August 2008
Here is sneak peek at some links from my weekly Weekend Reading column over at TheStreet: Lehman Brothers in urgent talks on capital injection (Telegraph) The death of the credit card economy (Slate) British economy facing 'worst downturn in 60...
With Hurricane Gustav now reaching Category 4 status, and Category 5 looking likely with warm water ahead, there are some mighty traffic jams today as people head out of New Orleans in advance of Gustav. Live traffic cam here,...
Just a live link to track Hurricane Gustav (via Wunderground):...
I’m checking out shortly, so a link to some wonderful photos to put you in a contemplative frame of mind for the weekend. The Boston Globe has up a series today taken over London’s financial district at night, and they...
We keep hearing about warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico fueling the rise of Cat 3 hurricane strength from tropical storm Gustav, but just what does that mean? Well, studies generally suggest hurricanes require water temperatures over 26 C...
Employee stock options at 1 in 10 Fortune 500 companies are essentially worthless, and stock options are currently underwater at 40% such companies. That is up from a little over 30% being underwater at the end of Q1, according to...
Much to the chagrin of their many boosters, prediction markets missed the boat on the Obama candidacy -- they had Clinton for too long -- and they totally whiffed on John McCain's Sarah Palin pick....
I have a bet with Arik Hesseldahl over at BusinessWeek on the current Apple quarter. Check it here, and feel free to tell me, post-Dell, I'm wrong in my bearishness....
Apparently Wikipedia had John McCain's Sarah Palin pick for VP first. Check the following edits from late last night (that were then deleted, and reinstated): IP address for the edit source was 68.106.201.11, which is Cox.net account, but I can't...
Interesting graphic out from NOAA suggesting that, according to some models, soon-to-be Hurricane Gustav and Tropical Storm Hanna will join forces, sort of, over Florida in the coming days. What’s next for Florida? A plague of locusts? Other? [via Stormwatch]...
Last week Dean “Ultramarathon Man†Karnazes spoke last week at Google about life, ultramarathons and his outrageous feat of running 50 marathons in 50 consecutive days. His first book was harrowing but inspirational fun, and his new book sounds equally...
Gosh, apparently the automotive downturn is over already. General Motors chairman Robert Lutz told reporters that he is seeing a "resurgence" in demand for trucks and SUVs. Who would have thought? Then again, here is a gentle math lesson: When...
Some quick links others may find interesting: Sam Zell says newspaper are broken, subprime is in 8th inning and he's buying ... stuff (Bloomberg) Subprime is a pig in a python, and it's passing quickly (Bronte) Lots of whinging from...
While the U.S. market is undeniably more linked than ever before, the following Bespoke chart does demonstrate the continuing big regional differences in the post-boom tumbling of various markets:...
There are many unsettling things about yesterday’s brief and unseemly Bloomberg wire appearance, and then disappearance, of an obituary for Apple’s Steve Jobs -- not least of which is that he’s not dead yet -- but I was struck by...
I happened to notice the following today. Has there been another period since the Google IPO when Microsoft led Google in stock performance over so many periods? Period GOOG MSFT 1-week -3.39% 0.99% 1-month -4.75% 5.34% YTD -33.2% -22.6% 1-year...
Just in case no-one else has noticed, apparently all is well with the homebuilders. After spending the last few months in the doldrums (and spiking way up earlier this year), the S&P Homebuilders SPDR is now almost back to breakeven...
A quick roundup of some of the more useful images and storm tracks for Hurricane Tropical Storm Gustav. Now southwest of Haiti, it is currently projected to makes its way into the heart of the oil-producing Gulf of Mexico by...
I’m sure this will be useful to some people, but there is something about this “Grovel at Jack Welch’s Feet†event coming up in Boston that rankles. And $10,000 a person for 100 people, that’s …. hang on … carry...
I love that it snowed last night on the upper mountain at Whistler. Summer is wonderful in the mountains, but the first signs of a shift to fall -- cooler nights, surprise snowfalls, etc. – always make my heart...
Love this California real estate quote -- and be sure to check the date: In all the new states of the Union, land monopolization has gone on at an alarming rate, but in none of them so fast as in...
There is good news and bad news about Tropical Storm Fay. On the bad side it has caused a surprising number of deaths, plus significant property damage. I don't want to take anything away from any of the preceding, because...
