Sentient Money

There is one thing we cannot allow to happen after this bailout.  We cannot allow the perpetrators to escape unscathed.  This was brought on by two distinct groups.
Money Men
We must ensure that any solution has strong wording to ensure the money men do not run off with their new found capital.  The government/taxpayer needs to [...]

Consumer sales are starting to tank.  Just look at the auto companies (all the numbers are drops in sales):
 
Standard
·         Ford Motors 34%
·         Honda reported a 24%
·         Toyota U.S. 32.3%
·         Chrysler U.S. 33%
·         Volvo 51.8%
·         General Motors 15.6% (expected 26%)
·         Nissan Sales 37%
·         Volkswagen sales 9.4%
·         Hyundai Motor’s U.S. 25%
·         Kia U.S. sales [...]

In his new article “Drill, Baby, Drill” Stein spouts nonsense with just enough facts to make everyone think he is on to something with off-shore drilling.  He suggests that more off-shore drilling will be a major factor in gaining our energy independence.  He couldn’t be more wrong.
We, the United States, only have 1.5%-2% of proven [...]

We get this bailout.  Luckily people are actually calling their Senators and Representatives and telling them in no uncertain terms they do not want it.  Finally!  Congress is making the correct decision by not voting for it.
Why is this a good decision? Let us take a look:

There is no way we, or Congress, know all [...]

Volatility
This week is out of control.  As a result, there are fascinating new highs and lows, along with some very interesting events.
Stock market volatility is very high right now.  The VIX (see definition at the bottom) measures this volatility and highs in the VIX suggest too many that a bottom could be near.  The following [...]

Nouriel Roubini (economist at NYU) appears to be the man with his finger on the pulse of this crisis.  He has been way ahead of the curve on many issues:

Predicting a very bad housing bubble collapse
Predicting that subprime would not be contained and it would spread through the financial system
Predicting Freddie and Fannie would get [...]

I mentioned Nike in my previous post, because they report earnings this week.  Today, Nike announced a share buy back program for roughly 15-20% of the outstanding shares.  The timing of this announcement is very interesting considering how close it is to their earnings announcement.  A bit of good news before a bad announcement?

This market is a mess right now.  It is entirely made up of extremes and there is no way to predict how this will fall over the next week.  Could it continue to go up?  Maybe, but probably not in massive moves like it has done over the past two days.  Could it go down?  [...]

Every news program has some half-wit finance expert with their own theory of how this all happened (CNBC being one of the most egregious offenders). Most of these theories are only vaguely based in fact and look for someone outside of the financial industry to blame.  Well, I plan on providing a simple explanation of [...]

Yes, the title is a little over the top, but her recent comments on Larry King Live show how little she knows about the markets and economics
Larry King: A few months ago, you said on this very show that you would be worried if there was another big government bailout. It’s now happening. Should the [...]