American consumers are finally opening up their wallets. Spending by consumers rose by 3.6% in the first three months of 2010, more than double the 1.6% rate of the fourth quarter. That’s the biggest gain in this gauge in three years. More importantly, it is a subtle but significant shift in the drivers of economic growth. The U.S. …
Investors large and small are watching a spectacular financial fire rage across Europe, with Greece headed for either all-out default or a painful restructuring of its debt, and fellow members of the European Union in earlier stages of their own crisis. (As of Tuesday afternoon, the leaders of the European Union were announcing their …
The Federal Reserve’s policy making committee still has its lasers focused on the weak points in this economic recovery. In the minutes of the open market committee meeting, released today, the Fed noted that the economy is improving but it also noted ongoing weakness in the labor market and the fact that bank lending continues to …
I thought about entitling this post, “Goldman Gets Blasted For Selling a ‘Sh-tty’ Deal,” a phrase borrowed from an internal Goldman Sachs email that Senator Carl Levin chose to cite in his questioning of current and former Goldman Sachs executives during Tuesday morning’s investigative hearings into the financial crisis. But then I …
Up on my office wall just beyond my computer screen I have a 100- year chart of the stock market. It’s none too elegant, having been cobbled together from a long-term chart of the Dow that Value Line offers for free on its website, some decades from other data sources and crude penciling in by me of missing months. (A friendly source …
The Securities & Exchange Commission on Friday sued investment bank Goldman Sachs for defrauding investors. It could severely damage Goldman’s reputation and a settlement, if it happens, could be very expensive.
The sheer spectacle of the U.S. Government charging Wall Street titan Goldman Sachs with civil fraud has been enough to …
Well, it happened. The Dow Jones finally closed above 11,000 a level it has not seen since the Fall of 2008. There weren’t much in the way fireworks to go along with the occasion and that could be because the rise was rather wimpy. The market closed with the Dow just 5.97 points above 11,000, a gain of a mere 8.62 points or 0.08%, hardly …
The stock market is the economy’s newest cheering section. It’s long been a manic-depressive member of that moody club known as the Leading Economic Indicators. But now it really seems to saying that being of sound mind, it is honestly upbeat. On Monday, the Dow rose to an 18-month high and closed just a hair below 11,000, at 10,973.55. …
We have an odd juxtaposition to consider today. The mortgage rate on conforming 30- year mortgages is around 5%, according to Bankrate.com. Meanwhile, at the sale of Greek seven-year notes yesterday the yield was set at 5.9%. I should note, too, that even at 5.9% (the coupon rate), investors were not rushing to buy. So what state of the …
Ever since Social Security came into existence in 1935 there has been vigorous debate about who should get it. On Thursday we were reminded that too many people are in line to receive it and not enough people are contributing. The result: The trust fund will pay out more this year than it takes in, a point that we were not supposed to …
Most students of the economy are focusing on the Fed’s planned wind down of monetary support, and that awful swamp known as the housing market. But increasingly I’m seeing smart souls question something that’s been off the table for a few years: inflation. Talking about inflation now is a bit like discussing fur fashions in August, but …
The stock market is rising on the healthcare news— the S&P 500 index gained 0.5% on Monday and the Dow industrials gained 0.4%. That’s a welcome relief because it wasn’t a given that stocks would react positively to a big, expensive government initiative. I don’t read this market rise as an endorsement of expanding federal …
