Money Fest

Will Chrysler take off or crash again under its new 5 year plan?With all of the attention paid to the role of Wall Street in the financial crisis or to the political difficulties surrounding the health care reform bill, it is easy to forget that last year around this time some of the nation’s largest automakers were staring bankruptcy in the beady little eyes, and in some cases submitting to its stigmatizing but forgiving ways. Read more

Trillions of Dollars of Private Investment Is Waiting For Government Policies On Green To Invest In It...!I’m fascinated by the evolving relationship between climate change and money- on one level, there is no way that they can be separated. Climate change affects the entire framework of how we experience the Earth, while money is the system by which we gauge value within that framework. No matter what, the environment and money matters are inextricably mixed. Read more

Too many imports for the U.S.

The U.S. is having issues with money- and not surprisingly, the issues that most Americans are having- buying too much and more than we actually have money to afford, along with carrying a lot of debt that we don’t actually have the means of paying off anytime soon- and we are just not talking about it. The numbers are just in for November, and is seems that the U.S. trade deficit got much larger, ballooned is the term Reuters used, in part because oil went up over $5 per barrel and demand from consumers started going up again. It grew by 36.4 billion, or 9.7%, which is the largest deficit since last year in January, which could signal both healthy consumption in the economy and something to be worried about- we haven’t actually changed our habits at all. Read more

I mean, it's still a lot of money...Remember the financial crisis? Oh yeah, it’s not over. You know that friend or family member of yours who lost their job? You know those vacation plans you had to cancel because you need to save up a little more money? You know those Christmas presents you decided not to buy this year? You know that APR that went up on your credit card for now apparent reason? Yeah, everybody is going through tough times- including the executives at AIG. One of them just quit it’s so bad. Read more

OilWhen the American media talks about oil fields in the middle east, we usually talk about them in the way that assumes that they are relatively orderly and just sitting there in all their Jurassic glory waiting for someone to come along and dig, gulp, and burn the oil out of them. Maybe you picture the oil well drills that you’ve seen in Texas or somewhere like that, languidly pumping against a sunset backdrop, carefully churning out the highway blood of the American life. But you would be wrong. Not so much about the silhouette or the blood of American life part, but about the sitting and waiting patiently part. Nations fight over oil fields the way we in the U.S. fight over street corners to sell drugs, commercial time to sell products, or ad space in a crowded terminal to push wares. There is so much money in oil that it starts wars. Think about that. Read more

Gold and silver have taken some hits since they posted new yearly highs the first week of December.  For gold bugs, this dip in price is just another buying opportunity.  For those who bought in at the $1200+ mark, the recent $150 drop has been a test of their intestinal fortitude.  This most recent dip has served to shake many investors out of the market.  Some investors, who have been in for years, chose to pull the trigger and sell their precious metals at the high point.  Silver stayed below $20 per ounce, but it’s nearly impossible to find any of the white metal for sale for less than $20 per ounce.  Currently, it’s sitting above the $17 mark, and has been bouncing around this area for the past couple of weeks. Read more

Google- As Ubiquitous as the Morning CoffeeAs if we didn’t know already, Google is taking over. Google's mission? According to them, it’s “to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Fair enough- but of course, they are a business as well, and a good one at that. They reported $5.94 billion in revenue for 2009 Q3, up 7% from 2008. So they are doing well. And making investments in everything from YouTube to AOL to ClearWire. Basically, they know what they are doing and are doing it aggressively.

I’ve noticed 3 things lately that speak to another expansion that Google is going for, I would say in a big way: Read more

It makes the politics go round...It’s been a while since I did one of my politics is money posts, and just today a headline caught my eye that makes me double-down on that certainty- Reuters is reporting that the senate has just approved more than $600 billion in new military spending. So the message is- if you want more than half a trillion dollars for the military, no problem, we’ll get that through without a problem. If you want something like that for health care, prepare for a drawn out debate and question marks even after that. Frustrating.

The bill also carries provisions to extend jobless aid and sends money to supplement Medicare payments and rates for another 2 months, but the thrust of it is to fund military spending in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s a pretty simple jump to say, “Where are our priorities?” Read more

The DOW surged today on news that existing home sales were more than 10% higher in October than in September.  On the surface, this is great economic news.  But if you look at the situation a little more closely, the DOW’s rebound today is more of a matter of how the news was framed rather than the story behind the spike in home sales.  I argue that the good news is really no news at all, as it reflects a broken economy and people wanting to take advantage of stimulus money. Read more

The Bank of Japan has announced for the third straight month that signs of grown are on the horizon.  The Japanese consumer index is still down by a couple of percentage points from last summer, and the deflation is expected to continue well into 2010, but nearly every other indicator is pointing to a gradual recovery from the world wide economic slowdown. Read more