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The Biggest Losers Of The Past 5 Years Joe WeisenthalJanuary 26, 2013, 9:42 AMYou could argue that economic policy makers have done a disappointing job over the past five years, trying to get advanced economies back on their feet. Growth is still slow in the US, and job creation is subpar. But in a sense, the past five years have been a huge vindication for mainstream economic approaches, as these huge experiments in recovery have not had the nasty effects that so many people would have predicted. Consider all of the people who have spent the last few years talking...

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35) - - FBI agents from the Washington, D.C. field office have raided a building in downtown Orlando. The building raided is the Colonial Bank building on Pine Street. The FBI is working with the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program which was established by the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. FOX 35 has a crew at the scene. Check back for updates.

Rate tumbles 3.7 percent in a week, 53.4 percent in a year Average spot rates collected by ocean carriers for a 40-foot container from Hong Kong to Los Angeles fell to a new low of $949 this week, down by 53.4 percent from $2,036 a year ago, according to data compiled by Drewry Shipping Consultants in London for the weekly Container Rate Benchmark published by The Journal of Commerce. The rate for the week starting May 18 is thought to be the lowest rate ever. It was down 3.7 percent from $986 last week, when it fell below the $1,000...

Contrary to the claims of current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Federal Reserve Chairman Benjamin Bernanke, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and so many economists, the fundamental reason that our economy is falling apart is NOT subprime mortgages, or insolvent banks. The problems are far deeper than that, because such things are only symptoms of the underlying disease. History teaches us that economic depression and/or hyperinflations are NOT caused by banks or the money supply. Such events, whether they occured in ancient Rome, or the modern United States of America, are caused by a perception, by the People, that their leaders...

The U.S. economy contracted at a steeper-than-expected pace in the first quarter, weighed down by sharp declines in exports and business inventories, according government data on Wednesday that showed the economy was still deep in recession. Gross domestic product, which measures total goods and services output within U.S. borders, dropped at a 6.1 percent annual rate, the Commerce Department said, after shrinking 6.3 percent in the fourth quarter.

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Tipping Point for U.S. Treasuries? If the day comes when the U.S. Treasury bond auction fails, it will be too late to react. With some help from the mass media, the situation is likely to get very ugly. Markets move faster than ever and once a tipping point is reached, you’ll be like every other sheep at the slaughterhouse. Seeing the signals and preparing for this potential calamity may end up being the next major investing opportunity or wealth destructive event of our lives. Because the magnitude of its potential impact is so great (some say 50% devaluation of the...

<p>The Great Depression of the 1930s was the most momentous economic event of the 20th century. It was a proximate cause of World War II, having fed the Nazis' rise in Germany. It inspired a new American welfare system as a response to mass misery. Everywhere, it discredited unsupervised capitalism. Given today's economic crisis, our renewed fascination with the Depression is natural. But we ought not stretch the parallels too far.</p>

Yellen says policymakers need to pop bubbles By Laura Mandaro, MarketWatch Last update: 8:01 p.m. EDT April 16, 2009 Comments: 99 SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- San Francisco Federal Reserve President Janet Yellen said late Tuesday that central banks need to deal with bubbles in asset prices before they get too big, although monetary policy may not be the best tool for the job. Letting them go unchecked "can lead to grave consequences," she said in prepared remarks for a conference held in honor of economist Hyman Minsky in New York. "Episodes of exuberance, like the ones that led to our...

In a speech this week summarizing his administration's economic policies, President Obama grossly overstated the support these policies enjoy by claiming, "economists on the left and right agree that the last thing the government should do during a recession is cut back on spending." There are a great many economists who were surprised to learn that, apparently, they now agree with the President. Reading straight from the Keynesian playbook, Obama justified the creation of multi-trillion dollar deficits by asserting that the government must fill the spending void left by the contraction of consumer and business spending. As one of those...

To be sure, the dollar’s strength has surprised a lot of people, including me. And it’s tough to bet against the greenback when other currencies are looking even worse. Now, however, the dollar may be coming up against some simple but brutal math — foreign central banks may not be able to finance much of the 2009 U.S. fiscal deficit. The U.S. needs to borrow $3.25 trillion this fiscal year, according to Goldman Sachs. President Obama is asking Congress to approve a whopping $3.55 trillion budget for 2010, and that may not be enough — the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office...

