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The U.S. stock market has been off to the races, since hitting a low in March.  The S&P 500 has skyrocketed a massive 34%, erasing all of the losses of 2009.  Is this a case of much too fast too soon?  And is this a bear market rally?
Before I tell you my thoughts, let me [...]

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Now that everyone is talking about green shoots and the potential for economic recovery, I thought I would run through the statistics of U.S. GDP with you.  The reason I am bringing this up is that there is a lot of confusion about what recovery means and positive GDP growth mean.  So, I am going [...]

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Last week, the number of people filing new unemployment claims dipped to 601,000 on a seasonally-adjusted (SA) basis.  The unadjusted number (NSA) was even lower at 534,047.  This most recent data should bring cheer to the markets as it comes the heels of a better than anticipated unemployment report yesterday from ADP, the payroll processing [...]

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YouTube – Pig Slop Processor
A friend of mine sent me this link. It has nothing to do with finance, but it was so good I had to post it. WARNING: don’t watch this while eating.

The Banks and Orwell – Yves Smith
This post demonstrates that it may be back to the grind, business as usual in [...]

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While the Chinese were adding to their gold stock over the last several years, Europeans were selling – with disastrous results.  Back in 1999, Gold prices were depressed after an almost two-decade bear market.  For some strange reason the Bank of England decided this would be a good time to start to sell its gold.  [...]

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Yesterday,I posted the post "Almost all biggest subprime lenders have received bailout money" based on the very detailed detective work by The Center for Public Integrity (please visit their article here). Since then, the FT has come up with a nice little interactive pie chart which shows specifically:

Which Members of Congress have received large contributions [...]

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Volkswagen and Porsche have finally hammered out a merger plan after some bitter infighting. My understanding is that the new company will carry the Porsche name and trade under its ticker symbol. In addition, the company plans to raise more capital to pay off debt before the merger goes through. Why Porsche took on so [...]

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On Monday, I mentioned that the Asian Development Bank Fund was a clear sign that Asia was cutting loose from the west and looking to take care of things domestically.  WIlliam Pesek of Bloomberg News put out a piece this morning echoing those sentiments, but also adding a lot more background regarding the events leading [...]

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Richard Bernstein asks a very good question in a wide-ranging interview with Bloomberg.  Now that the so-called green shoots are dominating the news coverage and the S&P 500 is up a massive 34% from its March lows, one might think we are due for a pretty Robust V-shaped recovery.  Is that what the future holds?
Bernstein [...]

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If you haven’t noticed, the Treasury department seems to be leaking the results of the stress tests to reporters at the Wall Street Journal.  Richard Bove, a well-known bank analyst was on Bloomberg Radio this morning talking to Tom Keene and said he knows they have been leaking.  Yves Smith was on top of this [...]