Over the past few days, the U.S. has been in the world’s crosshairs. Political bickering in Washington produced a debt agreement widely criticized as insufficient and incomplete. Standard & Poor’s downgraded America’s credit rating, raising concerns about the health of the world’s most important economy. Slow growth in the U.S. is threatening the entire global [...]
Updated Aug. 9, 9pm EDT The Federal Reserve’s much awaited statement following its August meeting offered some solace to jittery investors. The FOMC said it would likely keep interest rates steady for the next two years, which bolstered the market after an initial negative reaction. But it committed nothing in the way of new funding [...]
Will Ben Bernanke ride to the rescue? And how? In recent months the Federal Reserve Chairman has given the impression that he and the other policy members on the Fed’s board have no plans to launch any new stimulus efforts. But the question now is whether the market gyrations, including a 600 point drop in [...]
Updated Aug. 9, 8pm EDT In 2008, as Lehman Brothers collapsed, stocks melted down, Wall Street buckled and finance and trade froze from Tokyo to Chicago, governments and central banks across the world stepped in to save the day. Yes, the Great Recession was terrible, the worst economic downturn since the 1930s, but it [...]
I’ve argued that U.S. borrowing rates will continue sitting pretty, despite the cascade of debt downgrades this country appears to have in store. That’s because when it comes to investments considered to be “safe havens,” there are few other places global investors can go. But here’s another reason looming downgrades aren’t likely to rock the [...]
Having Standard & Poor’s downgrade the creditworthiness of the U.S., and warn the country about further downgrades, is a little like having the Catholic Church lecture Scout leaders on the proper behavior toward boys. The moral authority seems to be wanting. S&P, you may recall, is one of the ratings agencies (the others being Moody’s [...]
Standard & Poor’s decision to strip the U.S. of its triple-A credit rating, whether we agree with it or not, signals a turning point for the entire global economy. Because of the unique role the U.S. plays in the world economy, a downgrade of the U.S. isn’t anything like a downgrade of Greece or Spain. [...]
Here’s the bad news about today’s jobs report: It proves once and for all that we are in a slow growth economy. And that’s worse news than you think. Next to recent headlines, of course, most people would take slow growth. For the past few weeks, more and more forecasters have been saying that the [...]
