United States

Consumer prices came down more than expected with the CPI (Consumer Price Index) falling 1.0% month-to-month. This s a large decline, but is entirely related to fall in the price of oil. Underlying core CPI excluding food and energy, down…

The tag line from the Obama campaign was "Change We Can Believe In." However, an increasing number of people are becoming skeptical as to whether Obama will actually change anything. I, for one, have always felt his cautious approach meant…

Why not? Everyone else is getting something. Aegon, a Dutch company, is trying the same maneuver that Genworth Financial and Hartford, two American companies, are trying -- it's buying a small depositary institution. This will give it…

The video below comes via the Daily Kos and YouTube.Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) has said that Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) needs to publicly apologize for his actions during the recent U.S. Presidential Campaign in order to retain his seat as…

I am listening to the Congressional hearings with Sheila Bair, Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke recounting what they have done to restore the economy with the $700 billion that Congress gave the Bush Administration. The hearing is pretty…

The headline story is that this is the largest month-to-month fall ever since monthly statistics began for this data series in 1947. But, as you can see from the chart below, all of this decline was due to food and energy. Therefore, the…

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…

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…

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.…