What another ride this week in the markets, but you had to read between the lines to understand how everything that’s going on may affect the housing market through consumer confidence, banking uncertainty, and The Fed’s “Operation Twist” which is about lowering long-term rates (think mortgage rates). Operation Twist Freakonomics at the NY Times has… Read the full article…

Okay so I’m remiss not to have posted in almost a month, but frankly not a lot has changed – we’re still on a bumpy path sideways, and that’s to be expected. It fits the fundamentals and the fundamentals, while they could have shifted, they haven’t. There’s nothing really new going on, and that includes… Read the full article…

This is what sideways feels like. We dive onto the banana slide in the back yard and tumble off the end into the grass. Our knees hurt and we don’t go back to the line to do it again. Then the sting wears down, the water is spraying, everyone’s having a good time, and we… Read the full article…

France has a AAA credit rating from S&P, though it too is threatened by S&P. What other countries does S&P believe deserve a higher credit rating than The United States? AAA countries according to Standard & Poor’s: Austrailia Austria Canada Denmark Finland France Germany Guernsey Hong Kong Isle of Man Liechtenstein Luxembourg Netherlands Norway Singapore… Read the full article…

Smart investors don’t give a flip about S&P. Why do we even have credit rating agencies? Must we really outsource our own thinking to some big company that overvalued the mortgage-backed securities that turned out to be worthless and led to the biggest recession since the Great Depression? Records show they didn’t even understand what… Read the full article…

Okay yeah I know what’s going on today around the world and indicators etc. But there is no good fundamental reason for today’s market sell-off. None. Nothing is different today substantially from yesterday or last week. Strong corporate earnings with generalized cautionary notes of total CYA for Q3, but still… Strong earnings. Corporate balance sheets… Read the full article…

It’s all just a little bit of history repeating………..       We tend to have short historical memory. Ronald Reagan signed bills to raise the debt ceiling 18 times. George W. Bush did it at least 7 times. Typically, doing so is so routine — and such an obvious need for the economy —… Read the full article…

Okay so here’s what we got:     It took until today for a 2nd degree “veto threat” of the Boehner plan, which Wall Street and CBO has also warned would not avoid a downgrade in our AAA national credit rating by S&P. Key to understanding the current political theatre is bearing in mind how presidential… Read the full article…

I’m amused now, July 25th, reading my most recent post foretelling the path of the debt ceiling debate from two months ago. Up until today, I have stood by my last post. But tonight, the President has called a national address on all news and network channels. Why? Today, the markets (to be clear, by… Read the full article…

    This chart tells the story of what I’m seeing through other economic indicators being released now and in recent weeks. This is a chart of the past 10 years of Producer Price Indices, the general economic cost index for companies that produce things. If a steel cookware company wants to sell more cookware,… Read the full article…