The New York Times, it seems, can’t make up its mind on l’affaire Goldman and AIG. In the past week the Grey Lady has had dueling articles on whether Goldman would have or wouldn’t have lost billions if the giant insurer had failed back at the height of the financial crisis. On Saturday, Gretchen Morgenson wrote that [...]
So it was a humdinger, after all. Friday morning’s GDP report, which is the first stab at estimating growth in the just completed second quarter of 2010, also provides some significant revisions to prior quarter growth estimates. The latter news is perhaps bigger than the 2nd quarter’s 2.4% gain—a bit below the consensus expectation of [...]
While watching President Obama talk about the jobs on The View—he should do more of that stuff, he’s good at it— my other eye was taking in all the commentary on Wednesday’s durable goods report. The latest news on durable goods orders is not encouraging, not just because it shows a monthly decline for June [...]
Another post from Ruchika Tulshyan: Recession got you down? There’s a new way to reach a 1.3 billion-strong market. Rebrand your run-of-the-mill American product, launch a “luxury” ad campaign and sell it in China for 20 times what you sell it for in the U.S. Don’t trust me? Pabst Blue Ribbon did it. The PBR [...]
Amidst all the great earnings reports coming from U.S. companies this week there is disquieting talk of a real slowdown ahead in the economy. I was reminded of it Tuesday morning when PIMCO’s Mohamed El-Erian stated on Bloomberg TV that the indicators his firm watches most closely (and presumably trusts the most) show that “the [...]
It is remarkable how sentiment has turned around on Europe from where we were less than three months ago. Back then, the euro was tanking, fears were escalating that the continent would suffer a series of sovereign debt defaults, and financial contagion raged out of control. My how things have changed. The governments of Spain [...]
The stock market is defying doomsayers and showing a good bit of resiliency over the past week. True, it’s on low volume but the market is climbing nonetheless, rising 3.5% last week and then up about 1% on Monday. The Wall Street Journal even trumpeted the fact that the Dow is now in the black [...]
Time to say Goodbye to the Pay Czar Nearly a year and a half ago, Kenneth Feinberg was appointed to overseeing the pay of Wall Street executives and top officials of other companies that had to be bailed out in the financial crisis. Today is most likely his final day on the job of any [...]
Ruchika Tulshyan, who is interning at Time this summer, said some interesting things in this morning’s meeting. We asked her to write a blog post. Here it is. As the austerity debate rages on and squabbles erupt over every single point—should interest rates be raised? is stimulus spending good or bad?—there are lessons to be [...]
We all knew housing would sputter after the expiration of the federal home buyers’ tax credit. Of course, we also all hoped that the economy would be on steadier footing by then, and would itself provide some stability to the housing market. Well, unemployment is coming down—it’s now at 9.5%, compared to 10% in December—but [...]
