In a stagnant economy, there are no winners on Wall Street – only survivors. That goes double for Wall Street’s winners (and losers) coming out of the 11th-hour debt deal between Republicans and Democrats in Washington. While …
Wall Street
Middle Class Sees Biggest Employment Drop in Recession
Early on in the financial crisis there was talk of this finally being the Wall Street recession. Investment bankers, CEOs and other high-paid types would be thrown out of their jobs or see their paychecks cut. Manufacturing and …
Apple Does it Again: Why Companies Win While Economies Lose
As Washington continues to skate perilously close to the economic abyss, 3,000 miles away in Cupertino, California, this week Apple released its results for the second quarter. To no one’s surprise but to almost universal …
Banks Are Hurting? It’s All Relative
The latest out of Wall Street-land is a warning by analysts at Citibank that profits at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley (and to a lesser degree at other banks as well) will show a sharp contraction for the second quarter of …
High Potential in Low-Debt Stocks
Companies free from financial problems should enjoy even greater advantages over the next five years.
The White House and Jeff Immelt on Jobs: Compelling, Infuriating or Simply Irrelevant?
At the start of the week, Jeff Immelt, the CEO of GE and the head of President Obama’s task force on job creation, released an interim report on plans to boost employment in the U.S. The reactions have been relatively …
Why Do We Cheer for NBA Stars But Not for Bankers?
There was something dramatic and striking about the Dallas Mavericks’ victory over the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals on Sunday. No, it wasn’t the caliber of play – which was high – nor the sight of the vaunted Miami “Dream …
Tech Stocks: Should You Buy the Bubble?
How to find under-appreciated bargains in the midst of the latest hype over high-tech companies.
Markets Plunge Because of Greece, China, and the U.S. (Or so they say.)
Another day, another market plunge. Yesterday was notably sharp, with all major indices declining more than 2% and getting worse as the day wore on. The story du jour – and it is an axiom of market declines that there must be a …
Raj Gets Nailed. The Ratings Agencies Beat the Rap
So the Feds got their big fish. The takedown of Raj Rajaratnam for insider trading is going to give U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara plenty of momentum in using an old prosecutorial weapon to go after a new set of miscreants. Rajaratnam was fried by his own words, obtained by the kind of wiretap that the prosecutors use to go after Mafiosi, …
Keeping Us Safe from Poker
It’s been an interesting couple of days in the place where money and gambling intersects, otherwise known as Wall Street. Over the weekend, the Internet gambling sites PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker got taken down by Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which among other things covers …
Japan and the rising risks to the global recovery
Last month, I asked in this space if the global recovery was becoming a sure thing. Some economists had started to become buoyant about the world’s economic prospects and boosted their growth projections, but I had a few doubts. There seemed to be too many risks hanging about out there to be fully comfortable that we had finally …