Finance

5 Stocks To Watch This Week

(Photo Credit: Maurizio Pesce) Tuesday – Darden Restaurants Darden Restaurants (DRI) which owns several casual dining chains including its crown jewel Olive Garden, is set to report 3rd quarter earnings on Tuesday, December 16 before the opening bell. Promotional deals including Olive Garden’s eyebrow raising 30 day unlimited pasta pass are expected to drive sales higher…

Microsoft Joined By Almost Everyone In Fight For Privacy

Microsoft has been joined by various Tech companies such as Apple, Amazon, Cisco, eBay and Verizon along with media companies such as ABC, CNN, Fox News and the Guardian, the largest business organizations, such as the US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, as well as privacy groups and leading computer scientists who have all filed…

The Answer To The Unemployment Problem Is More Jobs

by L. Randall Wray Dean Baker, everyone’s favorite progressive economist (mine, too), has an interesting take on our unemployment problem. Give more paid vacations. The idea is that if all the employed work less, employers will need to hire the unemployed to produce what the already employed won’t be producing while sunning themselves on Florida’s beaches….

The Great Generic Drug Rip-Off

Big Pharma has followed the only avenue left to reap billion-dollar profits: jack up the price of generics. What happens when rapacious cartels run out of billion-dollar-profit products? They jack up the price of what was previously low-cost. And why are they able to raise prices by 388% to 8,000% at will? Because they can. That’s the whole…

Indonesian Telco Indosat Launches ATM Card To Go With Ewallet

Photo Credit: Tech In Asia – Alexander Rusli (center left), CEO of Indosat Indonesian telco company Indosat, in collaboration with Qatar National Bank (QNB), launched a mobile money ATM card this week,  CNN Indonesia reports. The card is integrated with Indosat’s ewallet feature Dompetku, which now claims to be the first mobile money provider in Indonesia with a parallel ATM…

Cheniere Energy To Raise $11.5B For LNG Export Facility

Cheniere Energy, Inc. (LNG – Snapshot Report) plans to raise $11.5 billion in debt for its Corpus Christi export facility and has engaged 18 financial institutions for the same. Following the announcement, shares of Cheniere gained around 1.5% on the NYSE. The company plans to use the funds for development of its Corpus Christi Liquefaction Project in Texas….

When Central-Planning Fails: “Stimulative” Chinese Ra

China faces epic unintended consequences in its efforts to ‘manage’ everything. As Bloomberg rhetorically asks, what if a central bank cut interest rates and borrowing costs rose? Well that didn’t work out as expected, eh? The reason is simple – the leveraged-speculative surge into Chinese stocks triggered by the “easy” rate-cuts sparked a major rotation from bonds into…

T2108 Update – Volatility Drops Even After Major Market Breakdown...

T2108 Status: 29.7%T2107 Status: 39.6%VIX Status: 20.4 (actually DROPPED 3.1%)General (Short-term) Trading Call: Fresh buys only on close above 50DMA or oversold conditionsActive T2108 periods: Day #40 over 20%, Day #38 over 30%, Day #2 under 40% (underperiod), Day #4 under 50%, Day #8 under 60%, Day #110 under 70% Reference Charts (click for view of…