Markets were in the dumps yesterday with more broken bones than a wrestling match at the retirement village. On Wall Street, the thirty blue chip names comprising the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 2.35%, or 200 points.
The World Bank downgrades its world economic forecast, A few lessons from the school of German-style hyperinflation, Will we be seeing you in Vancouver this year? And plenty more…
The greenback surges on an confidence from an unlikely ally, 686 billion reasons for Japan not to laugh at the U.S. dollar’s fate, Lessons from the political obituaries and plenty more…
Markets salute mounting unemployment figures, Resources and euros: just two alternatives for the Chinese dragon, What happens when rates go up again? And three other ticking time bombs…
Losses in equities worldwide top $25 trillion. What say ye, Obama?… Japan, eurozone enter recession, Gulf bourses continue to tumble… Turning fear into profit: A special volatility report, and plenty more…
Dow rallies 300 points ahead of Obamamania, Can the President Elect orchestrate a miraculous market Turnaround? Part one of your “chicken long” ideas and plenty more…
When the president of the United States visited this region almost a year ago, the city of Dubai closed down for the entire day. Locals and expats alike jokingly refer to this event of yore as “Bush Day,” a day when they stayed home from work and watched movies as the leader of the “free world” took a Big Bus tour of the city.
Let’s start at $500 billion. Why? That was the figure Paulson’s emergency elixir was thought to cost…as recently as Friday. In a characteristically misguided effort to restore calm to the markets, the federal government proposed a plan that involved purchasing a half trillion dollars of carcinogenic mortgage-backed assets.
Congratulations! If you are an American taxpayer, you now own a share of the risk held by two firms that own or guarantee around half the mortgages in the country, says Joel Bowman. And this at a time when home prices are plummeting, inventories are swelling, foreclosures have reached an all time record and unemployment skipped along to a five-year high of 6.1%, further weighing on demand for new digs.
Financial charts can generally look good or bad. But sometimes, one comes along that is downright ugly. The Rude Awakening’s Joel Bowman says the earnings chart for the Dow Jones Industrial Average index (.DJI) is particularly sore on the eyes. Earnings were negative in Q208, for the first time ever, giving the index a price-to-earnings ratio of nil. Such losses will heighten deflationary fears, encouraging the government to crank up its inflationary policy. More from Joel…