I have been warning that the initial BEA estimate of 2Q GDP was going to be revised down considerably from the initial +2.4% growth rate to the +1.0% range by the third estimate on September 30th. Friday’s revised 2Q GDP estimate was posted as +1.6% -perfectly midway between what they said last month, and where [...]

Mixed signals from the Fed is causing bond and stock markets to interpret our economic prospects in a wildly different way.
The Fed is responsible for setting short term interest rates. Normally, that’s the main tool the Fed uses for having the economy speed up or slow down. But what do you do if short term interest [...]

The top story this week is the July employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics -the BLS.  Wall St expected 100,000 new private payroll jobs created but this would be offset by losses in jobs from census workers, and from state, local, and federal workers of around 165,000. So on the whole, the market [...]

The Fed is apparently considering cranking up the printing press again.. Next week, if the Fed announces they’re planning to begin quantitative easing again via their buying Treasuries, that will demonstrate 2 things:

Thing 1:  that you can sleep better knowing the Fed will spend whatever it takes to stop deflation. (tongue firmly in cheek)
Thing 2: [...]

What do you think it means when a Federal Reserve Governor (the St Louis Fed Governor – this week) publishes a statement indicating the Fed should begin buying US Treasuries to help stop deflation?   It’s a sign that the Fed sees a weakening economy, that deflation is here, and that they’re out of bullets. In 2009, when the Fed [...]

FINREG was signed into law by the President this week.                 
 
I’m sorry to say that FINREG recommends changes to 12b-1 fees that amount to nothing and offer no further protection of investors from this rip-off fee. 12b-1 fees are an ongoing charge by mutual funds to individual investors and are effectively an annuity payment to stock [...]

I have been working from the premise that once the federal government stimulus is removed, and once 2011 tax increases kick in, that our economy will enter the second leg of a recession -the double dip. In a broad sense, I arrive at this conclusion because I maintain that the pain of unwinding a quarter [...]

I won’t get into the gory details of economics, lest you skip reading these newsletters altogether. But consider please, the possibility that Keynes was wrong.
There are several widely followed schools of thought / philosophies in the field of economics (called the dismal science was good reason).  John Maynard Keynes is arguably the best known economist and [...]

On top of the $145B Greek emergency loan package, we now have another loan package worth 750B euro or roughly $970B to help stave-off a default from any of the PIIGS: Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain. 
 
Here’s how it breaks out:

The 15 eurozone countries (those countries that use the euro as their currency) other than [...]

The 1st quarter advance GDP report was released. Estimates were for 3.4% growth, but we saw 3.2% reported. 3.2% GDP growth is very respectable and likely one of the highest growth rates we’ll see in the next several years.
 
The report’s good news is consumers increased spending and helped propel economic growth last quarter. The bad [...]