Have you seen or heard anything in recent months that points to a near-term improvement in the economy? I haven’t. The economic news in this period has been uniformly awful. Bankrupcies and foreclosures continue to soar. Job losses mount at a frightening rate. Consumer and business confidence keeps plunging. So why has the stock market gone up 16 percent since the end of November? The answer, of course, is that we’re seeing a faith-based rally. Three main strands play into this rally....

Last year the House of Representatives passed a bill of rights for credit cardholders that didn’t make it through the Senate. It may fare better in 2009. Personally, though, I’m against such a measure. Credit cardholders shouldn’t have special rights vis-a-vis card issuing banks. That’s not fair. The really fair approach is simply to give cardholders the same rights as issuers. Banks, for example, now have total discretion when it comes to card rates. They can increase them...

We’ve all been hearing a lot about in-coming President Obama’s plan to dramatically improve this nation’s infrastructure with a huge new federal spending initiative—one akin to the way our national infrastructure was improved in the 1950s by the interstate highway building program. Sound great? Well, maybe not so great. Infrastructure improvements in this country historically have been paid for by state and local governments. A great many of these entities, however, have hit a...

A just-completed poll found that three out of four Americans are glad that George W. Bush is finally leaving office. If Woody Guthrie were writing a song to herald his departure, it might go like this… So long, By now we all know you. So long, The door we’ll now show you. So long, In Crawford we’ll stow you. And not see your like soon again. You started a war that nobody needed, For us ’round the world, disrespect you have seeded, The planet’s good health you were quick...

What Do Bankers Really Want? Much of the $350 billion in public money that the Paulson Gang has so far doled out to banks has not gone to banks that were on the verge of insolvency but to generally healthy institutions. The hope being that maybe, just maybe, some of these extra dollars would incline these banks to lend more to individual consumers and businesses, thereby improving our national economic prospects. This hasn’t happened. Of sure. Healthy banks took the money....

A new smugglers’ tunnel between Egypt and Gaza was recently discovered. No. This one wasn’t bringing in assault rifles or land mines. It specialized in Viagra and iPods. Given the opportunity, it seems, people in every part of the world would rather focus on having better sex lives and ready access to Madonna downloads than acquiring instruments to kill one another. Perhaps there’s hope for our species after all. Happy, happy holidays….Mike@wallstreetpoet.com

Job Creation 101 The word is that when President Obama looks at taxes, he won’t be seeking to lessen our surging deficit by doing away with Bush tax cuts for the rich. Why? Because the thinking of Democratic circles in Washington is that, while these tax breaks may have been excessive, during a recession with so many job losses we need the rich to stay that way so they can provide funds that create new jobs. Rich people are the prime job creators? So sayeth...

When asked why $350 billion already spent on government bailouts had brought about no noticeable improvement in the economy, a Treasury official stated recently that things would have been worse if the Treasury had not acted as it did. When George Bush was recently asked how he summed up the war in Iraq, he said that had we not gotten rid of Saddam the world would certainly be worse today than it is now. Comments like these got me thinking. What a great excuse we have here—for everything. Just...

Soak The Rich! Somewhere always in the tax code There somehow seems to be a glitch Providing some folks with huge windfalls And those folks are always rich. In these very trying times though Quirks like these we have to ditch It’s time to dump past ways of taxing Make a fundamental switch. Some group’s gotta take the dive soon Patching deficits a bitch Some group’s gotta close the gaping holes And the question now is which? Biggest earners have long fed unfair From their...

Huge government bailouts have not solved this country’s basic economic problem because the people awarding the money don’t understand what the real problem is. It isn’t a financial crisis that has spilled over into the general economy. It’s a debt-based economy-wide problem with financial industry overtones. Making the financial industry whole does nothing to address this basic problem. It simply replaces money lost by greedy, arrogant and incredibly foolish hucksters with...

I had a simple notion to help ease the economic crisis. Instead of funneling endless amounts of public money to financial institutions in hopes some will trickle down to consumers and businesses, give consumers and businesses the money directly. And the mechanism to do this? Suspend the payroll tax for a year and pay Social Security benefits with some of the borrowed money now being shoveled by the ton into bank coffers. This would give an immediate 6.5 percent pay raise to all workers, and a 6.5...

