Panic and uncertainty – uncertainty and panic. The twin towers of turbulence that are causing all sorts of commotion in our financial markets. Sure there are real problems. But these two mischief makers are making things a lot worse than they need to be. So much so that we are seeing interest rates approaching zero. Read on for the story. Investor fear drives US Treasury yields to near zero Dec 7 06:50 PM US/Eastern The…
Category: Current Events
After All the Volatility And All The Promise – All You Get Is A Measly 6.4%
12,463 13,264 Recognize those numbers? I know that some of you do. And those do should be fatally disappointed with them. Why? Because they represent the opening and closing Dow Jones Industrial Average numbers for 2007. 2007 opened at 12,463 2007 closed at 13,264 A whopping 801 point increase for the year. An increase of 6.4%. For the entire year. (But don’t feel so bad – the S&P 500 posted an increase of only 3.5%…
Can You Afford to Lose Any MORE Ground?
This is the performance of your retirement account while you have been investing in the stock market over the last six months. Look familiar?  Take a closer look at the chart – over the last six months the market has been down – despite those huge peaks that you see. That means a negative ROI – and the fact that you probably lost money – and lost ground. Is this going to impact when you can…
Brace Yourselves
I have been staring is disbelief at an AP story this morning. Now I know that the AP is not up to the journalistic standards of accuracy as, say, the New York Times or the Washington Post. But the fact is their stuff gets widely distributed and widely read. The first line is the report was: “Consumers, battered by a steep downturn in housing and a severe credit crunch, slowed their spending growth in September…
Ok Ok We’re In a Recession Already
Now, What Are You Going to Do About It? It looks like the rest of the country is finally waking up to the fact that yes, we really ARE in a recession in the US. A recession that is being led by the decline in real estate values. How can that be, you say. Real estate, while a large and important part of the overall economy, does NOT have the power, by itself, to drive…
Housing Cools, Inflation’s Up. See I Told You So . . . .
Two short months ago I wrote about the unbelievable action that the Federal Reserve took to prop up our sagging stock market by injecting billions of dollars into the economy, and that it didn’t take a freshman econ whiz kid to tell that this would undoubtedly lead to an increase in the inflation rate. Strangely enough I found very few business reporters that even discussed the impact of the Fed’s foolhardy actions, and fewer still…