Markets around the world fell yesterday on news of disappointing US job growth, with most indexes in the US and Europe sinking at least 1%. The median forecast by analysts was 203,000 new jobs in March according to Reuters, while actual results were 120,000. For comparison, the past three months have exceeded 200,000 new jobs. … Continue reading
In case you haven’t heard, today the stock market took what may be the largest drop of the year, and is giving me nightmares of 2009. Basically, what has happened recently is that all of the positive news of the past few months has cycled through the stock market and been accounted for. The knowledge … Continue reading
So if you’ve seen the news recently, you’ve heard the big news: Obama has released his new spending proposal. Here are some details: Total Spending: $3.8 Trillion -Replaces the AMT with a “Buffet Rule” tax, where people with incomes over $1,000,000 will pay a 30% minimum tax. -increases the tax on dividends to the level … Continue reading
Sorry for the late post, i’ve been incredibly sick the last two days. There have been more developments on the Greek front. http://www.reuters.com/resources_v2/flash/video_embed.swf?videoId=230006889&edition=BETAUS Protests are ravaging Greece right now, as the Greek Parliament is set to vote on an austerity package that would precede a bailout by the EU. Greece needs this in order to … Continue reading
In recent days, Ben Bernanke has gotten surprisingly political. In a Senate Budget Committee hearing, Bernanke stated that lawmakers must act fast and renew the Bush tax cuts. He argues that all the uncertainty will hold back markets and will keep businesses from making long term decisions, causing economic growth to stall. As he has … Continue reading
The 2012 election campaign has been under way for a while now, and I thought it would be worthwhile to write about it. This election very quickly became a battle over the economy, with the republicans trying to say that Obama’s doing a horrible job and Obama trying to prove them wrong. Mostly, the republicans … Continue reading
New figures for US GDP growth have been released, and they have disappointed many economists, who predicted between 2.4% and 4.5%. The current quarterly rate, 2.8%, falls between those forecasts, but is lower than the average rate forecasted. This mirrors the IMF forecasts, which state that US GDP will grow only at a 1.8% rate … Continue reading
Once again, some good news and some bad news. The good news is that confidence in the economy among business leaders has risen. In a recent survey by the National Association for Business Economics (NABE), business leaders were asked many questions regarding the economy. These included questions about GDP, unemployment, and more. The results were very … Continue reading
The Fed announced a new policy today of increased transparency. Specifically, it will start announcing inflation targets. In markets, information and the credibility of that information is important to economic decision making. Having this sort of information could do wonders for dampening recessions and unsustainable growth, because it would be common knowledge that the Fed … Continue reading