Best financial paper title du jour goes to this one: Higher-order potential forces observed in bubbles and crashes in financial markets Is that spooky, or what? It is like some combination of Jedi mind tricks, van der Waals forces and...
I have been sent the following "dot corn" chart more times than I get Britney Spears spam these days. Not generally being a fan of such things -- you can create bubble-ish looking charts of anything that moves quickly --...
You never know what you'll find on arXiv, so I was amused today to see this chart of the current "oil super-bubble" (their words), as plotted by three Polish physicists. They claim to have predicted "to an amazing accuracy" the...
Hurricane Gustav is strengthening south of Haiti and looking like a bad guy as it heads WNW. According to the most recent storm track, it will wend its way past Cuba and into the Gulf of Mexico, complete with at...
Great post by John Hempton on the real roots of China's penchant for savings: Its one-child policy. In most poor jurisdictions there is a simple method of saving for old age. Have six kids. They will have a few each...
It's apparently awards time again, and I see I'm nominated for a BusinessWeek award. The rest of the nominees are people I've never heard of from low-traffic sites -- Scobleizer, TechCrunch, etc. -- so be sure to vote early...
Here are the two best blogs you're (likely) not reading: Bronte Capital. John Hempton has an awe-inspiring winner here. This recently-launched blog by a former fund manager is everything you could hope for: lucid, smart, analytical, bemused, and self-critical. The...
The papers and agenda from this year's Kansas City Fed meetings at Jackson Hole are now up. Why they can't post the agenda before the event, I have no idea. What, are they worried that economists won't show without a...
Here are the top twenty countries in terms of GDP/gold medal at the Beijing Olympics. In other words, this is the list of countries that spent, loosely speaking, the most for the least. Country Golds GDP/Gold India 1 1,090,000 Turkey ...
If you picked today to get back from holidays and re-commence messing about in the capital markets, I'm guessing you wish you hadn't. The indices all tanked, with everything from oil to the financials doing a Fearless Freep dive...
In an article dismissing current weakness in Euro markets comes this candidate for dumb-ass throwaway economic comment of the year: ...the eurozone’s strengths are too often hidden. Here is the clincher: eurozone countries together won more medals at the Beijing...
Some fascinating data from a new Unilever study on how U.S. consumers are adjusting spending in the face of the current economic malaise: In short, they will cut back on air fresheners, but they can't bear the idea of trimming...
Some quick links other people may find interesting: New investing survey shows people are as clueless about saving for retirement as they are about ... almost everything (Schwab) Inadequate shipping and storage conditions are costing millions of bushels of U.S....
There is a sure to be fight-starting cover piece in the current New Scientist arguing that there is no global water crisis. The gist of the argument: Water is poorly managed, with too much going to agriculture in the wrong...
Some worth watching economics videos from last week's Nobel laureates conference in Germany. In particular, check out Joe Stiglitz's presentation, and the Sholes/Stiglitz panel. You won't disagree with all/most/any necessarily, but it is intermittently provocative stuff....
Is fuel conservation a a new source of risk? I have twice recently been on planes that had to turn around after long taxis/queuing to go back to the ramp for more fuel, and then this story today about a...
For those of you who are vexed by talk of such things, skip this post. And for those of you who chide me for not posting when I'm doing a media spot, here is a heads-up: I'm guesting tomorrow on...
Cute quote from a French banker after the crisis of 1907 that I just ran across: The U.S. is a great financial nuisance. Coming after nasty U.S.-led financial crises in 1873, 1884, 1890, 1893 and 1907, this was an understandable...
Here is a sneak peek at some links from my weekly Weekend Reading column over at TheStreet: Reliability of oil supply/demand forecasts challenged (O&G Journal) Securitization isn't going away, even if credit crisis has been a surprise in its severity...
I'm inordinately fond of this typo in a WashPost article today on the deepening crisis [ed., I hate when you write "deepening" crisis: It's not a Beijing lap pool.] at mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I really hope...
Not sure if I've mentioned it here before, but I'm fond of my handy-dandy Ebay-based bankruptcy indicator. It works like this: When high-profile companies are in dire financial straits, or at least employees perceive that to be the case, insiders...
Interesting NPR segment this morning on Morning Edition where author Witold "Last Harvest" Rybczynski made the following claim: Virtually all the [U.S.] founding fathers were real estate developers. Well, at least we know who to (in absentia) congratulate/blame. [via NPR]...
