Jul 31 2012

The engineering of bigger financial bubbles – corporate profits as a percent of GDP at record levels while unemployment is historically high and record number of Americans on transfer payments. Paying interest on excess reserves to banks for our own bailout funds.

The market is perched on the edge of a chair looking out for what the Federal Reserve and European Central Bank have to say.  The almighty Oz is the only game in town.  With the Fed, the expectation is of some sort of additional quantitative easing to prime the economy once again whereas the market […]

Jul 29 2012

Ph.D. in food stamps – the rise of food stamp usage among those with advanced degrees. Record number of households on food stamps.

t is hard to declare a recovery when a record 22.3 million households are now on food assistance.  The latest data shows that 46.5 million Americans are still relying on SNAP, the food assistance program, to get by each month.  Since this data lags, we see that in May we added 77,000 jobs but added […]

Jul 26 2012

Retirement means having to work in current economy – new survey shows 34 percent of workers in their 60s do not plan on retiring. The hunger for higher yields in a weak stock market.

The chase for yield is causing money to flow into unlikely places in the market.  The low performance market has taken a toll on retirement planning models for millions of Americans nearing retirement age.  Many of the models were built on the assumption that stock market gains would return 7 to 10 percent annual gains […]

Jul 23 2012

The hindrance of global debt – Spain accelerating to major bailouts and bond markets react. Eurozone stock markets in major decline.

It is always a sign of desperation to ban short selling.  Trying to put an artificial bottom usually backfires and we are seeing this hit in Spain.  The situation is unsustainable and has taken the headlines away from Greece.  Spain is a much bigger economy and they are deep in a recession with headline unemployment […]

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