Bloomberg.com – Toxic’ Orders Can Predict Likelihood of Stock Market Crashes, Study Says A formula for measuring how fast the best-informed traders increase their share of market volume may help regulators prevent crashes such as the May 6 plunge, according to a study from researchers at hedge fund Tudor Investment Corp. and Cornell University. The… Continue reading Predicting The Next Flash Crash
Bloomberg.com – Goldman Sachs Losing Fixed-Income Trading Edge as Risk Falls Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is losing its edge in fixed-income trading, the firm’s biggest business and the one that led to record earnings last year. The company’s share of fixed-income trading revenue at eight of the largest U.S. and European banks slipped to 19… Continue reading Goldman: God’s Work Is Less Profitable These Days
A Barry White-style ballad about central banking policy.
Earlier this month we noted the stock market gains that occur on days the Federal Reserve conducts Permanent Open Market Operations or “POMO”. Let us update these findings. The table and chart below continues to confirm what Goldman said on October 22. In our version we start on August 27, the day of Bernanke’s Jackson… Continue reading POMO Still Matters!
CnnMoney – No double-dip recession Commentary: Lakshman Achuthan and Anirvan Banerji are, respectively, co-founder and chief operating officer and co-founder and chief research officer of ECRI, the Economic Cycle Research Institute. The good news is that the much-feared double-dip recession is not going to happen.That is the message from leading business cycle indicators, which are… Continue reading Two Views On The Double Dip Recession
<Click on chart for larger image> <Click on chart for larger image> Center For Politics – Larry J. Sabato:The Crystal Ball’s Final Calls The Crystal Ball has operated within a very narrow range all year. When others were projecting GOP Senate gains of just +3-4, we were already at +6. Depending on the primary results… Continue reading Mid-Term Elections
America’s economy: Not by monetary policy alone Another dose of “quantitative easing” is necessary; but it will not, by itself, revive America’s economy ONE of the few people to come out of the economic crisis well is Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, America’s central bank. He won acclaim for his decision to pump… Continue reading QE2
<Click on chart for larger image> The Irish Times – Irish bond yields top 7% as deficit contagion fuels fears IRISH BOND yields reached a new peak above 7 per cent yesterday as contagion from Portugal and Greece added to investors’ fears that the Government’s plans to cut €15 billion from the Irish economy would… Continue reading Ireland
Bloomberg.com – John Hathaway: Gold Will Outlive Dollar Once Slaughter Comes The world’s monetary system is in the process of melting down. We have entered the endgame for the dollar as the dominant reserve currency, but most investors and policy makers are unaware of the implications. The only questions are how long the denouement of… Continue reading Gold
The New York Times – Cheap Debt Fuels Private Equity Revival The Blackstone Group and the Carlyle Group demonstrated on Thursday that the private equity industry is thriving amid a weak economy — but they did so in nearly opposing ways. Blackstone, in reporting a 23 percent jump in third-quarter earnings, said it has found… Continue reading Private Equity
The Financial Times – Nouriel Roubini: A presidency heading for a fiscal train wreck What has been the fiscal performance of President Barack Obama? He inherited the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, as well as a budget deficit that – after much needed bail-outs and a series of reckless tax cuts – was… Continue reading Roubini
The Economist – Bank failures in America: More but merrier More lenders are going bust but most of them are minnows THE sound of banks being shuttered hasn’t been this loud since the savings-and-loan crisis in the early 1990s. Any day now the number of failures in America this year will surpass last year’s total… Continue reading Banks