According to reports, one of the first acts of the Republican congress will be to fire Doug Elmendorf, current director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, because he won’t use “dynamic scoring” for his economic projections. Dynamic scoring is the magical-mystery math Republicans have been pushing since they came up with supply-side “trickle-down” economics. It’s based on…
All Ords Index Strong gains over the past six trading sessions sees it coming in close proximity to resistance. The buying has been on low relative volume so the rally may pause at 5520 points before market direction is re-established. All Ords index Qantas (QAN) Breaking out from the bullish pennant. Qantas (QAN) Ramsay Health…
by Kent Moors Oil prices are struggling to stabilize in the wake of what some are calling a “black swan” event. It refers to a theory popularized by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a well-known risk analyst and statistician. A black swan is an outlier, a development that fails to follow any normal pattern. According to Taleb,…
Should the federal government be spending billions of dollars to pump up Wal-Mart’s profits? I know that question sounds really bizarre, but unfortunately this is essentially what is happening. Because Wal-Mart does not pay them enough money, hundreds of thousands of Wal-Mart employees enroll in Medicaid, food stamps and other social welfare programs. Even though…
Last week was a fairly typical Christmas holiday-split week, marked by weak volume before and after the day off, and a slight gain on par with the beginning of an average Santa Claus rally (not to mention the tepid bullishness in front of the Christmas break). Though the trend was up more or less, take last…
The EUR/USD pair fell during the session on Friday as per usual, but as you can see did and make a fresh, new low. That being the case, the market looks as if it’s ready to continue to go lower but doesn’t quite have enough momentum yet. That doesn’t mean that it won’t though, because after all…
The Trading Money Center New York bankers did a brilliant sales job on policymakers, central bankers, and economists that the way to stabilize the world economy was to securitize everything. This combined with what they called the “Originate and Distribute Model” would lead to the promised-land in finance. Indeed, financial intermediation has changed dramatically over the last…
Follow the money is a good start–but what matters going forward is income, and most especially, net income and disposable income. Debt is important, money/capital flow is important, but when push comes to shove, all that matters is having net income/disposable income: to service debts, to invest, to spend. Debt can be substituted for income, but not for…
