Monthly Archives: January 2009

Over the past few days, I have been watching a history series on the American Presidents, past to present.  The series, which I recorded from the History channel, covers the Presidents in order and includes commentary on their major accomplishments and failures over about eight hours of video.  While it has been quite some time since I’ve taken [...]

Financial stocks are ripping upwards in the aftermarket on rumors that the government may be getting closer to establishing a Bad Bank that would accept troubled loans, similar to the Resolution Trust Company that proved successful during the early eighties Savings and Loan crisis.    In the Book of Leviticus, God tells Moses to impose quarantines on [...]

In addition to layoffs at Summitville Tile, the family which owns my beloved Spread Eagle Tavern  located here in Ohio, the Wall Street Journal also reported on a host of other job cuts at many major organizations this morning.  Among the layoffs:                                                                              Home Depot, 7000 jobs                                                                    Caterpillar Tractor, 20000 jobs                                                        Texas Instruments, 12% workforce reduction                                                                                Sprint , 8000 jobs                                                                                    IBM, 2800 jobs                                                        Pfizer/Wyeth merge, 10% [...]

The markets have resumed their pattern of large daily swings.  Much of the volatility has been centered within the banking sector (down 17% Tues, up 16% Wed, down 8% today), where loan loss provisions are increasing and uncertainty is back to extreme levels as many banks cut their dividends to bare bones levels.  There are some who [...]

“Obama was sworn in 1.5 hours ago.  Why isn’t the economy better?  I voted for change.”                                                                                             - Tongue in cheek humor from a friend and Obama supporter.  *****************The markets have been selling off most of the day, but all eyes on Wall Street have been focused on the historical inauguration of President Obama.Nothing, of course, will be resolved overnight with [...]

Here is a nice editorial written by Colin Powell, in today’s Wall Street Journal, just in case you missed it.Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Only six months ago, I was visiting a large, privately held company and the subject of skyrocketing commodity prices entered the discussion.  When I commented that inflation trends were likely headed down as the boil came off emerging market economies, one executive looked at me as though I had to be out of my mind [...]

Friends at Stifel Nicholaus passed along the following observations from Richard Cripps, CIO at the firm.  The last year - to be sure - has shown us that the highly improbable has been uncharacteristically commonplace, but I still say it is alot more fun to hope.  I for one, am sick and tired of Black Swans.  Besides, if they [...]

After enjoying a nice twenty percent rebound from November 20th through the first week of this year, the markets are pulling back aggressively once again and threaten to test their prior lows.  The reasons are always difficult to pinpoint, but the fact that we are headed into earnings season probably has as much to do with it [...]