The market drops again…
…but the good news is: mortgage rates are mega-low! Time to buy a home! That is, if you’ve got any money left, or a job. Here are some possible reasons why the market is tanking today. And only 26% of … Continue reading →
Category Archives: Finance and economics
On the stimulus
Here’s Krauthammer on the stimulus: “[Obama] did a huge Keynesian gamble, and it failed.” But super-Keynesians such as Krugman say it failed because it wasn’t nearly super enough. It should have been bigger. And Obama says if he hadn’t done … Continue reading →
Warren Buffett to federal government: stop me before I pay low taxes again!
Right off, I noticed a few things about Warren Buffett’s plea in the NY Times asking the federal government to stop coddling him and his fellow rich people and to please, please, PLEASE raise their taxes on income, capital gains, … Continue reading →
Romney: corporations are people
Romney is getting a lot of flack for saying that corporations are people, but even liberal Greg Sargent is defending Romney—sort of, anyway A transcript of Romney’s remarks appears at Sargent’s WaPo blog. And well, aren’t corporations people? The whole … Continue reading →
Stock market’s down again…
…and this time they say it’s about trouble with the French banks, which hold a lot of European debt. My opinion? The market is very volatile, and each explanation is only part of the explanation. The fuller explanation is uncertainty … Continue reading →
Did S&P make an error (redux)?
By now you may be heartily sick of this question. I certainly am. I’ve written enough about it, and I’m not planning to write about it again—unless, of course, some important new facts or revelations come into play. And those … Continue reading →
Down and down the Dow goes, where it stops…
…nobody knows. Right now, in a move that should surprise absolutely no one, the market is down significantly (as of this writing, 325). A great deal of the slide is almost certainly a reaction to late Friday’s S&P downgrade of … Continue reading →
Pigs fly, and I agree with Robert Reich, Daily Kos, and the Guardian: S&P and the AA+ rating
Last night—as you all must know by now unless you’ve been having a much more exciting weekend than I—the financial ratings agency Standard & Poor downgraded the US debt from AAA to AA+ for the very first time. Now, AA+ … Continue reading →
Falling stocks, rising fear
Stocks are falling sharply today, and some of the cause is bad news from Europe. Many countries are having the same crises of benefits outstripping the financial resources to provide them, and populations grown accustomed to their perks and angry … Continue reading →
Keynes vs. Hayek: the fight continues
I must confess to feeling a bit weary now that the debt ceiling negotiations have been concluded. And this is only the first of many bitter fights to come. What to cut? Who’s to decide? How much is enough? How … Continue reading →
The debt limit compromise
If you look at today’s Memeorandum page, you’ll see that the debt ceiling compromise story totally dominates the news. Most of the articles are of the “who won?” variety (even though the vote hasn’t occurred yet, everyone’s assuming it will … Continue reading →
Debt ceiling negotiations, redux
The other day I wrote a post about the debt ceiling negotiations. Few people in the comments section agreed with my point of view. But I had expected that, and I expect it for this one, too, which is fine; … Continue reading →