Please bear with me as some issues are simplified for clarity and length. The American Economy has evolved a lot in the 234 years since the Declaration of Independence. We’ve been an agrarian economy. At times our economy has been driven by various commodities such as gold or steel; in fact, it is still widely [...]
Let me start by pointing out that today alone, the FDIC had takeover teams at 6 — yes, 6 — different banks in 3 different states. I think that Count Von Count would not be happy to keep track of this. Another number that would fail to please the Count but might make Dr. Evil [...]
It’s the Jobs, Stupid. You can’t swing your arms on the internet these days without hearing talk about jobs, and with good reason. We’ve got fewer job openings* and high unemployment, particularly high long term unemployment. It’s all about the jobs, and in many ways its about the fact that despite the law, people much [...]
I am glad to see someone with a high profile speaking out on this, and I sincerely hope other journalists start talking about it. Now, about that economy. The nicest thing I can say about the United States economy right now is that unemployment isn’t as bad as it is in much of Europe. Our [...]
Before we get to today’s news, let’s start with a bit of history and background on how banking and lending works. Long ago, the first bankers realized that the odds of everybody wanting their money at the same time were just astronomical. So if they were to lend some of that money out at interest, [...]
This is Your Economy: The ADP payroll report is out today. They’re the people who print paychecks, so they have a very good idea how many private sector jobs there are. And in May, they say there were 55,000 more private sector jobs. All the gains came from the “service” sector: jobs that often begin [...]
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission has requested the company of the world’s 3rd richest man next week. And then, when he declined their invitation, they sealed the deal with a subpoena. CNN helpfully points out “If you don’t know how a subpoena works, this one begins with capital letters, ‘YOU ARE HEREBY COMMANDED to appear [...]
Even though officially, the Great Recession is over and the economy is no longer contracting, most people believe the recession is still ongoing. They believe this because as the saying goes, “Things are tough all over.” The sad truth is that many of the jobs that were lost in the first decade of this century [...]
Normally, you start a jigsaw puzzle with the edge pieces. However, that’s really hard on this one because the fallout of the dysfunctional banking system that resulted in many of our economic issues is in the process of bringing down a foreign nation: Greece. Mr. Buffett is really good at these puzzles, so let’s let [...]
I know, I usually talk about housing over on my real estate site. Today there’s a bunch of conflicting information about whether nationwide, house values are going up or not. Prices fell 2.5% in Q4 of 2009 (not in Vegas, but nationwide), but rose in December, but only if you looked at it on a [...]
