Archive - Jun 2010 - Blog entry

So this is all $887 billion in stimulus gets you? There are now more than 15 million unemployed, including 6.8 million who have been jobless for more than six months. Until today’s number, our nine month long recovery produced a net loss of 133,000 jobs! At this stage of the 2003 recovery, we were regularly clocking 200,000-300,000 a month in job gains. Is Michele Obama already secretly scoping out new private elementary schools in Chicago?

President Obama has now become a professional economist, because like most professional economists his unemployment forecast was wrong. The May unemployment data clearly reveals a flattening of the economy.

As we continue our exploration of our individual and collective insanity, we spend some time examining that lovable megalomaniac ego inside each of us, why and where it all went wrong, the sliding scale of insanity with lots of finger pointing, how we certify our madness for comfort and support, our mental toxic waste dumps and the first sighting of light at the end of the tunnel. Or is that just the crazy train express to DC? Here’s one car wreck we can all safely examine as we drive by in our economic suicide machine.

In continuing my data intense, hardcore, uber-objective dissection of the stuff that is proffered through the mainstream media (MSM), I bring you...

Oops. The Swiss have left the house.

Is 10% of all higher education in the US nothing more than a scam? The gravy train is about to end. Education’s version of the subprime crisis. A crack down on deceptive marketing practices, where degree programs are sold like time shares. The student loan default rate at for profit schools is thought to be as high as 50%. Sticking the government with the tab. Starve these schools of subsidized government funding, and their shares are history. And just try and get a job with one of these Mickey Mouse degrees. (APOL), (CPLA), (DV).

The European Commission is proposing that an already-planned central European Union regulatory body — the European Security Markets Authority — should take on oversight of the existing rating agencies when it is due to begin work in January 2011. Will this be enough?

This article is a look at the US's recovery, Europe's recovery, Asia's (China) recovery, and how they all tie together. While US manufacturing has been improving, mainly because of exports, it is also flattening out. Ditto almost everywhere else. This is a sign of what's coming.

From Expected Returns Blog

The Gulf oil spill seems to one of the events which markets are having anxieties over. However, the recent pullback on commodities due to this mis-reaction should serve as a good entry point for long-term investors. A few options are discussed here.

The title says it all...

The recent surge in stocks is setting up a classic “head and shoulders” top. Anything short of the 500,000 blockbuster number some analysts are expecting for Friday’s nonfarm payroll could tank the market. Is the Dow still overvalued by 3,000 points? Watch out when those low interest rates depart for nether regions. Reversion to the mean can be a bitch.

JP Morgan's history of alleged fraud committed against their clients continues today when they were charged with commingling $8.6 billion of client assets with the firm's without their clients' knowledge for 7 years.

The big four Australian banks - ANZ, Commonwealth, NAB, and Westpac - have used the cover of the global financial crisis to charge borrowers more than the increase in their own costs, resulting in big profits; however, the minutiae of stories about banks gouging their customers with excessive fees distracts citizens from understanding the much more important big picture of the fractional reserve lending scam.

Bottom-line: You can read all the bears in the world, focus on events in Europe (which are bullish long-term, but nobody bothers to mention this), focus on the BP disaster, focus on every piece of negative data in the world, but the reality is that the US economic recovery is picking up steam. Expect a monster jobs report this Friday, and it's not just a one-off from Census hiring!