There’s That Word Again
The Federal Reserve on a few separate occasions, as I noted late last week, has begun to peremptorily quash the growing use of the loaded word “bubble”. From academic papers to Fed speeches, US monetary policymakers want to make sure that investors and the public know they are watching for them though they have yet .. read more
Einstein, Bernanke and Shampoo
Mandates are tricky enough when it comes to interpretation of how to best and most efficiently achieve them. This is especially true when the act of fostering a mandate or moving a system toward the desired outcome is disruptive. The evaluation process of the mandate and the policies meant to push toward it inevitably descends .. read more
History Repeats Itself Because No One Was Listening The First Time
File these under Joe Calhoun’s “everything has already happened” theme. In doing research for last Friday’s RealClearMarkets column I happened to read the Republican Party Platform. I was mostly interested in the Gold Commission/hard money initiatives, but some of the other “planks” offered a very telling glimpse into the party’s positions: They [The Democratic .. read more
Trend Watcher – 2012 Expectations
Joseph A. Gomez, Sr. Investment Advisor Will 2012 be a repeat of “Sell in May and Go Away”? Collectively, strategists are expecting the S&P 500 to finish 2012 at 1,350, which would be a gain of over 7%. HSBC has a year-end 2012 price target of 1,190 (down 5+%). Goldman Sachs is expecting the S&P 500 .. read more
Weekly Economic And Market Review
Well, at least August is finally over. The S&P 500 lost a bit over 5% on the month but that doesn’t begin to tell the whole story. It was one of the most volatile months on record with 15 daily swings of more than 1%. S&P downgraded US debt to AA. The European debt situation .. read more
Weekly Economic and Market Review
“We don’t have a precise read on why this slower pace of growth is persisting.” Ben Bernanke at his press conference last week following the FOMC meeting. That was – by far – the most important statement to come out of the post FOMC press conference last week. Bernanke finally had to admit that he .. read more
How’s Bernanke Doing?
Ben Bernanke famously apologized to Milton Friedman saying: Regarding the Great Depression. You’re right, we did it. We’re very sorry. But thanks to you, we won’t do it again. Bernanke was referring to Friedman and Schwartz’ book “A Monetary History of the US”, in which they explained that the Great Depression, and the deflation that .. read more
What Credit Crunch?
I’ve blogged about this before here and here. There seems to be a disconnect between what the Fed and Treasury are telling us about credit conditions and the data that is compiled by the Fed about credit. Reuters has a story today about a study by Celent that comes to the conclusion that the credit .. read more
