US Federal Reserve

It’s hard to believe that it’s been nearly two years since we first wrote about the game of “hide the ball” that Junkmeister Ben Bernanke is playing. Finally, Congress is getting some admissions out of the Federal Reserve about the gusher of cash that was opened up when the insides fell out of Wall Street’s Ponzi scheme. Remember, you read it here first!  read more »

There was a popular book in 1973 – A Random Walk Down Wall Street. (by Burton Malkiel, now in its 9th edition, 2007) – that pooh-pooh’ed the idea that one investor’s stock picks could always be better than another investor’s stock picks.  read more »

Warren Buffet, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, and Henry “Hank” Paulson, former Treasury Secretary, were guests of honor at the annual meeting of the Omaha Chamber of Commerce this week.  read more »

This week, Time magazine named Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke “Person of the Year 2009.” CNBC’s panel of experts gave Bernanke the “Man of the Year” title (no misogynists there!) in 2008. And well they should since their sponsors are among the biggest recipients of the Paulson-Bernanke-Geithner bailout.  read more »

There is considerable discussion about tasking the Federal Reserve Board with monitoring and even taking actions to prevent asset bubbles. Before they move too far, the Fed needs to understand what happened in the housing bubble to which they responded after the world economy was decimated.  read more »

Shortly after I told you that Bloomberg.com is reporting a running total of the money the U.S. government has pledged and spent for bailouts and economic stimulus, reporters Mark Pittman and Bob Ivry updated the totals: So far, $12.8 trillion has been pledged – an additional $1.2 trillion over the earlier report.  read more »

Don’t worry about China taking over the US economy. Despite what all the talking heads on TV and the radio talk shows are saying, there isn’t another country out there that hasn’t been hammered at least as badly as we have by the financial meltdown. The problem with any other country attacking the US dollar, for example, is that they are all holding a lot of US dollars. You probably remember last year they were worried about the fact that we import so many goods that we have big “trade imbalances” – meaning that we buy more of their goods than they buy of ours.  read more »