New Zealand ‘enters recession’ – BBC News (Add New Zealand to Denmark which is already in recession)
UK pensions are ‘back in the red’ – BBC News (I haven’t focused nearly enough on this issue. It never really went away. The bear market ally of 2003-2007 made it seem so.)
GDP cut holds up German [...]

I’ve been thinking a lot about unrealized gains and their effect on the global economy. if you remember, I wrote a few weeks ago about a new debit card that lets people tap the money from their 401(k) plan. I think these cards are a bad idea. I don’t like them because [...]

Riches to Rags – NY Times (article about Kevin Phillips’ Bad Money — great book)Credit crunch: The blame game – BBC News (Interesting compilation of pundits’ take on who caused the crunch)Wary investors see banks as cheap – BBC News (I think some banks are not cheap — they are going to zero.)
Repel the calls [...]

Clive Crook of the Financial Times rightly takes on the Bush Administration and its squandering of hundreds of billions of dollars of fiscal surplus on war in Iraq and ta cuts for the wealthy. In this time of economic crisis, the U.S. is severely limited in its potential fiscal response by the massive budget [...]

In today’s Financial Times, former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan has taken the unusual step of playing market pundit even while his successor struggles to deal with the mighty financial turmoil he engendered. It is highly unusual to see an ex Central Bank head talking about market turmoil and contrasting it negatively to [...]

Looking more closely at the data on U.S. GDP, a number of things emerge. First, I should add that the GDP deflator does not include import prices. So, one good reason it was so low last quarter is because it didn’t factor in the 28% rise in import prices which includes the oil [...]

You thought I was on vacation? Well, I am, but I want to make a few comments about the goings on today as a lot of data came out. Here is the lightning round in no particular order (sorry Cramer, I’m stealing your tag line)

Thousands face sack in California: Should we have expected [...]