Economy

You remember the furor in 2004 over the hackability of the Diebold voting machines? Well, that same worry is back in 2008 and apparently Homer Simpson has fallen prey. Watch the video. Hilarious. (hat tip Marshall Auerback). Related…

If you recall, I have been warning for a while now that hedge funds were going to take a beating. There are many progosticators out there including Nouriel Roubini which feel that many hedgie bankruptcies are on the way. Below is a…

PNC, down only 13% this year-to-date, very good for a bank stock, is acquiring beleaguered Ohio bank NCC for $5.5 billion. The price represents a huge discount to the prevailing market price before open today and NCC was down 34% in early…

I am hearing of heavy early voting in the U.S. presidential election. In particular, I have heard stories of heavy voting in Georgia, Colorado, Florida and North Carolina. Apparently, Colorado's exit polls show an enormous 20%+ advantage…

Jobless claims came in at 478,000 for the previous week, up from 463,000 the week before. But continuing claims were down 6,000 on the week to 3.720 million from 3.726 million.While the one-week continuing claims number is fine, all…

Bloomberg's Lisa Kassenaar and Christine Harper have written a good, long article about Goldman Sachs, how it dealt with crisis, and what led the venerated firm to the brink of collapse despite being the best run firm on Wall Street.…

Writedowns continued unabated despite the easing global credit markets. While we should see a bear market rally due to this easing, the ill effects of a global recession and new concerns in emerging markets and Asia will cause writedowns…

Yesterday, I made the case for us to be less concerned about the U.S. and even Western Europe, but to be very concerned about a slowdown in Asia. The reasons for this are simple: most analysts now understand the extent of problems in the…

Race has a way of inserting itself into almost everything in America. I have always found this troubling. In this particular Presidential election, it should be the economy here, the economy there, the economy everywhere. Yet, we also…

Yesterday, former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Republican, endorsed Democratic candidate Barack Obama for President despite long-standing support for John McCain. While I agree with the reasoning in many of the statements he…