The Financial Times – Lex: Gold: pinpointing the peak Investor manias are profitable for those who cash in their gains in good time. The problem is always to pinpoint the top. For gold, there are reasons to hope for more. The current price is still around 30 per cent below its January 1980 peak, adjusted… Continue reading Gold
Reuters – Deal Reached on US Debt Crisis; Downgrade Still a Worry President Barack Obama said on Sunday that Democrat and Republican leaders had reached an agreement to reduce the U.S. deficit and avoid default, but it was not clear if the spending cuts were deep enough to stave off a credit rating downgrade. The… Continue reading Will This Deal Prevent A Downgrade?
CNN – White House, congressional leaders reach debt deal Two days before the deadline for a possible U.S. government default, President Barack Obama and congressional leaders reached agreement Sunday on a legislative package that would extend the federal debt ceiling while cutting spending and guaranteeing further deficit-reduction steps. The proposed deal, which still requires congressional… Continue reading A Deal To Avoid Debtpocalypse?
(This was written and posted Friday afternoon, July 29) Bloomberg.com – Mortgage REITs Tumble on Financing Concern Real estate investment trusts that buy mortgage debt tumbled the most in more than a year on concern the markets that finance them will be roiled if the U.S. government defaults on its debt. A Bloomberg index of… Continue reading Did The Federal Reserve Tighten?
The Wall Street Journal – QE III Sailing In? Watch Factories for Signs Now, the effects of that “quantitative easing” program having worn off, and conditions look similarly rocky. Stocks aren’t yet so battered, but the debt-ceiling crisis has left a cloud hanging over them that may linger even if a deal is reached, as… Continue reading The Federal Reserve’s Talking Points
The Financial Times – Ratings blow for mortgage securities It’s the last thing players in America’s fragile mortgage debt market needed. Plagued by macroeconomic uncertainty, rising default rates and apprehension over the quality of some new deals, they now have to contend with a ruckus over ratings. Standard & Poor’s added to the headaches of… Continue reading More On The Rating Agencies
The Telegraph (UK) – Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: America is merely wounded, Europe risks death We have a glimmer of hope. The key indicators of the US money supply are at last firing on all cylinders, a dramatic turn for the better that would normally signal recovery or even a mini-boom within the next six to 12… Continue reading Comparing Europe And The U.S.
The New York Times – Floyd Norris: Usual Growth Leaders Absent From Recovery Since the recession officially ended in June 2009, the number of government jobs has fallen 2.2 percent. In no other recovery since World War II has there been a decline over a similar period. In recoveries before 1990, construction employment was always… Continue reading The Current Recovery
The Wall Street Journal – Sea Change in Map of Global Risk With Crises Shaking Confidence in U.S. and Europe, Investors Turn to Debt of Emerging Lands As the fracas in Washington has shown, not even the U.S. government can be seen as completely risk free. And the Greece bailout, which is likely to leave… Continue reading The Changing Bond Market
h/t TBP
The Wall Street Journal – Little to Smile About With Growth Outlook Already, the sunset of stimulus programs, along with cutbacks by state and local governments, is a drag on GDP. Government spending cuts clipped about 1.2 percentage points from GDP growth in the first half of 2011, according to Goldman Sachs, and the pace… Continue reading Market Capitalization As A Percentage Of GDP