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Browsing Category
Economy
News from 1930: Closing of Bank of United States
The closing of the Bank of the United States could be considered the event during the Great Depression that was most akin for the U.S. to the collapse of Lehman Brothers last year. The event occurred on 12 December 1930 – so 79 years…
Greece risks financial Armageddon while Ireland makes cuts
The Irish government announced draconian spending cuts of 6 billion Euros in order to stave off a debt crisis in the worst modern-day downturn in the nation’s history. Even so, Irish government bond yields have been rising relative to…
John Mauldin: Thoughts on the Statistical Recovery
Below is the latest from John Mauldin via his weekly newsletter. John expects a double dip recession as I do. Here he talks about what I call structurally high private sector unemployment i.e. unemployment in the private sector that cannot…
Bernie Madoff is seen as a ‘godfather’ to fellow inmates
Today is the first anniversary of Bernie Madoff's scam of the century which defrauded investors out of tens of billions. The former fund manager and head of NASDAQ who ran the world's largest ever financial fraud seems to be a hit in prison…
Who’s spending more this holiday season?
Yesterday, I linked out to a Gallup poll which detailed self-reported average daily spending by income bracket. The poll showed wealthy Americans reporting a 14% fall in spend in November while middle- and lower-income Americans…
News from 1930: “Playing politics at the expense of human misery”
This comes from the Blog News from 1930 which tells us what happened on this day in 1930 according to the Wall Street Journal: Pres. Hoover criticizes wide variety of extensive relief measures introduced in Congress as “playing politics…
Chinese tariffs of up to 25 percent on Russian and American steel
This comes via Reuters: China's announcement on Thursday it would slap punitive tariffs on a type of electrical steel used in transformers is likely to hurt exports from leading U.S. producers AK Steel and ATI Allegheny Ludlum. The…
Seasonally-adjusted claims below 500,000 for third week
The weekly jobless claims figure came in at 474,000. That is up 17,000 from the previous week. Revisions of the two prior weeks put the net surge at 18,000. The 4-week average is 473,750. All numbers are seasonally-adjusted. This latest…
A reminder about eminent domain and government power
Last week after the Thanksgiving holidays, the Supreme Court started to hear oral arguments in Stop the Beach Renourishment v. Florida Dep't of Environmental Protection, a case of eminent domain. This is the biggest case since the…
The TARP slush fund debate
Paul Krugman and Bruce Bartlett debated on PBS whether President Obama should divert money from the TARP program to a jobs program to combat high unemployment (Hat tip Mark Thoma). Here is the video and a transcript of part of the…