Archive for the 'Economy' Category
Questions on the Dollar
February 27th, 2010WARNING: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument. There have been a few emails from people who are wondering about the dollar. My analysis from February 19th, 2010 is in force. The dollar has multiple resistance levels just overhead, as indicated previously. On Friday, we also saw a breakdown […]
Officials Puzzle Over Millions of Dollars Leaving Afghanistan by Plane for Dubai
February 26th, 2010Via: Washington Post: A blizzard of bank notes is flying out of Afghanistan — often in full view of customs officers at the Kabul airport — as part of a cash exodus that is confounding U.S. officials and raising concerns about the money’s origin. The cash, estimated to total well over $1 billion a year, […]
IBM Researchers Develop Energy Efficient Method to Analyze the Quality of Data at Record Speeds
February 26th, 2010Via: IBM Press Release: Research today unveiled a breakthrough method based on a mathematical algorithm that reduces the computational complexity, costs, and energy usage for analyzing the quality of massive amounts of data by two orders of magnitude. This new method will greatly help enterprises extract and use the data more quickly and efficiently to […]
Clinton: U.S. Deficit a National Security Issue
February 26th, 2010Via: Reuters: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday said “outrageous” advice from former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan helped create record U.S. budget deficits that put national security at risk. Appearing before congressional panels to defend the State Department’s $52.8 billion budget request for 2011, Clinton said the massive U.S. foreign debt had sapped […]
U.S. Senator Warns of ‘Financial Meltdown’ Risk
February 26th, 2010Via: Financial Times: The US is heading for a debt-driven “financial meltdown” within five to seven years [?], according to Judd Gregg, the outgoing Republican senator for New Hampshire. In a robust and at times testy video interview for the Financial Times’s View from DC series, Mr Gregg also complimented China for showing rising alarm […]
Ex-Madoff Operations Director Arrested by FBI
February 25th, 2010Via: CNBC: A former executive for imprisoned swindler Bernard Madoff’s firm was arrested Thursday and charged with concealing the scope of its multibillion dollar fraud and using at least $750 million of investor money to support the company’s trading arm. The executive, Daniel Bonventre, was described by investigators as the director of operations of the […]
Something Very Strange Is Happening With Treasuries
February 25th, 2010Related: In 2009, the Federal Reserve Bought 80% of U.S. Debt Via: NASDAQ: This means that the Treasury took up EVERY single cent of competitive bids coming from indirect buyers. Remember, indirect buyers are usually assumed to be foreign governments (even the Treasury website admits this). If this was the case yesterday, then foreign governments […]
Banks Bet Greece Defaults on Debt They Helped Hide
February 25th, 2010But first, a quick walk down memory lane: Banks Bundled Bad Debt, Bet Against It and Won: In late October 2007, as the financial markets were starting to come unglued, a Goldman Sachs trader, Jonathan M. Egol, received very good news. At 37, he was named a managing director at the firm. Mr. Egol, a […]
Fed to Look Into Insurance Contracts on Greek Debt
February 25th, 2010Bernanke is going to get to the bottom of it??? Via: AP: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told lawmakers Thursday that the central bank is looking into the use by Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms of a sophisticated investment instrument to make bets that Greece will default on its debt. Bernanke said the […]
Commercial Mortgage Default Rate in U.S. More Than Doubles
February 25th, 2010Via: Bloomberg: The default rate for commercial property mortgages held by U.S. banks more than doubled in the fourth quarter and may reach a peak of 5.4 percent at the end of next year, according to Real Capital Analytics Inc. The default rate for loans on office, retail, hotel and industrial properties surged to 3.8 […]
