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If you thought the bank bailout that started in late 2008 was long gone, you would be far from wrong. The special investigator for TARP, the government fund that was created in the wake of the financial crisis, released a report last week that said the government is still owed $133 billion from the fund. Worse, we’re probably never going to get all of our money back.
Ben Bernanke is playing chicken with the real economy. By most measures, the U.S. economy in the past few months seems to be improving. The unemployment rate has been falling. Manufacturing appears to be perking up. U.S. car companies are back in business. And home sales even rose in December.
Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney would save $3.4 million a year — roughly 85 times the total pre-tax income of the average American citizen — if the tax plan he advocates were enacted in the year that he is seeking to be President. In fact, Romney’s policies would not only shrink what he pays to the [...]
Never discount Wall Street’s ability to turn the most basic parts of life into profits. Mother nature is the latest money spinner for financial firms. Despite the recent Northeast snowstorm, the unseasonably warm winter, and in general a lack of snow, could turn into big profits for the banks, brokerages and insurance firms that deal [...]
You can’t have a strong economy without strong banks. That’s why President Bush’s and, later, President Obama’s first attempts to save the economy from a deep recession were focused around bank bailouts. And the fact that the banks have remained weak, despite the government’s efforts, is one of the major reasons the economic recovery has [...]
In most people’s minds inflation is up there with unemployment as one of the main ills you don’t want an economy to come down with. But in fact a growing number of economists are arguing that rising prices are exactly what we need to cure our the current economic maladies. It may not be the [...]
Companies are hiring again. That’s the good news. The bad news is those hires might not be coming fast enough.
There have been a number of phrases that have grown out of our current economic malaise. The housing bust. Black Swans. The Mancession. Financial Contagion. The growth recession. QE2. But above all else the phrase that most people seem to agree has capture best the essence of the post financial crisis economy is “The New [...]
A strange thing has happened as the debt crisis in Europe has gotten worse: The U.S. economy has, surprisingly, improved.
It may not seem possible, but the horrific housing market crash of the past few years has actually been worse than we previously thought.
