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The stock market is heading higher today, as part of a wider global equity rally. Earlier, James Bullard, the president of the St. Louis Federal Reserve, and a member of the Fed board, mentioned that he thought that the economic stimulus measure of buying mortgage-backed securities should continue into next year — moving beyond the first quarter.
As one might imagine, investors latched onto this news and took it as a cue to sell the dollar. After seeing gains for the dollar last week, Bullard’s remarks prompted a round of profit taking. Additionally, the comments also helped stocks. Confident that the [...]
Post from: EveryJoe
While I’m not always a huge fan of Ben Stein, he does come up with some interesting insights every now and again, and he does have some clever and funny things to say about them. For Fortune Magazine, he recently offered these 4 lessons that he learned from the recession:
Economic forecasting is difficult.
Financial market forecasting is more troublesome than economic forecasting.
The financial sector in this country has lied a great deal.
The government cannot predict the economy or financial markets.
These are, of course, very good lessons to learn. It is important to realize that neither the government, nor the financial “experts”, [...]
Post from: EveryJoe
This is going to sound counter-intuitive, but one of the best places to look for a job can actually be at a firm that just laid a bunch of people off. Depending on the reasons behind the lay offs, you might find that such companies are ready to do a round of hiring.
Recently, an acquaintance of mine was laid off — along with dozens of others — from a local company. Imagine our surprise when the Classifieds showed job openings in that company two weeks later! The reason? In the interest of cost-cutting, the company laid off around 50 of [...]
Post from: EveryJoe
Looking at Wall Street right now, you would never know that we just came out of a recession. And it is worth noting that for most regular folks, the end of the recession is merely a technical economic detail. Individuals still face a number of financial challenges, and with the weak labor market, it is little surprise that things most of Main Street is still wonder whether things are going to pick up. For thousands of Wall Street folks, though, that is not much of an issue. They just found out that they will be enjoying record bonuses.
Wall Street firms [...]
Post from: EveryJoe
Yesterday’s distressing unemployment data sent the national unemployment rate above 10%. This came as President Obama prepared to sign into law a bill providing an extension of jobless benefits. The bill is a relatively small measure, by recent economic stimulus standards, at $24 billion. The bill will extend the eligibility to collect unemployment benefits by 14 weeks. In states with higher unemployment rates (of more than 8.5%), there is a 20 week extension.
But it’s not just the jobless benefits that have seen an extension. The bill is also extending the first time home buyer tax credit along the lines negotiated [...]
Post from: EveryJoe
The Federal Reserve should be announcing its interest rate decision later today, and stocks are heading higher on the assumption that the Fed is likely to keep interest rates near 0%, as well as the expectation that the Fed will keep stimulus help coming in. Indeed, what Ben Bernanke says about economic policy going forward is more likely to influence the stock market than just about anything else today, and expectations that he will play up the fact that we’re only at the beginning of the recovery, and that there will be a continued need for economic stimulus for some [...]
Post from: EveryJoe