Hold off on the victory dance. The 2014 “Economic Report of the President” and many media reports indicate that the U.S. economy has finally recovered. But has it? One measure…
Wishful Thinking Does Not Create Economic Recovery
This was going to be the year. Remember the predictions of 3% economic growth? More recently, the consensus was 1.2% growth for the most recent quarter. It turns out, though,…
The Economic Recovery That No One Noticed
The average recovery since the end of World War II has been 58 months. The current “recovery” has just reached that milestone. So maybe we should be celebrating. But what’s…
The Fed Goes Long
Few investors today would consider investing in long-term Treasury bonds. The yield curve, which measures the spread between interest rates for short-term and long-term bonds, is not as flat as…
We’re All Debtors Now
You’ve probably heard that corporate America is swimming in cash. Something like $4 trillion worth of it. And once corporate America starts spending it, the economy will boom again, jobs…
The Neverending Story
Why change? It’s been more than five years since The Federal Reserve Board began its quantitative easing program. We’ve had QE, QE 2, Operation Twist and the never-ending QE 3. …
Solving Our Problems By Executive Order
Why didn’t he think of this sooner? President Obama announced during this week’s State of the Union address that he is going to bypass Congress and issue more executive orders…
No Records This Month
Markets go up and markets go down, so maybe it’s not surprising that January’s stock market performance has less exuberance to it than the performance to which we’ve become accustomed.…
Some Recovery
The government’s stimulus programs are not working and neither are a growing number of Americans. In October, we noted that the number of Americans not working exceeded 101 million, setting…
Paper Taper
So the taper begins in January. Big deal. That was the market’s initial reaction anyway. In fact, the market viewed this week’s announcement as a positive, setting yet another record. …