Rising home foreclosures was of course the main catalyst of the financial crisis. But credit card debt was also a big problem for the banks as more people lost their jobs and were unable to pay back all the boats and xboxes they had rung up on plastic. So the news a month or so ago that credit card delinquency rates were falling was …
It’s a long held mantra on Wall Street to buy straw hats in winter. The notion is that you should buy the shares of a company when no body wants them, or when things look their worst. Buy at the low. So based on that logic here’s the question: Is BP’s stock a buy? That’s the case that Felix Salmon makes on his Reuters blog:
Did the
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One of the worries as house prices began their now three-year plunge back in 2007 was the affect of falling values would have on budgets of cities and other local governments, which rely heavily on property taxes. Well it turns out, property tax revenue is far more resilient than people thought.
The strength of the property tax was the
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The Standard & Poors 500 vs. The CBOE Volatility Index
Volatility Mad Dow disease is back, baby. The Dow Jones industrial average started the day with a bang, down 300 points. It then rose most of the day. The result: The Dow was down just 20 points by the end of the day. The Standard & Poors 500 was actually up slightly. What’s going …
Once again, the wisdom of crowds doesn’t look so smart. A few months ago the prevailing wisdom was that mortgage rates were headed up. Why? Well, for so many reasons. Government borrowing was going to push up interest rates. The economy was recovering. And of course, we were soon going to be hit by massive inflation (even though the …
Fixing the stock market, it appears, is not as easy as we thought. In the days after the May 6th so-called “flash crash” that sent the market down nearly 1000 points in about 15 minutes, it seemed that everyone agreed on one point: We need better stock market curbs. Halt stocks instead of exchanges and we would never have to worry about …
I usually ignore stories trying to predict stock market drops. Who really knows? Not me. But with stocks down more than 250 points today, Fortune’s article earlier this week by veteran writer Shawn Tully is looking very prescient:
Here’s how I see the odds. The chances are about one in three that we suffer a huge, wrenching correction in
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The vote to close debate on the financial reform bill in the Senate failed. All but two Republican Senators voted against the moving the bill to a final vote. That’s not much of a surprise. The surprise is that two Democrats voted against the bill. And a look at why Russ Feingold of campaign finance reform fame voted no should give you a …
The consumer price index, which measures inflation, was out this morning and it was down slightly in April. Here’s what Calculated Risk had to say:
The disinflationary trend continues – and with all the slack in the system (especially the 9.9% unemployment rate), it is hard to see inflation picking up any time soon. The high unemployment
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Last week, it was big news when the four Wall Street firms (Goldman, Citi, Bank of America and JP Morgan) announced that they had gone the entire first quarter of 2010 without a down day on their trading desks. Look Mom, no losses. Some were skeptical. Called Wall Street a fixed game. Well turns out a perfect quarter is not such a great …
Andrew Cuomo really hasn’t had a good financial crisis. This is when prosecutors are supposed to shine. Just ask Spitzer. Cuomo came out swinging at the beginning of the financial crisis against Merrill and Bank of America on bonuses. He did a good job of calling Bank of America chief Ken Lewis last year on what most likely were lies in …
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