Fourth quarter GDP (5.7% annualized) blew away everyone’s expectations, consumer confidence is up, manufacturing’s up, and most importantly; Microsoft, Amazon, Intel, IBM, and something like 86% of the rest of the companies reporting have either met (8%) or exceeded (78%) earnings estimates. If you’d have told me all this on top of last week’s huge [...]

Continue Reading >>

Jobs The economy (and a politician or two) needs companies to start hiring. And while things are picking up, businesses are scared to death over what the future holds in terms of taxes and regulations. They’re therefore reluctant to hire anyone, at least on a permanent basis. I would be too… China The world’s all [...]

Continue Reading >>

DayPortPlayer.newPlayer({articleID:”105087″,bannerAdConDefID:”8″,videoAdObjectID:”7″,videoAdConDefID:”3″,playVideoAds:”false”,autoPlay:”false”,categoryID:”10159″,accPos:”CCTVI.VIDEO.LOCAL”,accSite:”KGPE”,playerInstanceID:”27574A89-06D1-CD92-4444-22719C5099EC”,domain:”kgpe.dayport.com”});

Continue Reading >>

Facing the coming mid-term elections and feeling a poll-inspired sense of desperation, our chosen few are in dire need of a villain. They need to champion themselves against a bad-guy and, in the absence of any, they will indeed manufacture one. Today their synthetic scoundrel would be Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner – his crime being [...]

Continue Reading >>

Robert Prechter, “the man who predicted the 1987 market crash”, in a CNBC interview during the noon hour (pac time) predicted that we’re in for “at least another large wave down”. Sue Herrera, as I type, credits his comments for wiping out today’s gains. Just for fun I went to CXO Advisory Group’s Guru Grades [...]

Continue Reading >>

A few random thoughts inspired by last week’s events: A new guy’s hired to run the show. Business plunges fifty percent (i.e., he fails miserably). The board fires the new guy. The parent company received “taxpayer” bail out money. The new guy walks away with a $45 million parting bonus. How come (according to the [...]

Continue Reading >>