General News

What does our economic future hold? Great question, right? Is our economy truly rebounding as much as our equity markets may portend or are we riding high predominantly due to government stimulus similar to an economic anabolic steroid? Is our future as bleak as the numerous and sundry doomsayers would proclaim? Does it appear as if our economy has a split personality or is operating in two different realms? Do you often wonder what others—especially those in Washington—may be seeing if the economic landscape in your backyard remains very challenging? I continue to believe our overall economy is and will continue to operate with a ‘walking pneumonia’ type condition. The massive debt burdens at all levels of our economy continue to serve as a drag and inhibit any sort of truly robust rebound. Let’s navigate and take the pulse of Rick Davis of Consumer Metrics Institute which captures real time discretionary online consumer activity.  Rick and his team recently put forth a fabulous...

Did you see 60 Minutes? This craziness is part of the "Fraudclosure" scandal that has been well documented by Barry Ritholtz over at The Big Picture so I’m not going to spend too much time on it other than to look at the overall trend. 37,000 people went to an event in Los Angeles for people who are in foreclosure and wanted to know their rights, 12,000 people came to a similar event in Miami, law firms are beginning to take cases on contingency in exchange for liens on the homes, which can become very valuable if the law firm successfully shoos the bank away from the Mortgage. LA and Miami are big cities so let’s say that, nationwide, only 200,000 of the 4M homeowners facing foreclosure are able to challenge their loans and let’s say only 50% are successful. That’s still 100,000 mortgages that may be written off and, at $200,000 per average mortgage, that’s $20Bn worth of bank write-offs to...

From CNBC: Moody’s Cuts Rating on Portuguese Sovereign Bonds Credit rating agency Moody’s cut Portugal’s sovereign debt by one notch on Tuesday, saying it believed an incoming government would need to seek financing support from the European Union as a matter of urgency. Moody’s cut its rating on Portugal’s long-term government bonds to BAA1 from A3 and said the country’s debt was still under negative review, with further downgrades dependent on Lisbon’s ability to secure medium-term funding. …”…Moody’s believes that the government’s current cost of funding is nearing a level that is unsustainable, even in the short-term,” the ratings agency said on a statement. …Portugal’s president dissolved parliament last week and set June 5 as the date for the next polls, meaning the country is effectively in limbo for two more months. …While Portugal can probably go on funding itself for the next eight weeks – it has to refinance 4.3 billion euros ($6.1 billion) of debt in April and 4.9...

The conditions in UK continue to be the source of surprise for investors and policy makers alike! With the rise in sterling and recent appreciation to hover around its fair average for now around $1.60 trade still found good support. The trade deficit in February unexpectedly contracted on record surge in exports on the month which helped ease some of the woes surrounding the outlook for growth in the United Kingdom.  The Visible Trade Deficit declined to 6776 million pounds from an upside revised previous of 7789 million pounds from the reported 7057 million. The data were stronger than expected and opposed the expected widening in the deficit to 8000 million pounds.  The trade deficit with Non-EU nations fell sharply to 2849 million pounds from a revised 4210 million from 4173 million and also opposed to the expected widening to 4900 million. In result the total trade deficit shrunk to 2443 million pounds from a revised 3858 million from 2950 million and the...