Michael Gracie 

A picture is worth a thousand words. And roughly 200 points up, and then down. Seems you can’t make anyone happy.

Forbes himself: “The bottom line: No strong economy has a weak currency.” Just above the “bottom line”…no strong currencies are built on negative real interest rates, bloated trade deficits, or $10 trillion on the right side of the balance sheet.

Me thinks he deserves it. Two economics/finance minded fellows that I thoroughly enjoy reading are taking Ben Stein to task. Stein recently layed out the notion that the financial markets exist to provide retirees with their nest eggs – Paul Kedrosky corrects, noting the markets are about liquidity, not serving the baby boomers. Barry Ritholtz [...]

Negative real interest rates didn’t help Japan much either.

Your economic worries are over, at least if you are a shareholder of United Industrial (NYSE: UIC). An $85 trillion market cap! These guys must have been doing one hell of a rollup – the only reason nobody heard about it was because of the M&A backlog on the street. UPDATE: Oops…that must have been [...]

You’re on the board of a couple of big companies. Their business is investing in home mortgages, and you force them to be moderately picky about what they buy. It can’t be too big, and must garner a sufficient rate of interest over a sufficient length of time. You also subsidize these companies through loan [...]

It may have been a “rogue trader” that caused a $7 billion loss for Société Générale, or maybe it wasn’t. If someone, say six months from now, came out and said Société Générale lost that money on the up-and-up, that like every other bank on planet Earth they made big bets on mortgage securities and [...]

Nobody should care about this except the National Association of Realtors, who sole purpose is to promote transactions (not smart, stable homeownership). Mortgage rates are also dropping, making homes more affordable to those able to get financing. The Realtors group’s affordability index in November and October was at the highest level in more than two [...]

Good advice…keep working. Of course, the Congressional Budget Office now says there won’t be a recession, and despite the fact that their report’s “no expectation” assessment included a caveat that economic conditions could change on a dime, you should have nothing to worry about.

No, it’s not in Florida. It’s not even in reality. It’s in Second Life, but still effecting real pocketbooks.