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September 12, 2008
The Government Sponsored Entities (GSEs) bailout is now predicted to cost taxpayers between 50 - 300 billion, with Former Federal Reserve governor William Poole saying the 300 billion number was closer to reality.The stock market is loving the bailout of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, ..
September 12, 2008
It would be a very interesting position to be on the Bank of England's Monetary policy committee (MPC) at the moment. Driven by the monetarist policies of both New Labour and the Conservatives, the rule always seems to have been control inflation by raising interest rates. This basic concept seems ..
September 12, 2008
So it has been a week since the feds came in and took over Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. While it will obviously take some time to know the long term repercussions I wanted to look at some of the immediate reactions to the move.First let's look at the reaction from the media and the general public. ..
September 12, 2008
The number of new mortgages approved for people seeking to buy a home in the UK fell to just 33,000 in July, adding to fears of impending recession.Figures from the Bank of England (BoE) reveal that the number of mortgages approved dropped by 71 per cent year-on-year to the lowest recorded, as ..
September 11, 2008
I found it quite a struggle to decide which topic to write about in this week's article as there are a couple of things that have really made my blood boil, but I decided in the end to write about this so-called ‘recession’ that the media would have us believe is just around the corner. .
September 10, 2008
History has a habit of repeating itself. On Monday the 19th October 1987 Stock markets around the world crashed culminating in huge losses. The crises began in Honk Kong, then rippled through one time zone after another in one 24 hour period. This was remembered as the largest one day percentage ..
September 10, 2008
Gross domestic product (GDP) measures the income and output for the economy of a country. The world GDP has been calculated at $65.61 trillion by the CIA World Factbook (2007). Another comparative measurement of wealth is purchasing power parity (PPP). It is the relative values of two ..
September 08, 2008
Recession word itself enough to create a panic in the stomach of the whole world. If someone gets up and checks the empirical meaning of recession in the good lexicon, he or she will feel something disgusting about it; fear factor will dance in front of him or her. It looks like coming to hell just .
September 07, 2008
Sitting in Union Square, in the heart of San Francisco, you will find many languages spoken. People come here from all over the world to experience San Francisco, one of America's, if not the world's, best cities. They also come here to shop.If you walk into any of the stores outlining the ..
September 07, 2008
Improving production - Natural gas production increased by 2.3 percent from 2005 to 2006. Part of this increase reflects the restoration of Hurricane Katrina and Rita in 2005. Production in coastal regions expanded as drilling increased. Industry in 2006, a record number of drilling natural gas ..
September 03, 2008
Post Olympic Stress shows up in a lot of different ways and a lot of different places.Look around and you'll see it: the blank stares that won't be satisfied with anything BUT live Olympic action.People are on a quest - a quest to find something to fill that Post Olympic void.But what's harder to ..
September 03, 2008
We're at a critical point.Stocks plunged yesterday on announcements that GDP growth came in at 1.1% instead of the expected 2.4%. However, despite the miss the talking heads celebrated the fact that we're not in a recession since GDP growth was positive.I have to tell you, I'm beginning to wonder ..
September 03, 2008
Pop Quiz...What country needs to spend?$1.6 trillion in the next five years just to maintain its infrastructure's adequacy.$78 billion to $137 billion per year for the next 20 years to eleminate its backlog of bridges and highways.$15 billion per year to maintain its transit systems (improving them .
September 03, 2008
Bully for you, Patrick Byrne.The founder of Overstock.com has always been one of my favorite CEOs. For one thing, he comes across as some kind of superhuman. He's got a PHD in philosophy from Stanford. He's also a three-time cancer survivor, former professional boxer, and a black belt in Tae Kwon ..
September 03, 2008
Scott Almeida had a problem.Fresh out of jail and in need of some money, Scott needed to find a job quick. Florida's housing market was red hot in 2002, so he thought he'd shoot for a mortgage license. Scott liked shooting things-when the cops busted up his cocaine trafficking business, they'd also .
September 03, 2008
Hank Paulson is out of control.For those who know Paulson primarily as Secretary of the Treasury, his request for a blank check from Congress with which to bailout financial firms appears to be the Herculean act of a masterful financier operating at the height of his powers.Truly, Paulson's latest ..