Currency swaps are of reciprocal currency agreements (swap facilities) between central banks. The officially purpose of such agreements are explicitly of short term and are intended to finance short-term capital flows believed to be seasonal or temporary in nature. Swap agreements are also misused to facilitate large interventions in foreign exchange markets, which is what is occurring with the dollar today. How currency swaps work The easiest way to understand currency swaps is to think of them as two separate zero-interest loans. For example, let’s say the fed and the ECB arrange a 80 billion euros ($107 billion) swap. The...

Snip As veteran market observer Richard Russell noted following a tribute Saturday evening, “one question that was asked repeatedly was ‘What is the difference between investors' sentiment now and that which existed at the 1974 bottom?' My answer was that there is a lot of complacency today. In fact, many leading analysts are already saying that ‘this is a new bull market.' … At the 1974 bottom, the sentiment was the opposite -- people and funds were black-bearish. Nobody talked about ‘the danger of missing this advance.' In fact, when I turned bullish in late-1974 I received hate-letters and angry...

Back in the early stages of the financial crisis, wags joked that our trade with China had turned out to be fair and balanced after all: They sold us poison toys and tainted seafood; we sold them fraudulent securities. But these days, both sides of that deal are breaking down. On one side, the world’s appetite for Chinese goods has fallen off sharply. China’s exports have plunged in recent months and are now down 26 percent from a year ago. On the other side, the Chinese are evidently getting anxious about those securities. But China still seems to have unrealistic...

Goldman Sachs reports better-than-expected profits this quarter. Wells Fargo cleared record profits last week. The President, understandably, points to signs of hope and encourages Americans to be optimistic about the economy. But when do we move from healthy confidence to a confidence game? The banks are reporting profits thanks to massive infusions of taxpayer bailout funds. It's simply silly to be lulled by cheery-sounding reports when the institutions are actually insolvent. At some point we have to take a clear-eyed look at the massive failure of our financial system. Ignoring it won't make it go away. That's more or less...

China is the largest foreign holder of U.S. government bonds. But, instead of buying more of those bonds as our skyrocketing national debt leads to more bonds being issued, China has been selling some of its U.S. government bonds this year. The Chinese are no fools. They know that all this unbridled spending — even when it is called "investment" — means that inflation is coming. That in turn means that the dollars with which U.S. government bonds will be paid off will be worth a lot less than the dollars with which the bonds were bought. Governments around the...

Q: What are the latest cardboard shipment figures telling us about our economy? A: The patient is still sick — and no sign of recovery has shown up in the box numbers so far. According to the Fibre Box Association, shipments fell 3.5 percent in the second quarter of last year, compared with a year earlier. Then they fell 3.3 percent in the third quarter. After that, the bottom fell out: Shipments fell 9.9 percent in the fourth quarter compared with a year earlier. This year corrugated box shipments have fallen, on a year-over-year basis, 5.1 percent in January and...

Jim Willie Ph.D. is a well-placed statistical analyst in market research and retail forecasting. Since I first started reading his articles in early 2007, which was before our current economic crisis was a blip on the radar screen, he accurately predicted the severity of our current financial crisis many months in advance and how the events would unfold. In his latest article, he speaks about what one of his trusted colleagues: This message was just received by a trusted colleague. This summer could be very bloody, in terms of global retribution against the United States, its debt peddlers. The gloves...

Time To Breakup Goldman Sachs It's time to breakup Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and for that matter any bank or holding company deemed too big to fail. It's not just the "too big to fail" hazard that is troubling, it's also the power these corporations have and the potential to abuse that power that is also troubling. /snip Readers know that I am not a subscriber to Plunge Protection Team (PPT) theory. However, I am open to the idea that it is possible for Broker Dealers or Bank Holding Companies to be trading their own accounts ahead of customer accounts and/or...

And you think we'll all be ok, and Obama can sustain his little game with spending eh? Treasury receipts say otherwise: Current year deficit thus far is nearly $1 trillion dollars - half way in. Worse, monthly receipts have fallen off a cliff, down nearly thirty percent compared to last year (for March.) From January to March last year Treasury took in $540 billion (rounded to the billions.) This period is important because it brackets the 1120 corporate tax return period, and this includes "settlement" of those obligations. This year the same three months took in $442 billion, a decrease...