Wall Street attaches some significance to the “January Effect”, which basically says that January predicts the whole year. In fact, when the market is up in January, it is usually up 10.4% for the whole year. If it is down in January, the year is essentially flat. January 2010 was down 2.9%, suggesting a flat year. Since the market was so hot the last part…
Today’s announcement that the GDP grew at 5.7% was clearly good news. In addition, the Chicago Purchasing Managers Index jumped from 58.7 in December to 61.5 in January. If that wasn’t enough, consumer sentiment increased from 72.8 in December to 74.4 in January. What a great day! OK, celebration over . . . the question immediately becomes whether the good news is sustainable? Or, is…
CNBC super-star Jim Cramer said the loss of either Fed Head Ben Bernanke or Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner could cause the Dow to immediately drop a thousand points. If either happened un-expectedly, Cramer might be right, but I doubt either will happen. Ben Bernanke is clearly guilty of not seeing the recession coming, but very few economists did. However, once it happened Bernanke was extraordinarily…
The Tea Party demonstrators were livid at the big banks, especially when the taxpayers had to bail them out. It is fair to say that profits were privatized, while losses were socialized. This means the banks and their shareholders got to keep the profits, while the taxpayers got to pay for their losses. Their anger is understandable. President Obama, anxious to prove he has heard…
Hyman Minsky was an economics professor at Washington University in St. Louis. He pointed out the credit availability is cyclical, i.e., that credit will expand until it bursts. In other words, credit doesn’t slowly deflate or get paid down. It bursts! Describing the 1998 financial crisis that began in Russia and ended with the collapse of Long Term Capital Management, Paul McCulley of Pacific Investment…