September 03, 2008
Everyone is familiar with tax incentive checks, but do you really understand the purpose of these stipends that come from the federal government? They are not intended just as a tax refund but rather as a way to stimulate a depressed economy. The government provides the incentive payments in the ..
August 31, 2008
I know that this topic will touch a nerve for many people, as it deals with a sacred place, one's home. Nevertheless, home ownership and how we view it must be discussed as America's inner cities are being gentrified at an alarming rate, displacing a large section of our population. Now, I am not ..
August 30, 2008
At the turn of the twentieth century, Capitalism was the only economic model that ruled the world. The failure of the free market, as expressed by the Great Depression, gave birth to two of the world's most influential economic theorists of all time: John Meynard Keynes and Frederick Von Hayek.The ..
August 29, 2008
Tired of the rat race, fast food and feeling out of touch with your world? These days people are becoming more self reliant, depending on themselves for what they eat, what they wear and even how they light their homes and run their appliances. Here are ten reasons why people return to ..
August 28, 2008
Currently, the United States is in a recession and this means that cities are worried about providing services when their tax receipts are down. Many cities get a percentage of the sales tax revenues, but what happens when sales dry up? When recession hits the highest ticket non-essential items are .
August 28, 2008
No business leader interested in the challenge of globalisation can afford to ignore the work of Kenichi Ohmae, an acclaimed management strategist renowned for his work on globalisation and the borderless economy.Dubbed “Japan's only successful management guru" by the Financial Times, Ohmae ..
August 28, 2008
The EU27 population is projected to increase from 495 million on 1 January 2008 to 521 million in 2035, and thereafter gradually decline to 506 million in 2060. The annual number of births is projected to fall over the period 2008-2060, while at the same time the annual number of deaths is ..
August 27, 2008
More than seven moths ago, I wrote an article describing, up to the very last point, what would happen to this (our country the USA), if we continued spending “Billions" (by now Trillions) of dollars in a futile war that should had never been started. All for a country that is not our country .
August 25, 2008
The economy is clearly not in good shape. We may or may not currently be in a recession, and while conditions won't get nearly as bad as the Chicken Littles of the world would have us believe, they most certainly won't improve either. Well, dramatically, anyway.The economy has been under a ..
August 25, 2008
The economic development association of Denver has been instrumental in revitalizing downtown and turning the more degraded peripheral areas into an economic success story. Today the light rail relieves traffic downtown and in the surrounding area. The incredible work done in Denver is a testament ..
August 24, 2008
"When the economy gets tough it is always the small businesses that get things moving again, but let's not tie their hands behind their backs" stated one Free Market Economic Think Tank recently. Indeed, it would be hard to deny that our small business sector is the back bone of our economy. After ..
August 22, 2008
As we get to the nitty gritty of the financial world and the recent credit crunch, there is the question, of why we rely so much on oil to determine our economy and our quality of life.The UK for instance now has reduced oil production as reserves drop and are harder to get hold of, so they move ..
August 21, 2008
The mention of Europe brings to mind quaint streets filled with cabs, bicyclists, and pedestrians. It doesn't initially make you think of fuel protests, exorbitant fuel costs, and rising food costs. Don't Europeans walk everywhere?The United States is not the only country that has been experiencing .
August 21, 2008
This year the U.S. economy has had the largest drop in building permits, stocks have fallen to record highs and unemployment continues to rise. This current trend is driving more individuals and businesses towards debt settlement.The single most telling event is the decline in building permits ..
August 21, 2008
Conveyancing in London and the United Kingdom has started to feel the housing market crunch but The First Time Buyers’ Initiative (FTBI) was introduced to make more affordable homes available to first-time buyers. It is available throughout England from 23 regional HomeBuy agents. So what ..
August 21, 2008
It is obvious that The Western nations have an intense fear of Russia. This fear has been with them even before the Russian revolution. The Mongolian Hordes once swept through Western Europe and slaughtered millions before they were repulsed. The Second World War recreated history when the Russian ..
August 21, 2008
"Panics do not destroy capital; they merely reveal the extent to which it has been previously destroyed by its betrayal into hopelessly unproductive works". - John Stuart MillClients and prospective customers often ask, “Which way are mortgage rates going?", and “Is now a good time to ..
