The Huffington Post – Robo-Signing Continues On Key Land Records In North Carolina When banks were caught improperly signing off on foreclosure documents last fall, consumer advocates and property rights experts hoped the public outcry would force the companies to change their foreclosure processing systems to ensure that meaningful document reviews were conducted and wrongful… Continue reading Robo-Signing Continues …
Bloomberg.com – U.S. Dollar Unloved by Bond Managers Top-performing global bond fund managers are sticking with long-term bets against the U.S. dollar even as the currency has rallied more than 4 percent since the end of last month. From Bill Gross, who runs the $241 billion Pimco Total Return Fund (PTTRX), to Anthony Norris, whose… Continue reading The U.S. Dollar
Bloomberg.com – Tom Coburn: Here’s How We Can Solve U.S. Debt Crisis. Really Leaders in Washington will soon have to decide whether to pursue a serious deficit-reduction agreement before the 2012 elections. Last month, Standard & Poor’s cut the outlook on the U.S.’s long-term credit rating from stable to negative for the first time since… Continue reading The U.S. Debt Crisis
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CNBC – Outlook for S&P 500 and Economic Growth Cut: CNBC Survey The Federal Reserve will execute a gentle, staged exit strategy that won’t begin until the end of this year at the earliest and will put the Fed Funds rate just 50 basis points higher 13 months from now, according to the latest CNBC… Continue reading Does The Federal Reserve Talk To The Wrong People? – Part 2
Reuters – Consumer inflation fears up? Not a worry, SF Fed says Increasing consumer anxiety that prices are broadly on the rise should not trigger an inflation-fighting response from the U.S. Federal Reserve, according to research Monday from the San Francisco Fed. That’s because consumers are not particularly good at forecasting inflation, according to the… Continue reading Michigan Survey Says Inflation Fears On The Rise…So The Federal Reserve Will Now Ignore It
MarketWatch – QE2 was a bust It‘s cost $600 billion of your money. And it was supposed to rescue the economy. But has Ben Bernanke’s huge financial stimulus package, known as “Quantitative Easing 2,” actually worked as planned? QE2 is being wound down in the next few weeks. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has said it… Continue reading QE2 Is Not Even Over Yet, But The Results Are In
<Click on chart for larger image> The Wall Street Journal – T-Bills Stay Hot Despite Low Yield Add this to the list of the year’s hot investments alongside tech IPOs and precious metals: the lowly Treasury bill. Dwindling supply and rising demand are causing a squeeze in the market for three-month Treasury bills, considered among… Continue reading T-Bills & The Debt Ceiling
The Wall Street Journal – The Return of Stagflation Although many forces buffet the U.S. economy, the near-zero interest rate policy of the Federal Reserve is the prime contributor to the current bout with stagflation. Since 1945, most of the world has been on a dollar standard. Today, for emerging markets outside of Europe, the… Continue reading Stagflation
<Click on chart for larger image> The Wall Street Journal – Moody’s: Greek Default May Hit Europe Ratings A Greek debt restructuring could affect the credit ratings of other European sovereigns and would likely also lead to rating downgrades for Greek banks, Moody’s Investors Service said Tuesday. A default would trigger a downgrade for Greece,… Continue reading European Contagion
The Wall Street Journal – The Housing Headache Felt All Over Anyone playing down the importance of housing at this point in the business cycle is missing the point: Housing is the business cycle. That is how Edward Leamer, a University of California, Los Angeles, economist, put it in a 2007 paper, and his point… Continue reading Housing
FT Alphaville (FT Blog) – Terry Smith doesn’t like ETFs Uh oh. Terry Smith, City veteran, pugnacious former director of Collins Stewart and manager of the Fundsmith Equity Fund, has turned a critical eye onto one of our favourite subjects — exchange traded funds. And… it turns out… he doesn’t like what he sees…Now, the… Continue reading ETFs