Archive for July 31st, 2009

Friday Failures

The FDIC was wielding its deadly scythe throughout the land today. It managed to cut down five banks today. Here are the links: Mutual Bank, Harvey, Illionis FirstbankAmericano, Elizabeth, New Jersey Peoples Community Bank, Westchester, Ohio Integrity Bank, Jupiter, Ohio First State Bank of Altus, Altus, Oklahoma If you’re keeping track that makes 69 for […]

How Defense Saved Second Quarter GDP

I bought into the meme floating around earlier today and credited fiscal stimulus with playing a part in the better Q2 GDP numbers. It turns out that government spending helped a lot but not money being spent under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. It came from the Defense Department. From the WSJ Real Time […]

“Cash For Clunkers” Crashing Into The Bureaucracy

Why am I not surprised that the “cash for clunkers” program may already be a bureaucratic hairball. A reader who uses the pseudonym Jaxon left a comment that directed me to the Ex-Car Salesman Blog. He has some interesting behind the scenes info. First, because of the popularity, there is a huge backlog of paperwork. […]

The Recession Bottoms Out

Here is the requisite Q2 GDP post, just keep in mind that , as you will shortly see, these numbers are subject to significant adjustment. The headline number is that GDP registered a decline of 1% in the April through June quarter. In the first quarter GDP declined 6.4% which represents an upward revision to […]