Despite the fact that Greece is in Europe (not here in the US) and has a very small economy, it matters a great deal what happens there in the coming days, weeks, and months (March, April, May). This is because there will likely be a common / repeated theme in how Europe manages Greece with [...]

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released data on February US unemployment.
The report showed initial claims remained at 9.7% (seasonally adjusted). This is known as the seasonally adjusted U3 rate. The BLS makes adjustments to the data every month to compensate for known annual pattern distortions in the population employment data. They do this to [...]

Here is a brief snapshot:

4q 2009 US GDP was revised up from +5.7% to +5.9%. That’s a welcome change from continual lowering of GDP data (though there is one more revision to come in another month). Unfortunately most of the gain -almost 4%- came from a tepid inventory rebuild. Because of how GDP is calculated, [...]

The Congressional Oversight Panel for the TARP program released information on its findings on the health of small banks. Almost 3000 small banks (there are about 8100 banks in the USA) will have to dramatically reduce the business they do with commercial real estate and build up their balance sheet. Small banks are facing a [...]

No, you are not imagining it — stock and bond market volatility has steadily increased over the past 2 decades as innovative financial products have been developed and implemented. This is contrary to the objectives of many new-fangled financial products, and it is certainly contrary to what banking system regulators believed was the case (is [...]

The Fed is due to end purchases of mortgage backed securities by the end of March. That will leave it with $1.25T worth of mortgage backed bonds. This extraordinary measure was taken to ensure mortgage rates remain low in order to make home purchasing easier (so we could reduce a mountain of housing inventory). We’ll [...]

We will read about many proposals to improve the global banking system in the coming months. By improve, I mean make the system less prone to systemic collapse (I don’t mean more profitable). We’ll see many concepts. Some will have merit. The final solution will doubtless be labeled Basel 3 and involve some of the [...]

Indulge this for a moment…  Let’s say you’re German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The entire European Economic Community is putting pressure on you to lead a bailout of Greece because they don’t want contagion and they know you’ve got the pocketbook to pull it off. But you’re a little tired of non-stop handing money over to the rest of [...]

As I watch US & international stock and bond markets move over the past few days and weeks, it is clear that markets are schizophrenic. The only news that propels stock markets is further bailouts. Case in point, this article is about whether and when Greece will be bailed out. So this is what it [...]

I am quoted in the Wall St Journal today, criticizing Target Date Funds as reckless.
The Wall St Journal has 2 articles on Target Date Funds in today’s paper. One is about how regulators are going to “crack down” on target date funds. To that I say well done. The horse has long since left the [...]