MarketWatch – Private-sector job gains hottest in a year: ADP Private-sector hiring in November was the hottest in a year, as 215,000 jobs were added, according to a report from Automatic Data Processing released Wednesday morning. The result blew past the consensus economist forecast, which had expected a November gain of 178,000 new private jobs,… Continue reading An Updated Look At ADP’s Accuracy
Business Insider – ATTORNEY GENERAL HOLDER: Wall Street Should Brace For Another Round Of Lawsuits Next Year The U.S. Justice Department plans to bring civil mortgage fraud cases against several financial institutions early in 2014, using as a template the case that ended last month in JPMorgan Chase & Co’s $13 billion settlement, U.S. Attorney… Continue reading Ringing In The New Year With Some Lawsuits
The Wall Street Journal – Congress Moves Closer to Budget Deal Congressional negotiators are nearing a small-scale budget agreement, possibly by the end of this week, but minefields remain as they work to sort through differences on revenue and spending matters, several congressional aides and lobbyists said. Aides to senior Democrats and Republicans said talks… Continue reading Budget Negotiations
The Wall Street Journal – Keep Emergency Fund in Cash or Invest? It’s a common rule of thumb: keep an emergency fund of three to six months’ worth of expenses in a savings account or other low-risk account. But like all rules of thumb, it doesn’t work for everybody. New research published recently in the… Continue reading Is This A Sign We Are Near A Top?
MoneyBeat (WSJ Blog) – Squaring Bitcoin’s Uncertain Future With Its Meteoric Price Rally There’s no surefire way to determine fundamental or fair value–notwithstanding the useful benchmarks for doing so in markets such as stocks–especially for something as untested as this. But the lesson of Tulip Mania is that when prices truly get into bubble territory,… Continue reading Finding A Fair Value For Bitcoin
FT Alphaville (FT Blog) – ISM vs the hard data Two recent notes emphasise that the impressive recent ISM manufacturing readings in the US are probably as much about expectations of future performance as about what has already happened. Aichi Amemiya of Nomura notes that historical divergences between the ISM and the “hard data” have… Continue reading ISM Meets Reality
Time – Icahn Files Apple Shareholder Proposal Veteran investor Carl Icahn is opening a new front in his quest to persuade Apple to part with more of its massive cash stockpile. Icahn believes the technology giant should share more of its wealth with stockholders. So to push Apple, he now wants stockholders to vote on… Continue reading The Most Important Investor In America?
The Wall Street Journal – Volcker Rule Won’t Allow Banks to Use ‘Portfolio Hedging’ In a defeat for Wall Street, the “Volcker rule” won’t allow banks to enter trades designed to protect against losses held in a broad portfolio of assets, according to people familiar with the rule. The practice, known as portfolio hedging, has… Continue reading The Volcker Rule
Bloomberg.com – Caroline Baum: Keynesians Revive a Depression Idea Larry Summers is talking about it. So is Paul Krugman. So are other economists. And everyone else is talking about the folks who are talking about it. The “it” is secular stagnation, which seems to be the New New Thing or the new new normal: a… Continue reading Keynesians & Stagnation
<Click on chart for larger image> The Wall Street Journal – Detroit’s Painful Pension Lesson This week’s legal decision on Detroit’s bankruptcy means Motown pensioners will take a hit, which is unfortunate if unavoidable. But there’s a lesson in this for government workers who have been told that defined-benefit pensions are safer than 401(k)-style defined-contribution… Continue reading Defined Benefit vs. Defined Contribution Plans
The Financial Times – An astonishing, but very British, recovery When George Osborne, the UK chancellor of the exchequer, stands up to deliver his Autumn Statement on Thursday, he will be able to talk about good economic news for the first time since 2010. The speed of recovery in the economy in the past six… Continue reading Recovery In The UK