Poor Barack. His whole presidency rests on getting this bailout thing right. If he does, he’ll be a hero. If he doesn’t, the economy will go into a Japan-like slump and he’ll spend his entire time in office dealing with people looking for handouts – zombie banks, comatose corporations, and desperate households.
A boom is coming, says Ted Peroulakis. Unfortunately, it’s a boom in inflation. It looks increasingly like the Fed will have to print its way out of this economic crisis. And the huge national debt burden will need to be inflated away. Ted says investors can protect themselves against this trend by holding the ultimate currency: gold.
While the rest of the world is grappling with the global slowdown, China is figuring out ways to exploit it.
President Barack Obama’s $825 billion stimulus plan heads to the floor of the House of Representatives this week, with House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, saying many in his party will vote against the package unless significant changes are made.
A significant piece of legislation that is part of President Obama’s stimulus package could open parts of the U.S. to new high-speed Internet services – giving local economies a boost. If so, we’ve identified one company that investors should consider buying in anticipation of a key piece of legislation that was passed last week.
President Obama’s economic-stimulus package is another campaign promise likely to become a fiscal pipedream – giving a setback to renewable-energy investors. The touted infrastructure build-out intended to create new green industries that was part of the Obama plan could now be the first casualty of close scrutiny in the corridors of power, both on Capitol Hill and Main Street.
Everyone has been dumping stocks for the last year and retreating to the relative safety of Treasury notes. But where will we invest when that ride is over? We may soon find out.
Recently I took my girlfriend’s son to buy a large screen, flat panel TV so he could play his computer games with life size characters. The deal was if he saved half of the cost his mother and I would make up the other half. If you’re new to this computer game thing, it’s visual crack for these kids.
Off we went to the store where he had scouted out the best price on the unit he wanted. Wow, these things are expensive. As he stared in wonder at this digital behemoth, the sales person dutifully came up to close the deal.
As is always the case, numbers started flying back and forth between the sales person and myself; cables, warranties, delivery…
The Congressional Budget Office’s announcement Wednesday that 2009’s budget deficit was going to be $1.19 trillion – before a nickel of President-elect Barack Obama’s stimulus plan has been included – raises a crucial question for the U.S. economy: Is there too much stimulus, and what effect would too much stimulus have?
The base metals were all deep in the red on Tuesday. Copper had another day of incessant down, with each tiny upblip met with immediate selling, leading to a finish barely off its intraday low at $1.5997/lb., down 10 cents. Nickel followed a similar path, except that it didn’t manage to escape its intraday low, closing right there at $4.6531/lb., down 29 2/3 cents.