Posts Tagged ‘Add new tag’

CDS And A U.S. Default: What’s The Point?

John Carney has a really smart post over at Clusterstock regarding the pricing of credit default swaps for Campbell Soup, JPMorgan and the US government. In case you haven’t been following all of this, the cost to insure credit risk on Campbell Soup and this country are essentially the same while the cost to insure […]

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 […]

The Social Security Safety Net Has Big Holes

The Trustees for Social Security and Medicare issued their annual report today and it does not make for nice reading.  Social Security is now forecast to begin paying out more than it receives in 2016 and be insolvent in 2037. Previously it was expected to be revenue negative in 2017 and insolvent in 2041. Medicare is […]

Is Obama Digging A Hole On Jobs?

I’m sure it pained them but kudos to the New York Times for pointing out the incredible escalation in the number of jobs that the Obama team claims to be able to create. Recall that we started out on the campaign trail with a promise to create 1 million jobs. After the election we heard about 2.5 million […]

Asia’s Export Economies-A Failed Model?

The Wall Street Journal has a dry but important piece this morning on the decline in Chinese manufacturing. The numbers that the Chinese are reporting may or may not accurately reflect the reality of the current state of the Chinese economy but even if puffed up they point to an economy heading towards recession. Which […]

How Deep Is Emanuel In On The Blagojevich Affair

What do you think the odds are that Rahm Emmanuel is still the Chief of Staff for Obama come the end of January. I’ll take bets that it is close to zero. The press reports are heating up and drawing all sorts of connected dots between the erstwhile confidant of Obama and the indicted governor. […]