» Econ Matters

The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) is a program initiated by the US government, funded by taxpayers, in October 2008 to bail out the banking and housing sector after the 2008 financial crisis. Due to the program’s complexity and “repayment” schemes, there has been different e...

The ink on our last article is barely dry when its dire prediction actually came true 48 hours later–natural gas price dropping below $2, a level not seen in over a decade.  Henry Hub natural gas front month futures declined to $1.982 per 1,000 cubic feet (mcf) on Wed. April 11, its lowest ...

Brent crude ended trading above $120 a barrel on Friday, April 13, while WTI crude on NYMEX for May delivery settled at $102.83 a barrel.  Oil has traded above $100 for all but a couple of days in the past year (see chart below).  This persistent high oil price has many concerned to start threate...

The latest January trade data of China showed the broadest measure of China’s global trade surplus fell to a several-year low to around 2.7% of GDP.  Export also collapsed to a negative 0.5% year-over-year in January, down from +13.4% in December.  Imports looked even more dire with a 15.3...

The recent massive demand for ECB’s LTRO (Long Term Refinancing Operation)–nearly 490 billion euro in three-year 1% loans from 523 banks–only confirmed the suspicion of some market participants that European banks are having financing issues, and that the LTRO is unlikely to flo...

Stock markets soared after the coordinated actions on Wed. Nov. 30 from six central banks around the world — the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank (ECB), and the central banks of Canada, U.K., Switzerland, and Japan — to provide “temporary U.S. dollar liquidity swap arrangemen...

After MF Global went bust, most people believe it was an extreme “spectacular recklessness” under Jon Corzine, and that the U.S. banks should have only “moderate” European Exposure.  However, banking stocks have been under pressure with increasing investors worries. Jefferi...

There was nothing really new out of the 2-day FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) meeting on Nov. 1-2 without much indication to the widely anticipated further quantitative easing (QE3).  For now, the FOMC has basically decided to adopt a wait-and-see stance by maintaining its current policy incl...

Brookings just published a new study analyzing data on neighborhood poverty from the 2005–09 American Community Surveys and Census 2000, and here are some of the very depressing findings:   Over a ten-year span, the number of Americans in poverty has grown by 12.3 million reaching a historic ...

Below are trading range charts for 10 major commodities from the Bespoke Group.  All 10 commodities are currently at or below the bottom of their trading ranges, which would suggest at the moment, a good opportunity to get in at oversold levels for investors looking to gain long-term exposure. How...

While some of us are still recovering from the first ever U.S. sovereign credit downgrade from S&P in August, BofA Merrill dropped another bomb.  From Reuters,  “The United States will likely suffer the loss of its triple-A credit rating from another major rating agency by the end o...

The latest move on China politics at Washington is the China currency bill, due at the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, Oct. 11.  The proposal would levy tariffs on China and four other Asian countries for artificially depressing the value of their currencies to boost their exports. To us, it seems eviden...