Is the Ten Year Going to 3%?
These two articles point in a bad direction: China’s 2011 total trade surplus was $183B. The surplus with the USA was $270B; the US was 150% of China’s total surplus. China imports lots of “stuff.” More...
Swamp Gas: Notes From DC
#1 Smoot-Hawley Redo The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is obligated to review and “score” the financial consequences of any proposed legislation. It came out with a report on H.R. 4105. The title page of More...
On Politics, Social Security and Spine
Assuming that no white knight (aka NJ Gov. Christie) enters the scene for the Republicans, this fall will be a race between Mitt & “O”. I’ve listened to them discuss their views on a hot button of mine, More...
Sins Of The Past
Ben Bernanke has said many times that Marriner Eccles, the head of the Federal Reserve in 1936/37 made a mistake by tightening credit (raising reserve requirements). Bernanke blames Eccles’s actions for the 50% More...
DOJ’s Latest Beat Down: Swiss Banks
Wow! The Department of Justice took an extraordinary step yesterday. It indicted Swiss private bank, Bank Wegelin, for aiding and abetting in US income tax fraud. This is a big deal. I’ll More...
CBO Report: OMG!
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is out with its annual report. It’s a blockbuster. This 165 page monster is filled with dozens of charts, graphs and detailed projections. It will be talked about for weeks. More...
Entering the Intervention Zone
One Around Two We are near the edge on a few situations in the FX markets. I’m watching the EURCHF and the USDYEN. The market traded EURCHF to a low of 1.2032 Wednesday. It closed at a (slightly) safer 1.2044. More...
Obama Bluffs on Refi?
In his State of the Union speech, the President said: Millions of innocent Americans have seen their home values decline. And while government can’t fix the problem on its own, responsible homeowners shouldn’t More...
Bernanke Goes All In
Well, we got an inflation target from the Fed. Basically, thinking at the Fed has been eliminated. The process has been automated. Bernanke has convinced the Fed board to adopt Core PCE as a determinate of monetary More...
Three of a Kind: On Death, Debt and Taxes
On the Debt Ceiling The Treasury Department emailed its fans a blog entry setting out its position on extending the debt limit. The very fact that the Treasury Department feels the need to post blogs on this More...