August 18, 2008
The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 is the new bill passed by the Congress and signed into law that has been explained as providing government help to homeowners facing foreclosure, but which really illustrates just how closely connected Congress is with financial and business interests. ..
August 18, 2008
The collapse of the housing market, despite impoverishing the middle class and wiping out trillions of dollars of home equity and turning suburbs into slums, will assuredly turn out to be a great profit-center for the wealthy. So many subdivided, built up resources just sitting empty throughout ..
August 15, 2008
With the economy shift the US has most of its work force employed in the service sector. This is because we are competing Globally and losing most of the time in manufacturing. There are lots of reasons we do not make nearly as much in this nation as we use too. And many reasons why there are fewer .
August 15, 2008
From time to time all of us have to tighten our belts. Sometimes we know why and others often remain a mystery. For those of us in the real world, we simply get by with less. The money does not go as far so we learn to make trade offs. We buy less expensive products or we cut back on the volume we ..
August 15, 2008
The price of gasoline has increased more than 150 percent in the last five years. In 2007, Americans paid on average $3 per gallon for regular unleaded. Today, many are struggling to pay the record setting $4 per gallon, which is why more people are riding buses and selling their sport utility ..
August 15, 2008
Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve criticized the government's response to the issues that arose from the mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's recent troubles. While he often supports his opinions with a laundry list of clauses, side notes and ..
August 14, 2008
"I'm in show business, why come to me?""War is show business, that's why we're here."- “Wag the Dog" (1997 film)The first week of August 2008, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had just announced record losses, and so had most reporting corporations. Unemployment was mounting, the foreclosure crisis .
August 12, 2008
There are three main heated debates involving energy right now including John McCain's Gasoline Tax Holiday, who is responsible for gasoline prices, and what effect offshore drilling and ANWR (the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve) can have on the United States. I've already covered the McCain ..
August 11, 2008
Are we all just hallucinating? Is the recession only in our minds? According to John McCain's key economic advisor, Phil Gramm (who incidentally was one of five people who co-sponsored the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which is thought to be to blame for allowing the Enron scandal to .
August 10, 2008
At the supermarket I noticed my favorite Doritos Salsa Verde returned to the lower retail price. It weighed 12.5 ounces. I swore the last time I bought it months ago, it was a heavier 14 ounces. Then I thought: What a clever, skillful, and almost sneaky way for the manufacturer to make more profits .
August 09, 2008
In the news today we read that financial institutions and banks will lose one trillion dollars because mortgage backed assets have lost their value. This year has seen a national downturn in the prices of houses in US and mortgage lenders in the UK have repossessed forty eight percent more ..
August 08, 2008
We've all seen the elaborate television segments which pummel us with data and figures surrounding the American economy. Almost as a reminder that this well oil machine is too vast to comprehend. Yet even with its machine-like characteristics, we tend to envision a living entity which can ..
August 07, 2008
Since the collapse of Bear Stearns just a couple weeks ago, Lehman Brothers has been anointed as the next US Investment Bank likely to collapse.Over the past few weeks rumors have circulated alleging that Lehman was facing the same liquidity issues that forced Bear to fall to under 3 dollars a ..
July 31, 2008
What does it take to have a free market? You need willing buyers and sellers, a supply of goods to be purchased with money or bartered for (I'll give you six ears of corn and a measure of flour for twelve eggs-that sort of thing) and an environment-a market-in which this can happen. What you do not .
July 31, 2008
When do we know we are in an economic recession? The indicators are based on a country's gross domestic product (GDP) falling over a six month period, or two successive GDP quarters. A recession can lead to an economic Depression, as was the case in the 1929 and 1930, but in recent history economic .
July 30, 2008
Nothing ever seems to happen without causing some good. For instance, there seems to be a little uptick in analyzing our thinking, as a result of wading through this financial crisis.Radicals are starting to say that simple cause and effect reasoning could have prevented the current financial ..
July 30, 2008
A new Government report has predicted that the current tightening of the mortgage market will last until 2010. Predictably, the brains behind the report have stated that the current situation has led to the drop in house prices, and will inevitably lead to more repossessions - thanks for stating ..
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