government out of a budget crisis that has shaken the entire EU.
The 48-hour Greek customs strike is expected to [...]

The idea of just sending the keys to your house or condo back to the lender would have been unthinkable just a year or so ago; now underwater owners are doing just that all over the country.  This is especially true once they lose any hope for lender assistance in making their payments and realize [...]

The best prognosticators I know of are at Elliott Wave.  I have referred to their work here many times.  If I have not made their views clear before, then I shall do so now.  From their January 14, 201 Theorist: “the fact that investors are still giddy – which is an apt word for today’s [...]