I was just comparing Fed Chair Ben Bernanke's Jackson Hole speech at the current Kansas City Fed event this year to his speech there last year. Lots of things pop out, so you should read them both, but here is...
Here is a telling quote on the collateralized debt obligation (CDO) market, circa 2005 from a profile of Merrill Lynch's then-rocking CDO team: “If you polled a hundred capital markets participants about IBM, most people are going to have some...
Some remarkable rainfall piling up in Florida during the current stalled Tropical Storm Fay. Check the following 24-hour precipitation figure, and note that there are areas in Florida now well on their way to 20 inches (!!) of rain over...
Inc. magazine has out its 2008 list of the fastest growing private companies in the U.S. How many of the companies on the list last year were in financial services? How many this year? You ready for the answer? The...
Some quick links to a few articles that people have sent my way today: Laws of population growth (arXiv) CalPERS is going heavy into infrastructure and water (EMII) The genetic map of Europe (StrangeMaps) Why it has become more difficult...
Speaking of those damn foreigners -- you know, the ones who keep propping up Fannie/Freddie by buying their debt -- there is a new Federal Reserve study out seemingly showing that non-U.S. exposure to subprime is a little less than...
I had a surreal moment on CNBC this morning. In talking about proposed changes to the SEC's new-ish short-selling rules, I cited a recent IMD study showing that market quality deteriorated during the last month or so for the 19...
Missed this in yesterday's WashPost, but a piece on how Fannie Mae was desperately seeking subprime mortgages, just as the market went boom, is a must read. In January 2007, as years of loose mortgage lending were about to send...
Tonight I was re-watching Usain Bolt's recent world record 100m performance in the 2008 Olympics and it got me thinking about physiological limits and human performance trends. What are the limits to human performance, and are we approaching them asymptotically,...
I have long been intrigued by property theorist Michael Heller's anti-commons work. He sometimes calls it "ownership congestion", and it is the idea that too much ownership in a market can block innovation, whether in drugs, music, airport runways, etc....
Just finishing with a new book, Global Catastrophic Risks by Nick Bostrom. Granted, it's not the feel-good book of the summer, but it is interesting, data-rich, and comprehensive in its canvassing of the many things that (could) go bump in...
Some guy named "Paul Kedrosky" (what is that, Polish? yeesh!) popped up in the NY Times today with an uppity comment from back when Ron Insana left television and started his own hedge fund. The comment turned out to be...
A quick heads-up that I am guest-hosting again tomorrow from 11am-noon EST on CNBC's "The Call". Feel free to send segment ideas, etc....
Is it just me, or does it feel like the market bounce after each Treasury/Fed save of the U.S. economy is getting shorter? Way back last fall we were able to get three months out of that post-save bounce, and...
Folks, it's your last chance to submit a proposal for the O'Reilly Money:Tech Conference 2009. If you have something cool at the confluence of finance and technology that you'd like to show off, or a really interesting idea for a...
Matthias: Could be worse. Centurion: What you mean "Could be worse"?! Matthias: Well, you could be stabbed. Centurion: Stabbed? Stabbing takes a second. Crucifixion lasts hours. It's a slow, horrible death. Matthias: Well, at least it gets you out...
A comment from Merrill Lynch's David Rosenberg got me thinking, perversely enough, that one money-making trend to watch going forward will almost certainly be a burgeoning U.S. market in -- wait for it -- frugality. Frugality is going to set...
There is a fascinating piece in the September issue of National Geographic on how dirt is becoming a growth industry. With food demand accelerating, and millions of acres of agricultural land degraded via salination and over-use, and other land...
An absurdly interesting map splitting the U.S. up by in an alternative and Pychonian line of places where "pop" or "soda" is the most popular colloquial way of referring to carbonated beverages. Speaking as a Canadian used to confusing Americans...
Two fascinating charts from the folks at Zillow today. Both highlight current trends in negative equity -- homeowners who owe more on their home than it is worth -- albeit in different ways. First, here is a look at number...
I was scanning the new Fenwick & West Q1 release on Bay Area venture capital activity, and it's hard not to come to this conclusion: Venture capital rules, baby! In these troubled economic times what other asset class has seen...
A year ago overseas markets were all the rage. A weaker U.S. dollar and fast-growing markets in Asia, in particular, were keeping the U.S. out of recession, despite a rapidly weakening U.S. consumer. Fair enough. But what happens a year...
