November 2008

A reader has recently corrected a claim I made on a recent blog entry regarding GE Capital. I would like to bring this error to your attention and make a few comments. The first statement is actually not correct. Looking at the FDIC…

In a surprising move, the Bush Administration has decided not to seek the $350 billion still to be used under the TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program). Instead, they will allow Barack Obama's Administration to distribute the monies as they…

Because I was out of commission pretty much all day on Friday, I haven't been able to crunch the U.S. retail sales numbers until now. But, let me do a recap today and breakdown what these numbers might mean for the U.S. economy. The…

Hank Paulson may have created a monster. He has recently said that he does not want to use the TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) to buy dodgy assets as he originally billed the U.S. bailout measure. Instead, he wants to inject cash…

This chart and the commentary both come from FT Alphaville: A look at the Fed's balance sheet currently will tell you it's very much in the business of supporting liquidity/prices in assets other than Treasuries. The graph below is a…

Here in Washington, DC, we are preparing for the G-20 summit, the largest gathering of foreign leaders in this own since the 50th anniversary of NATO in 1999. The event has been billed as a latter-day Bretton Woods, a forum to reform the…

516,000. That's the number of people who filed for employment claims this past week. This is the highest number we have seen since September 2001, just after 9/11. The last time we saw claims over 500,000 before that was July 1992.…

Hank Paulson knows he has two months left until he leaves Washington. Therefore, he must feel he needs to pass out as much free cash to his friends in banking and finance before he leaves town. Or, at least so it seems. The latest story I…

I have been doing these round-ups rather sporadically now, but the news flow is still considerable. In fact, the news flow is so much that I have off-loaded my links onto a feed which you can access here.The main story I am following is the…