Very Interesting Analytics "Why it sucks to be middle class"

If you are seeking to understand some very important aspects of this recession in terms of numbers, income and job growth or lack thereof, this video really captures it in it's simplest form. If you have a business and want to get some basic analytics in terms of the buying power of the consumer rignt now this really sums it up. From CNN Money Reports. "Why it sucks to be middle class"

Warning From S&P on Munis

By JEANNETTE NEUMANN
Downgrades of bonds issued by state and local governments could increase this year, according to a report to be issued Monday by credit-rating agency Standard & Poor's.

The $2.9 trillion municipal-bond market has been thrown into tumult in recent months, in part because of growing fears that some state and local governments will default on their debt. Investors have pulled out record amounts from muni-bond mutual funds, while the yields on muni bonds, which move inversely to price, have hit their highest levels since the depths of the financial crisis.

A downgrade of a government borrower would likely put downward pressure on the price of its bonds, resulting in higher borrowing costs and potential losses for investors.

Standard & Poor's says it expects greater muni-market volatility this year, but cautions that a rise in borrowing costs wouldn't add to municipalities' credit concerns unless bond yields were to surge.

While rating downgrades may increase in 2011 compared with recent years, S&P says the majority of state and local government borrowers will maintain their medium to high investment-grade ratings. Read More

Bonds by Jack Hough (Author Archive)
$125,000 Muni Warning Yields Backlash
State and local government bonds have broadly fallen in price since late September, when celebrity analyst Meredith Whitney began publicizing a 600-page report predicting widespread defaults and a new financial crisis. Whitney recently told interviewers that the market turmoil is validating her thesis, but a rising chorus of dissenters say her statements are alarmist and unfounded, and that the fear they've helped stir is further straining municipal budgets by raising the cost of borrowing.

The matter is made more complicated by the unusual secrecy surrounding Whitney's report. Many key municipal players say they've been unable to obtain a copy. Some say Whitney's firm quoted them a price that they found shocking.

"I think it violates what are considered to be today's standards of research and transparency," says Iris J. Lav of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a think tank. Lav and co-author Elizabeth McNichol published their own report last Thursday countering some of Whitney's arguments without naming her. Strained budgets are a "cyclical problem that ultimately will ease as the economy recovers," they argue, and long-term problems like pension shortfalls are fixable. According to Lav, state and local debt payments total only 4% to 5% of spending in most states, with no state over 7%.

Lav hasn't seen the Whitney report because "they want $25,000" for a copy. That might have been a relative bargain. A municipal researcher at one major financial firm says his employer was quoted $125,000 and declined to buy a copy.

Read more: Analyst's $125,000 Muni Warning Yields Backlash - SmartMoney.com

Bankruptcies Drop as Companies Heal

By Matt Krantz, USA TODAYSome companies can finally say, "Rumors of our bankruptcy were greatly exaggerated."
Despite widespread speculation the credit crunch was going to grind up whole swaths of companies and force them into bankruptcy, companies are showing their mettle and are defying these dire predictions.

A dramatic drop-off in the number of companies going bankrupt is one of the most stark signs yet of how the Darwinian killing off of businesses is easing as the economy heals.

Perhaps more important for the future, though, is that the number of companies at immediate risk of failing is also sharply declining. This strength of companies pulling out of the recession gives further credence to the belief that despite the economy's problems, there's a recovery going on. Continue Reading Story Here

AP: Surge in Bankruptcies Shows Signs of SlowingRALEIGH, N.C. (AP) —The growth in bankruptcies around the country slowed significantly in 2010 from its breakneck pace in recent years, with about a dozen states recording a decline in filings from consumers and businesses, according to an Associated Press tally Tuesday.
Filings collected from the nation's 90 bankruptcy districts showed 113,000 bankruptcies in December, down 3% nationwide from the same month a year ago. That followed a similar year-over-year decline for the the month of October. It had been four years since an individual month showed such an improvement. Continue Reading
FINANCIAL TROUBLES
A state-by-state ranking of percentage change in bankruptcy filings last year from 2009.

