The motivating factor?  this article in Politico:
President Barack Obama plans to announce in next year’s State of the Union address that he wants to focus extensively on cutting the federal deficit in 2010 – and will downplay other new domestic spending beyond jobs programs, according to top aides involved in the planning.
The president’s plan, which [...]

This morning, David Rosenberg of Gluskin Sheff had another wonderful piece. I am only going to take on one part of it here. I have linked to the full article below so that you can read his analysis in it’s entirety (registration free but required).
The part I want to focus in on has to [...]

Hong Kong’s leader Donald Tsang has come out with a scathing criticism of U.S. monetary policy, comparing it to Japan’s which he believes contributed to 1997’s Asian crisis. This is the most direct and strident criticism of the U.S. Federal reserve’s monetary policy from a major international politician yet.
Bloomberg reports:
The Federal Reserve’s policy of keeping [...]

Just arrived in my inbox:

If you want to know what market momentum is all about, here you have it. Get in now to profit.
Sources
Bill Gross Calls High-Yield Corporate Debt `Overvalued’: Video (video here) – Bloomberg

The Jamie Dimon piece in today’s Washington Post is a must-read. Dimon, head of behemoth JPMorgan Chase makes the best case for not breaking up large too-big-to-fail financial institutions. His idea: set up a robust resolution process and let reckless lenders fail regardless of size.
Now, back in September, I attended a meeting at the Clinton [...]

A friend sent me the following presentation earlier in the week when I was feeling a bit ill. So I neglected to post it.  But, I want to return to it because it is in keeping with my recovery/depression theme. These are the issues that were complicit in the latest financial crisis and almost none [...]

In the video below, Marshall Auerback gives a even-handed analysis of the parallels between the US and Japan on Fox Business with Brian Sullivan.
Demographic trends, GDP trends and deleveraging trends are all similar. But, Marshall goes further by pointing to the misallocation of fiscal resources, the emergence of crony capitalism and the likelihood of [...]

In a recent post, “How is Citi going to deal with $38 billion in deferred tax assets?,” I pointed to a Reuters article which called into question Citigroup’s ability to earn enough money to prevent its having to take a charge for an incredibly large deferred tax asset. That post generated a response from a [...]

FT.com – Lloyds raises new capital target as bondholders warm to CoCos (sounds like good investor appetite for Lloyd’s)
FT.com – Dollar knocked by China renminbi hints (Chinese showing they could revalue just before Obama arrives)
Goldman’s Complete Presentation And Transcript From The Merrill Lynch Financial Services Conference | zero hedge
Intel Pays A.M.D. $1.25 Billion to Settle [...]

Is it just me or did Secretary Geithner just talk out of other side of his mouth? Today he wrote an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal with two Asian leaders to mark a big meeting of APEC (Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation) in Singapore.
The WSJ article started out with a bunch of diplomatic niceties about [...]