Jan 11
Is it really different this time? In other words, is this recession really different from past recessions? I argue only in terms of magnitude. It was a bad recession, but it ultimately wasn’t any fundamentally different. Will the recovery be muted? I actually don’t think so. I just think we went down so hard that it will take a long time to recover. Unemployment, for example, will be relatively high through 2010, but mainly because it got so high in the first place. I expect fairly consistent improvement in all economic indicators through the year.If you disagree with the above, fair enough. Clearly the Fed should remain accomodative if the economy isn’t growing.
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Jan 10
Austrian conservative Finance Minister and Vice Chancellor Josef Pröll wants to nationalize Austria’s central bank completely. According to reports from Austrian state broadcaster ORF, Pröll offers the 30% private shareholders €50 million, a multiple for their €3.6 million in equity. Austria owns 70% of its Oesterreichische Nationalbank (OeNB), with the remainder held by banks, insurances and other privileged institutions under the system of Austria’s “social partnership.”Pröll made his comments after a high-level meeting of his party ÖVP (Österreichische Volkspartei).
The conservative led coalition from 2000 to 2003 looted more than half the gold reserves of the OeNB in order to present a phony zero deficit budget. As Pröll
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Jan 10
A lot of us have already heard that E*Trade has a lot to offer to investors, but today I’m going to take a look at E*Trade’s banking products. You can choose among checking and savings accounts, certificates of deposit, and various types of mortgages.
ETrade Bank: Complete Savings Account
If you need a high yield savings account (or what passes for one these days), then the benefits offered by E*Trade’s Complete Savings Account might appeal to you. Right now, the APY is 0.50% and there are no account fees or a required minimum balance for this account. If yo
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Jan 09
Credit card debt is one of the many foes consumers may face as they deal with budgeting and saving money, though a recent report shows that their debt fell in November.
According to the Federal Reserve System, the total amount of consumer credit fell at an annual rate of 8.5 percent in November, which translates to a total of $17.5 billion. That furthers a trend that has seen total consumer credit dropping since the fourth quarter of 2008.
Both revolving and nonrevolving credit decreased during the month, though the former made the more significant decline in percentage. Read more…