economist

Mark to Market is a topic I have written about previously.
You can read about them here. (…)

What is left in the governments bag of tricks to get the banks back on track?  One topic that I wrote about — 5 months ago — has popped up this past week with more and more frequency.  We are finally starting to hear more and more chatter about relaxing "Mark to the market" regulations. (…)

The driver behind the whole economy is you, the consumer.
And everywhere you look, the media will remind you that we are "supposed" to be in a depression. (…)

Economic recessions and economic depressions

Since 1854, the United States has been through 32 economic cycles, one cycle lasting (average) nearly 5 years.  That's not the length of a recession, that's an entire economic cycle.  This includes some recessions/depressions in the 1800's that lasted 3 years, another for 6 years and a long depression that lasted from 1873 through 1896, a period of 23 years. (…)

Steve Forbes wrote an article back in October for his magazine. (…)

How can so many people be so wrong for so long?
It wasn't all that long ago where we had gas lines, a prime rate that reached 20%, unemployment reaching 12%, and inflation at 13%. (…)

The Treasury announced they will begin to inject capital (money) into banks, under terms created under the bailout bill.  This article will try to walk through, in English, what this all means. (…)

Sometimes, trying to get your arms around a gigantic number (for example, the area of earth covered by land) just takes time. (…)

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is the youngest governor in Alaskan history — and — the first woman governor of Alaska. (…)

There was an article distributed nationwide, written by the Associated Press, and carried locally in the Asbury Park Press on March 22, 2008. (…)

I've labeled this “the yikes spiral” because typically this happens when certain markets are in free fall. (…)

I'm not an economist (thank goodness!), but it's just my opinion that episodes like what happened in 1998 (and even in 2001 and in 2002) — when the Fed stepped in and changed interest rates — were more situations of market "liquidity" issues. (…)