There is an interesting new NBER paper on the "nondiversifiable costs" of entrepreneurship. In other words, what costs, incurred by entrepreneurs in being entrepreneurial, should they consider in deciding whether to quit their day job? Over the past 20 years,...
Here is a sneak peek at some links from my weekly Weekend Reading column over at TheStreet. Feel free to add links in comments to other useful articles you think I've missed: It's too soon to toast the end of...
Columnist Floyd Norris has a fun challenge: Name a penny stock that has become a big and important company. And not just a company, successful now, whose split-adjusted price was pennies years ago. Floyd wants a company that was really...
Quick question for folks: Anyone know the longest distance you can be from a road in the contiguous U.S. (thus excluding Alaska)? My guess today was 2 miles, which some people thought low. Anyone have a source or better info?...
Some quick links to things people have sent me and others may find interesting: The consequences of listing a house for $1 in Detroit (Zillow) OPEC revenue exceeds U.S. tax receipts (Bloomberg) Massive money outflows from emerging markets (FT)...
Here is a lovely new MODIS satellite shot of New Zealand. The green islands look ravishing, like they are swaddled in clouds. Click for a much larger version....
Jessica Rabbit: I'm not bad. I'm just drawn that way. -- from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) I know that many people are nodding in drunken agreement with an NYT piece today about how second mortgages in America...
It's happening again. Prophecies of U.S. economic decline are everywhere, as able chronicled by my colleague Dane Stengler at the Kauffman Foundation. Why is decline so persistently popular in mainstream U.S. thought?...
Marc Faber of Gloom, Boom and Doom report fame is speaking in September in San Francisco to the CFA Society. Should be good fun. More here. Semi-relatedly, I'm speaking to the same group the following week....
I just noticed that three of the last four IPOs to make it to market before the Rackspace offering had China or Asia in their name. Maybe if it had called itself ChinaRackspace things would have turned out better for...
A question that came up this morning in judging for the E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year competition: Can a great entrepreneur be running an unsexy company? Now, I don't mean unsexy merely in that the company sells thumbtacks or something....
While I agree that it makes sense for the U.S. to increase immigration of skilled workers, I laughed out loud at ex-Fed chair Alan Greenspan's other rationale letting more people into the U.S.: "The most effective initiative, though politically difficult,...
Some random trivia to use in cocktail conversations tonight: China has now won more medals in the current Olympics that it did in the entire 1988 Olympics -- and than in all games preceding '88 combined Swimmer Michael Phelps has...
I must be in an eye-candy kind of mood today. The following figure from a paper in the Annals of Geography is fascinating, showing the 3-D topography of wi-fi wireless network coverage in Salt Lake City....
Lovely chart from Bloomberg today showing that the languishing S&P 500 is newly languishing less than the newly even more languishing (and previously rocketing) indices of the BRIC countries. Call the press: We're the least loser! We're the least loser!...
Missed this months ago from my friend Barry. Very funny -- and darn useful when CNBC host Larry Kudlow comes back from holidays on August 25th. The Modern Kudlow To Standard English Translation Guide Kudlowism Modern Translation “The Greatest Story...
For weather geeks among my readership only: It turns out that under the right atmospheric conditions Doppler weather radar can detect cars, and even tell how fast they're going. Very cool. Check the following figures from north central Illinois via...
Fun paper up on Arxiv about avalanche prediction, with applicability to stock markets, sand and snow alike. Avalanche prediction in Self-organized systems Authors: O. Ramos, E. Altshuler, K. J. Maloy Abstract: It is a common belief that power-law distributed avalanches...
My financial book recommendation of the day goes to another in Wiley Investment Classic's series of book. This time it's Once in Golconda, a classic about life on Wall Street in the '20s and '30s, back in the time...
Nice chart from New Scientist showing some of the unintended consequences of having traders copying one another's behavior. Click for a larger version. As an aside, I'm trying to get the authors of the paper to speak at Money:Tech 2009...
It came to me today during a flight from San Diego to Kansas City: Google is a Ponzi scheme. Really. How do I know? Well, Hitwise just released a report showing that Google now has over 70% of the search...
Talk about slamming the barn door after the cows have all gone, check the eye-popping percentage of U.S. loan officers in the following Federal Reserve chart saying that their firm is tightening credit for home loans. We are at...
I use the following quote too often in presentations, so I might as well come clean and put it up here. It's from physicist Niels Bohr: Tomorrow is going to be wonderful, because tonight I do not understand anything....
