Bailout and Financial Crisis News

Scroll down for a summary of last week and a look ahread (or click here). First, via NPR: The Super Bowl Stock Market Predictor The Super Bowl Stock Market Predictor holds that if a team from the old NFL wins, the market will rise in that year; if a team from the old AFL wins, the market [...]

One of the most stunning mea culpas following the financial crisis was former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan’s admission in October 2008 that he had put too much faith in the free market to regulate itself. His reputation damaged, Greenspan is hitting back. In an interview with FORTUNE’s Geoff Colvin, Greenspan takes on his critics and says [...]

David Wessel, The Wall Street Journal’ economics editor and author of “In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke’s War on the Great Panic,” recently finished “On the Brink,” the new book by former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, which covers much of the same time period from a different vantage point. Wessel says he’ll leave the book [...]

For the first time since the early 1990s, the debt load of US consumers is finally dropping.  And it's dropping at a faster rate than it ever has. In the long-term, this is good: We borrowed so heavily from the early 1980s through 2007 that consumer credit soared over 100% of GDP.  Reducing this debt, and [...]

Should Greenspan and Bernanke have seen the bubble in housing and other assets and acted, or should we accept their defense that you can’t know whether there is a bubble until after the fact? We will look at research that suggests they should have known, and, at the least, policy makers should no longer be [...]

February 5, 2010 By John Mauldin Unemployment Numbers: A Mixed Bag A Bubble in Search of a Pin And Speaking of Bubbles Help in Europe, California, and Tampa, and Becoming our Parents Should Greenspan and Bernanke have seen the bubble in housing and other assets and acted, or should we accept their defense that you can’t know whether there is a [...]

Note: Earlier employment posts today: Employment Report: 20K Jobs Lost, 9.7% Unemployment Rate for graphs of unemployment rate and a comparison to previous recessions. Employment-Population Ratio, Part Time Workers, Temporary Workers Unemployed over 26 Weeks and Seasonal Adjustment This is an unofficial list of Problem Banks compiled only from public sources. Changes and comments from surferdude808: During the week, the [...]

The Federal Reserve reports: Consumer credit decreased at an annual rate of 4-3/4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009. Revolving credit decreased at an annual rate of 13 percent, and nonrevolving credit was unchanged on net. In December, consumer credit decreased at an annual rate of 3/4 percent. Click on graph for larger image [...]

Among the surprises in Friday’s government jobs report: Unemployment fell sharply in January to 9.7% from 10%. The jobless rate rose as high as 10.1% in October. But it’s most likely to move higher, not lower, in the coming months. The Labor Department estimates the unemployment rate from a survey of households, separate from the survey [...]

Fred Hickey, editor of The High-Tech Strategist and Barron’s Roundtable member, believes the Fed’s fiscal moves have helped rally the market. In 2010, he expects gold stocks to outperform gold.

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