Global Market Commentary, Analysis and Investments
U.S. taxpayers have lost $133 billion from TARP — the abominable acronym inflicted on us by former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson — a new report out this morning shows.
We begin another week pulled in two directions: In one direction lie unresolved failures in policy… and the mayhem it has wrought in the financial system. In the other lie breakthroughs in energy and biotechnology.
[Read more...]By all accounts, the stock market should be in free fall after a holiday weekend in which “the cosmic Brink’s truck of free money went over a cliff,” as Vancouver veteran James Howard Kunstler put it.
Alas, so much for the latest euro-driven meltdown.
After the close in Europe on Friday, Standard & Poor’s downgraded nine European countries, including heretofore AAA-rated France. Then on Monday, as a coup de grace, it downgraded the eurozone rescue fund.
[Read more...]We had to wait five years. But it turns out our suspicion that the Federal Reserve is clueless, at best, is true. We know because we read it in The New York Times.
Welcome to another Friday the 13th… Where if things aren’t exactly scary, they’re definitely surreal.
The Fed performed its ritual year-opening document purge overnight… unveiling the transcripts from Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meetings in 2006.
[Read more...]A new year, yes. But a well-aged story: Generalized fear and loathing about Europe is fueling the safety trade.
The longest, most-boring financial crisis in history continues.
For laughs, let’s tote up the damage:
Last month, the dividend yields on American AAA corporations moved above the yield on 30-year Treasury bonds! That had never happened before.
Even after last week’s stock market rally (which pushed dividend yields lower), the stocks of America’s four AAA companies still yield about 3%, on average, which is not quite as high as the yield on 30-year Treasury bonds, but still much higher than the yield on every Treasury bond of 24 years or less.
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Taking Back Habeas Corpus
“I’m a little Ron Paulish,” declared bond king Bill Gross to CNBC.
Recall from yesterday’s 5 that in his monthly letter, Gross groused that near-zero interest rates would hamstring developed economies and even “give a rise to commodities and gold as store of value alternatives when there is little value left in paper.”
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