Some quick links to things people have sent me that others may find interesting: Why are people from Vermont so much skeptical than the the rest of the U.S. about Michael Phelp's medal haul? (ESPN) Another affordable luxury victim: DISH...
The controversial financial research finding of the week (or maybe year) goes to a new-ish paper (Red and Blue Investing: Values and Finance) looking at the relationship between mutual fund and hedge fund manager performance, and political contributions. The paper,...
Is Amazon's Kindle a e-book reader turning into the iPod of books? It got generally positive reviews at launch, but word of mouth is driving it faster now, with people pushing it on each other increasingly eagerly. Further confirmation...
I love books about investing that aren't about investing. Or, to put it more coherently, I like books that are highly applicable to business & finance without necessarily being explicitly about same. Currently, for example, I'm finishing up Traffic: Why...
Here is a sneak peek at some links from my weekly Weekend Reading column over at TheStreet.com: An unnamed sovereign wealth fund is looking for U.S. properties at 50 cents on the dollar (New York Post) NBC Broadcasts Olympics via...
Let the gains begin. Fortune smiled upon stock markets last week, with the S&P 500 Index scoring its first back-to-back weekly gain since April as the US dollar rallied strongly and oil and commodities plummeted. The S&P 500's gain since the low of July 15 has been 6.7%, with the Financial SPDR up by 27.8%. Read all about this in Prieur du Plessis's guest blog post, highlighting some thought-provoking news items and quotes from market commentators during the past week.
Rachel Lapp: You know carpentry. Can you do anything else? John Book: Whacking. I'm hell at whacking. -- Witness (1985) To turn the data around for a second in the prior post -- the one about the seeming...
Ian Faith: The Boston gig has been canceled... David St. Hubbins: What? Ian Faith: Yeah. I wouldn't worry about it though, it's not a big college town. - Spinal Tap (1984) In playing with Google Insight I started...
It's interesting to think about the effective, unhedged income cut to OPEC and non-OPEC oil exporters caused by the current collapse in crude oil prices. Recall, we have gone from a peak of $146 to a current price of something...
Joker: C'mon hit me. C'MON HIT ME!!! -- Dark Knight (2008) Gee, apparently I'm dead wrong in my Yahoo Finance video where I opine about Apple's weak back-to-school selling season. Darn. And I was so sure I was onto...
We're deep in that nutty phase of the markets where they go pounding off in either direction, almost whimsically, depending on the latest bit of news. In other words, don't worry, it's not you, it's them, or at least the...
Interesting to compare the current collapse of most major currencies against the U.S. dollar with what is happening in emerging markets (click on either figure for a larger version): [via PERS]...
Larry Summers' FT column on building a U.S. financial recovery is must reading. It is lucid, crisply argued and practically-minded in its attempt to come up with a plan to get U.S. policy ahead of the curve with respect to...
Some quick links that folks may find interesting: Legg Mason dumped by Massachusetts as state swears off stockpickers (Bloomberg) Myanmar, one of world's poorest countries, will lose one-third of food production this year (Bloomberg) Panicked oil tanker owners thinking of...
Some unsettling data here from the San Diego Food Bank about the growing year-over-year second quarter percentage increase in demand for food: 102 percent: La Mesa 69 percent: Spring Valley 34 percent: Chula Vista 26 percent: Oceanside 25 percent: San...
My friend Barry has up a post claiming (via David Rosenberg of Merrill) the following: 300-point Dow rallies only happen in bear markets. It's a great claim -- amusing, contrarian and fun -- but is it true? It's a good...
I'm fallen down inside Google Insights for Search, and I can't get up. The newly launched service from Google is outrageously interesting, with fine-grained search term traffic data available across times and geographies. It's Google Trends, but crazy data delicious....
Anyone know more than I do about MFFAIS? This is (seemingly) an crazy comprehensive set of fine-grained data about institutional shareholdings around the world. Is the data credible, especially outside the U.S.?...
I just had an email correspondent suggest that I need to claim title to the crude oil price point at which equivalent economic damage is done (economy, cleantech, etc.) by price moves in either direction, up or down. I argued...
I wrote about this first back in September, but a (negative) investment theme I've liked for more than a year now has been the "decline of aspirational everything". To my mind, companies like P.F. Chang's, Cheesecake Factory, Whole Foods and...