1. Hawaii 22%

2. Utah 19%

3. California 19%

4. Arizona 18%

5. Colorado 14%

6. Florida 13%

7. Wyoming 13%

8. Maryland 12%

9. New Jersey 12%

10. Alaska 11%

11. Massachusetts 11%

12. Montana 11%

13. Connecticut 10%

14. Illinois 10%

15. District of Columbia 9%

16. Delaware 9%

17. Wisconsin 9%

18. Oregon 9%

19. Washington 8%

20. Maine 8%

21. Idaho 8%

22. South Dakota 7%

23. Rhode Island 7%

24. New Hampshire 7%

25. New Mexico 7%

26. Missouri 6%

27. Georgia 5%

28. Vermont 5%

29. Texas 5%

30. Nebraska 5%

31. Oklahoma 4%

32. North Dakota 4%

33. Pennsylvania 4%

34. Minnesota 4%

35. Kansas 2%

36. Virginia 2%

37. Louisiana 2%

38. Nevada 1%

39. Ohio unch.

40. Arkansas unch.

41. Michigan -1%

42. New York -2%

43. Indiana -2%

44. Alabama -2%

45. Mississippi -3%

46. Kentucky -3%

47. Iowa -3%

48. North Carolina -4%

49. South Carolina -5%

50. Tennessee -8%

51. West Virginia -10%

Timothy Geithner, U.S. Treasury Secretary on Charlie Rose

I watched this recently, a very interesting segment....Check out the video here
Timothy Geithner on Charlie Rose


Charlie Rose Talks to Timothy Geithner
The U.S. Treasury Secretary discusses the global recovery, the ongoing American mortgage mess, and tensions with China over its currency

By Charlie Rose as in Bloomberg Businessweek

October 18, 2010

Tell me where the global economy is right now and what you expect to happen next.
The world's now healing. And it's growing. The IMF expects the world as a whole to expand at a rate of a little over 4 percent next year, which is not amazing but much better than we would have thought possible. But that overall number hides huge difference across regions. China, India, Brazil, emerging markets in Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, they've got a long period of very rapid growth ahead of them. In Europe and Japan, growth is much weaker. In the U.S., the picture is mixed. Most economists think we're growing at a rate of about 2 percent. But the private forecasters say they expect the economy to strengthen gradually into 2011 and grow at about 3 percent. That's not fast enough for us. We want it to be faster.

We are, in my judgment, a substantial way through the process of healing, of fixing the things that were broken. The financial sector is much less leveraged, we've had a traumatic, huge adjustment in house prices across the country, and private savings rates have already increased quite significantly. Those things are really important for future growth, and they're encouraging. But they do mean that we're not growing as fast as we'd like, and I think Washington's got more work to do to try to provide some support for the economy.

Should there be a national moratorium on foreclosures?
What you're seeing in housing is a national tragedy, still very, very difficult. A lot of people were taken advantage of, and a lot of people were too optimistic about what they could afford. Now you've seen some banks suspend the foreclosure process so they can make sure that they're not causing any injustice to borrowers, and that's very important. But a national moratorium would be very damaging to exactly the kind of people we're trying to protect. We want to make sure we're holding [lenders] accountable. But we also want to make sure that we're not going to make the problem worse.

"It's The Economy, Stupid" Courtesy of SmallCapInvestor.com

"It's The Economy, Stupid" Ian Wyatt | SmallCapInvestor Daily | September 30, 2010 1:33pm EDT

When James Carville hung a sign with the phrase, "It's The Economy, Stupid" on Bill Clinton's Little Rock campaign headquarters in 1992 the message to campaign insiders was pretty clear - Clinton was a better choice than Bush because Clinton understood what the economy needed.

Now, I'm not going to get all 'political' on you today - but I am going to talk about the economy. Whether or not Clinton really delivered what the economy needed in the early 1990s is debatable. But what's not debatable is that the market and the economy are intertwined - so investors need to be aware of what's going on in the economy right now and consider how it will affect stocks moving forward.

***Earlier this week the Conference Board released the results of the latest Consumer Confidence Index. The results were dismal as the September consumer confidence level dropped to 48.5, down from 53.2 in August. The index measures consumers' feelings on the job market and general business conditions over the next six months.

