The Eurozone crisis calmed a little now that the European summit has agreed on a plan, but for how many days, and what about Greece? The agreement reached in Brussels raised stock markets around the world but only because the deal exceeded expectations, and that’s only because expecations were already priced into the market and […]
Spain has exhibited considerable economic denial about the state of its banks of late, saying it will need no bailout, in order to keep the drain in Spain from becoming plainly worse. The Spanish government is caught in a vicious circle as it spins down the debt drain, which it tries to offset with verbal counter-spin […]
Greece came together and fell apart in the same week; Spain went into free-fall; Germany’s Merkel dithered as if she owns time, itself … all while U.S. politicians did nothing but complain and campaign. While politicians all over the world could not agree on solutions, many of the world’s largest banks were substantially downgraded. […]
The euro crisis dominated economic news and set the stage for the summer I have been anticipating. Stocks fell; unemployment climbed; sales dragged; manufacturing sluffed off; consumer spending receded. Interest on the U.S. debt also ticked upward when the annual deficit soared over the trillion-dollar barrier for the fourth straight year. And that was just one week!  […]
Has anyone noticed the silence? Week after week the news screeches like relentless train wheels about the scurrying of European leaders in and out of meetings to resolve the latest failure of their efforts to round up their endless troubles. Yet, every week, at the same time, Â you hear no sound of U.S. leaders scurrying […]
Anyone can criticize while having no better ideas.  In fact, I would argue that, if you cannot put forward reasonable alternatives, you might not be qualified to criticize those who are, at least, trying something. In that spirit, I want to scope out a new economic recovery program vastly different from the economic plan the U.S. adopted […]
Bullheaded optimism presses on in the news. This week the Economic Times reported… “The bullish momentum on Wall Street extended Tuesday’s gains, when the Dow rose 0.2 percent, snapping a four-day losing streak.” Perhaps they mean the market is now “climbing at the speed of an ox cart.” It nearly crashed last week, completing the erasure of […]
To the Financial Editors and Reporters of this nation: One thing that defies sense to me is how nearly all of you have demonstrated an overwhelming tendency to write more optimistically about the economy than the facts deserve. I can understand why the government does it and to some extent why economists do it (in […]
You are currently browsing the The Great Recession Blog archives for June, 2012.