Be it resolved: We're at a price point in oil markets where we are screwed no matter which direction prices move. Higher prices smoke the economy and inflation, and lower prices screw the emerging alternative energy complex. Thoughts?...
Nice and somewhat amusing distinction made about Freddie Mac in a report today on Bloomberg. One analyst called Freddie Mac "profound insolvent". Question: What is the difference between being "insolvent" and being "profoundly insolvent"? Isn't insolvent one of those words,...
Was your reaction the same as mine to this snippet from Time-Warner this morning? Time Warner said it had moved to separate AOL’s traditional dial-up internet access business from its online advertising platform during the quarter. My reaction: AOL still...
These FOMC statements should be banned. They are a tired exercise in reader-hostile word-smithing, a conscious attempt to hide meaning and abuse language. Check the following for the MS Word track changes on today's statement. Then try to explain how...
Entertainingly neck-snapping day out there on the markets with stocks that were down yesterday going speedily higher. Here is a list of the top twenty stocks that were down yesterday, and up today, sorted by total distance traveled over the...
Quick heads-up that I'm guest hosting "The Call" on CNBC tomorrow from 11am to noon EST (8am-9am PST). Send topic ideas and I'll try....
I need a word. I want one that describes that delighted feeling you get when you discover that a subject that used to soak up a lot of cognitive cycles no longer requires any. I'm going to suggest "Yahoo!", but...
One of the most consistently provocative conferences I attended last year -- my own Money:Tech 2008 aside, of course -- was Eric Norlin's Defrag conference. Oodles of interesting people, lots of great conversation and all of it aimed at one...
Missed this news Friday, and so will react now to a note from American Airlines that it has decided to no longer feed its fares through aggregators Kayak and Sidestep. Here is message: As a valued customer who has booked...
Here is a map of all U.S. cities where homes sell at a discount to construction cost. It's an interesting swath of the country. View Larger Map...
I was leafing through a recent NBER paper today when I came across a table comparing housing construction costs versus average sale prices in various U.S. cities. As you might imagine, there are huge premiums in most cities, but there...
This year the major U.S. markets have been driven largely by what has happened in oil markets. Higher oil means lower stocks, and vice-versa. Right? Well, here is a graph of the correlation between oil futures and the S&P 500...
Here is sneak peek at some links from my weekly Weekend Reading column over at TheStreet.com: Questions for T. Boone Pickens (NYTimes.com) Peter Bernstein argues that saving homeowners is only path to stopping current decline (NYTimes.com) Offshore drilling is political...
As oil prices seesawed through the past week, fresh uncertainty about the outlook for the beleaguered financial sector triggered another wave of volatility in financial markets. Economic data were mixed, whereas earnings were mostly better than feared. After all the action, the S&P 500 Index closed the week virtually unchanged, posting a small gain of 0.2%. Read all about this in Prieur du Plessis's weekly review, highlighting some thought-provoking news items and quotes from market commentators during the past week.
Tom Vanderwell here with another Mortgage Market Week in Review...Is it just me, or do Fridays keep coming around faster and faster? Maybe it's because I'm so young! Any way, it's time for our "Mortgage Market Week in Review." We're...
Meant to weigh in on this sooner, but Google is going to launch a corporate VC fund. I've registered various times my general skittishness about such things, so I won't belabor that here, other than to say I can't imagine...
A guest post from trader, surfer and semi-pro poker player, Jeff Norman. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------.....Should the fed be more worried about inflation or deflation? There are compelling arguments to worry about both and your answer may depend more on where you are...
A few quick links to get people going "hmmm" on this foggy Friday (here in San Diego, anyway): Resurgent bearish macro hedge funds have people seeing next Soros (Bloomberg) Copper thieves cause delay in cancer surgery (LA Times) Live ATask...
Today GM turned in a jaw-dropping $15-billion second quarter loss. Coming on top of a $3.2-billion first quarter loss, and 2007's $38.7-billion loss, investors are naturally wondering one thing: Is GM now, like the airline industry, cumulatively unprofitable across its...
In spite of a "teaser" of a rally and stock markets holding their July 15 lows, equities were still in the red for the month of July. I have put together a table of global stock markets' performances over various measurement periods, showing a rather unpleasant message.
There was oodles of participation in the contest I held earlier today on naming the country with the largest gain in residential real estate prices since the U.S. began tumbling in January of 2006. Thanks tons for all the guesses...
