economics

Ponder this for a brief second: before June 11, 2012, the financial jargon word “Spailout” never existed. Perhaps it was scribbled on a whiteboard hung in an investment bank conference room should Spain score some money from an outside party to save its banking system (sound smart: “bailout”),...

Over this past weekend the Spanish government secured $125 billion in bailout funds (Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy prefers to call it a line of credit) to secure the Spanish banks.  The goal was to “ring fence” the banks from any further runs, particularly in light of this...

Boy, we extend an open invitation to any government official to join us as a Decoding Wall St. member free for a week. The lines of questioning and understanding of the broad economy, and the economy’s intricacies, were very painful to listen to at Ben Bernanke’s latest presentation before...

By Lance Roberts, Street Talk Live The problems facing the U.S. economy are daunting especially when it comes the issues of Government spending and the current deficit. We recently wrote about the dependency on Government programs which is currently making up as much as 35% of personal incomes...

The Economic Issues and Some Defensive Strategies and Ideas According to the WESP "World Economic Situation and Prospects Report" from the United Nations, the US and global economy is  in a rut and having extreme difficulty moving forward.  The report recommends  that governments must be...

The UMKC economics department is featured in an article in the current Playboy that discusses the failure of theoclassical economics and economists to admit their theoretical and policy errors. The devotion of theoclassical economists to those errors has proven so dogmatic that their disastrous...

By Satyajit Das, Minyanville At the time of its independence, India was a stable and relatively open economy with high rates of economic growth and significant international trade and investment. By the 1980s, however the picture had changed. Three decades of poor economic management meant India...

The debt crisis continuous to overwhelm Europe, and the prospects for countries most entrenched in debt, including Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain, and Ireland, are dismal. Worse, whether these countries voluntarily leave or are coerced to leave, it is conceivable that Germany may opt to go solo...

A recent Bloomberg Businessweek article, “Mr. Normal Meets Mrs. Merkel” got me thinking. Why are Americans screaming about their tax levels? We have among the lowest federal tax rates in the civilized world and certainly the lowest our country has experienced in the past several decades. In the...

In 2006, the underpinnings of the American financial system began to crack from a speculative bubble in the country’s housing market.  Fueled by irrational exuberance in which homeowners believed their home prices would rise forever, this was made worse by Main Street and Wall Street,...

Courtesy of Lee Adler of the Wall Street Examiner The Industrial Production news today reminds me of a story. It’s a story that shows just how the Fed’s manipulation drives both the stock market and the 'conomy. It’s also a story of the twisted personalities behind the...

Californicated? Visit with a few posts by Russ Winter and Mish Shedlock.  California and “Solving Problems” Courtesy of Russ Winter of Winter Watch at Wall Street Examiner American masters of the universe and their toadies give self serving lip service to covering some...

To know the Washington Consensus as a regular citizen is to hate the Consensus.  The Washington Consensus, as the name implies, was an “inside the beltway” series of neo-liberal policies embraced by the IMF, the World Bank, and the U.S. government. It called for a minimal State and an all-...

By Peter Tchir, Minyanville Timing in fixed income markets can be as important as it is in equities. With so many more liquid opportunities in fixed income now compared to the past, this is a meaningful risk management tool. This “active” component will also include ideas in equity and commodity...

On April 25, 2012, Treasury Secretary Geithner made remarkable statements about the role of elite financial fraud and greed in producing our recurrent, intensifying financial crises. In this first installment I focus on the first of five problems with Geithner’s claims: (1) he does not understand...