It appears JP Morgan Chase is a vampire squid as well. JPMorgan will pay a $153 million fine to settle Securities and Exchange Commission charges that it misled investors in a mortgage bond deal just as the housing market was about to crack. The SEC alleges that JPMorgan sold a type of risky mortgage deal [...]
Time for more housing stimulus. The question is how. According to numbers released today by the National Association of Realtors, home sales fell 3.8% in May. They were down 15% from a year ago. Home prices were down as well, 5% lower than a year ago. And while 4% might not sound like a big [...]
The entire financial world was watching Athens today to see whether or not the Greek government would survive a no-confidence vote. Thankfully, it did. More importantly, the government now has to push a new slate of severe austerity measures through parliament next week to try to control its escalating debt. If the package gets rejected, [...]
Remember the days when one catch phrase could sum up our entire economy? In the 1970s, it was “stagflation,” the idea that inflation could be high even when economic growth was low. In the early 90s, the “jobless recovery,” a term coined during Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign, referred to the lingering recession that eventually ousted [...]
Remember when we used to talk about a V-shaped recovery. Yeah not so much. A new economic report commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which is meeting this week, predicts that at least 50 metro areas, or about one-in-seven cities, in this country won’t see a return to pre-recession employment levels until 2020. Among [...]
As the contest for the top job at the International Monetary Fund heats up in the wake of Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s embarrassing arrest, I’m considering nominating a new candidate: Myself. Am I qualified? Well, I haven’t managed a finance ministry or a central bank, and I barely recall taking calculus in high school. But I’ve got [...]
UPDATED 4:06PM 6/17/11 When it comes to solving America’s debt “problem,” what we usually hear about is spending cuts or tax increases. Few talk about cutting Social Security. The program is wildly popular. It’s also a huge contributor to the nation’s debt problem. That’s why today’s news, via the Wall Street Journal, that the AARP [...]
When the economy improves – and no matter how stagnant the recovery has been, 2010 was a better year than 2009 – you’d expect shoplifting incidents to decrease. The better off people are, the less incentive they have to steal. According to a new report from the National Retail Federation (NRF), however, “shrinkage” – the [...]
We all recall from our high school literature classes that the Greeks are especially adept at the art of the tragedy. We can see that expertise playing out in Athens today. The government of Prime Minister George Papandreou is fighting for its life as the nation teeters on the edge of default and descends into [...]
The economy doesn’t suck as much today as it did yesterday, apparently. How do we know this? Initial claims for unemployment fell by 16,000 to 414,000, according to the Labor Department. That other weak spot, housing, got some good news in that housing starts rose 3.5% and building permits rose 8.7% in May vs. April. [...]
