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Key members of the Federal Reserve Board and a cadre of Wall Street economists have become fixated on the current account deficit as a worrying symptom of economic distress and a sign of impending crisis. This has led a host of Reserve Bank presidents and Fed governors to imply that the dollar should fall in order to rectify imbalances before a crisis becomes inevitable. Since the theory of imbalances holds that a crisis eventually will ensue, destructive policy actions that surely would trigger a crisis are being advanced as “solutions” to a non-problem. Steep tax increases to augment “savings,” a...

<p>NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - The buzz on Wall Street is that, thanks to generous corporate tax incentives, boatloads of cash are scudding toward technology firms in 2004. But here's a case where tech may not be the biggest winner.</p> <p>Back in May, in its effort to juice an economy that was still shedding jobs, Congress upped the first-year depreciation allowance businesses can write off on new capital investments to 50 percent from the 30 percent allowance enacted following Sept. 11. But this "bonus depreciation," as it is called, sunsets at the end of the year.</p>

LONDON (Reuters) - The dollar hit 11-year lows against the pound and eyed record lows against the euro on Friday, as looming U.S. trade data focused attention on the United States' wide current account deficit. Worries the world's largest economy will find it increasingly hard to attract funds to finance its deficit have knocked the dollar to record lows against the euro and three-year lows against the yen this week. The yen found additional support on Friday from news of an unexpectedly strong reading in the Bank of Japan's influential quarterly ``tankan'' corporate sentiment survey, although wariness of yen-selling intervention...

AFP - The depreciation of the US dollar is eating up the gains made by OPEC members from high oil prices and has become a main factor in the decision making process of the cartel ahead of its next meeting. "Current prices are right, the dollar is weakening, its purchasing power is quite weak," Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali Al-Nuaimi said on his arrival in Vienna which hosts the headquarters of the 11-member Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries. "We want to keep the prices where they are ... within the purchasing power of old good dollar," he added. OPEC's president...

America can no longer propel the global economy. Unless other countries take over, argues Zanny Minton Beddoes, the economic outlook is grim and globalisation is at risk THE evidence is still tentative, but America's economy seems to be gaining momentum. Consumers have stepped up their spending; the housing market is still sizzling; even manufacturing is perking up. For months, Wall Street's number-crunchers have predicted that America's real GDP growth will reach more than 4% in the second half of this year. That figure now looks more like a forecast and less like wishful thinking. As the signs of an upturn...

It is a mystery why the Bush administration continues to press for full elimination of taxes on dividends when it has been clear for weeks that this is untenable, given the limited amount of revenue available under the congressional budget resolution, says Bruce Bartlett. By continuing to press for its plan -- no matter how stupidly it is implemented, perhaps with long phase-ins and a sunset provision -- it reduces the chances of enacting good supply-side tax measures such as those proposed by Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.). The Thomas plan calls for: o Cutting the tax...

After researching the demise of tech bubble... I have come to the conclusion that we will not see any significant resurgance in the IT industry for at least another 2 years. Threw the late 90's, most companies obviously spent a signifacnt amount of money upgrading and implementing software and infrastructure. But that was then and this is now and it's new projects that drive most of our careers, and right now were worried about the installation and implementation of new equipment. The fact of the matter is, money is going to determine when a company is going to purchase new...