"Overall, consumers' confidence in the state of the economy remains quite grim. And, with so few expecting conditions to improve in the near term, the pace of economic growth is not likely to pick up in the coming months" said Lynn Franco, director at the Conference Board Consumer Research Center.

Experts think consumer spending will increase only at a modest pace throughout the rest of the year. This will hold back GDP and limit growth in all sectors of the economy.

"The economy is stuck in an unvirtuous cycle. Consumers are waiting for more jobs to be created, and businesses are waiting for consumers" believes Wells Fargo economist Mark Vitner.

What's needed is a positive feedback loop in which greater consumer confidence leads to consumer spending. In other words, the consumer needs to be a part of the recovery - and that comes down to job creation. Keep an eye on job creation and consumer confidence numbers and look for stabilization in the trends to signal a good time to buy stocks. When they improve, the market will likely have already moved higher.

***Right now President Obama's staff could hang a sign on the oval office that says, "It's Housing, Stupid". Any politician that doesn't see the direct correlation between a stable housing market and economic recovery should get a place in the unemployment line.

According to the S&P/Case-Shiller Index, housing prices increased 3.2 percent from July 2009 to July 2010. New home sales, existing home sales, and new housing starts all beat estimates last month as well.

Continue Reading

Tarp Lending, 30 Billion Small Business Lending Fund

TARP Lending Programs Curtailed


By DEBORAH SOLOMON - july 21, 2010
WASHINGTON—The Treasury Department, under Congressional orders to shrink and end sooner the much-maligned Troubled Asset Relief Program, plans to curtail two programs originally intended to help consumer and small-business lending.
Treasury officials say they plan to end a long-delayed, never-utilized $30 billion program designed to boost small-business lending and cut the amount of money available for a Federal Reserve lending program.

The Treasury will also stop creating any new programs to stabilize the financial sector.

The moves are expected to have minimal impact since the programs were not being used to the extent originally envisioned.

The Fed's Term Asset-Backed Lending Facility, which provided financing to bolster issuance of consumer and business loans, was used less than anticipated after markets stabilized.

The Treasury's small-business program, which never got off the ground, is expected to be replaced by a $30 billion lending fund. The House has already authorized the fund and the Senate could vote this week.

The Treasury's steps stem from a provision of the recently passed financial overhaul requiring the Treasury to cut TARP's spending authority to $475 billion from $700 billion and cease spending on new any programs. The provision brings forward the end of the government's ability to use TARP to fund any new programs retroactively to June 25 from Oct. 3.

The early end of TARP was included during last-minute negotiations between House and Senate leaders as a way to help pay for the new financial regulation. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates it will save the government $11 billion.

President Barack Obama is expected to sign the legislation into law Wednesday.


Obama: Republicans holding small businesses "hostage"

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama on Saturday accused Republicans of holding American small businesses "hostage to politics" after Republican senators refused to back a $30 billion small-business lending package.

Senate Republicans blocked the package on Thursday, dealing a fresh blow to Obama's efforts to show Americans, in the midst of a tough election year, that his administration is focused on tackling stubbornly high unemployment. Watch Video


Many Companies Reluctant to Hire- Watch Video

The Market's Mixed Messages- Watch Video


Fed Exempt From Most Oversight, FOIA- FBN?s Charlie Gasparino on the growing power of the Federal Reserve with little oversight by other areas of the federal government. Watch Video

Economic Outlook Not So Pretty Read Between the Lines

It has been several weeks since the last posting. I will be doing a more in depth posting this weekend. Former Fed Governor Robert Brusca and WSJ's Gerry Seib weigh in on the latest economic data and its impact on the market. Feds say full recovery to take at least 5 to 6 years. Watch Video

Unemployment Across States
A look at unemployment across the United States, with CNBC's Scott Cohn.
Watch Video

UMB CEO: Reform Bill Will Cost More for Credit
UMB Banks CEO Peter DeSilva on how financial reform will impact his business.
Watch Video

SEC's Khuzami: Goldman Will Have 'Profound Effect' on Wall Street
SEC Director of Enforcement Robert Khuzami weighs in on Goldman Sachs' settlement with the SEC. Watch Video