This week the stock market saw its largest increase since 1974, five straight days of hefty upticks. This surge occurred at the same time that a consistently awful string of financial and economic news was pouring in, not only in this country but around the world. So why this latest bubble? What spurred the great stock beast to its latest burst of excessive enthusiasm? The answer is frightening. Really, really frightening. The U.S. government’s latest bailout, this time Citibank, demonstrated...

For most Americans, the big day this week is Thanksgiving. For retailers, however, and for economists as well, it’s the day after Thanksgiving. This is “Black Friday,” traditionally the biggest shopping day of the year, the day retailers hope to get into the black, the harbinger of overall holiday sales strength. The sonnet that follows describes the worries currently surrounding this retailing rite of passage. A Black Friday Sonnet Just as the waves rush to a pebbled shore,?On...

A Jewish Colony In 17th Century America? Thirteen English colonies on the East Coast of North America, most settled by groups seeking religious freedom, came together to form the United States. In his new alternative history, The 14th Colony, author Michael Silverstein describes a fictional additional colony, New Israelia, founded by Jews in northern Florida in the 1650s—300 years before the actual founding of the State of Israel in 1948. “Before beginning serious research for...

The Food Bank Poem A lot of folks have found new banks With cans on shelves instead of tellers These banks don’t handle cash or checks Instead they dole out hunger quellers. When making a withdrawal here With other patrons you take care To never look directly ’cause They get embarrassed when you stare. Recession angst has taking hold Economists don’t see no traction In Washington they huff and puff On main street there’s no good reaction. For those who’ve felt...

Stopping By Polls On Election Evening (With apologies to Robert Frost) Who got us here I think I know, In many ways he’s brought us low, But I can’t vote against him now, On this year’s ballot he’s no-show. It really doesn’t seem that fair, That during an election year, The perp I’d love to vote against, Won’t need my vote to disappear. And who appears now in his wake, With claims to cures I know won’t take? Two candidates...

Both candidates’ tax plans have merit. But one of these plans (Obama’s) makes more sense in light of current economic conditions. McCain’s plan focuses on increasing investment in business. This is highly desirable at times when business is expanding and needs tax savings both to buy new equipment and to hire more help. This is obviously not what businesses plan to do today, however, as we enter what looks like a long and deep recession. Obama’s tax plan puts more money into...

Elections are national events. People pick the candidates who they think will make things better in their own country and for their own citizens. Some elections, however, like those for the United States presidency, have enormous international repercussions, many of which are determined by the reactions of non-Americans to the outcome. When George Bush defeated John Kerry in 2004, the world felt great sadness. The feeling almost everywhere was “how could they do it again?” “How...

Beyond Craziness Economics When I was working at Bloomberg Financial News a few years back I saw up close what was going on in markets and thought it was crazy. The Wall Street crowd was slicing and dicing the same assets and selling the pieces as if they were new assets. And the risk management derivatives that were supposed to take the place of regulation were nothing more than modeling constructs concocted by mathematical geniuses who didn’t know a bond from an option...

The market is up 257 points. You go out for a coffee, come back and it’s down 400. This isn’t a volatile market. It’s a lemming market. Panic rules… The Market Lemming Run Another market day, Another lemming run, You don’t know where your going And who to trust or shun. Poor badly frightened lemming, Seeking others for condemning, Paulson’s hawing and his hemming, Ain’t these panic losses stemming. *******

McCain is going after Obama because the latter told Joe the Plumber that he aims to “share the wealth.” Well, yeah. Isn’t that a good thing to do? What kind of country, what kind of people, doesn’t want to share its national wealth? And what’s the alternative? To not share the wealth? To keep it in the hands of the few? I’m not sure that I understand McCain’s thinking here. Sharing Wealth Obama wants to share the wealth, His message here is clear, McCain...

Ever hear of the “wobblies?” That was the nickname of the International Workers of the World, a radical labor movement that had many followers a hundred or so years ago. An outfit that promoted the idea of one big union of all the world’s workers to confront “the bosses.” Their one big union of working people idea never came off, of course, But a collective of a very different sort just took on what was supposedly its own bosses and won really big time. I refer to the...

I posted this poem for the first time in September. And wish to heaven it wasn’t so prescient… Market Meltdown Blues The U.S. dollar is shrinking, like a summer ice cream scoop; Congress is again overspending, awash in that old debt soup; The struggling Dow and Nasdaq, can’t seem to find a floor; And investor fears keep rising, rising, rising, Investor fears keep rising, Keep rising more and more. The days are past when investors viewed all losers as fallen gems, And rushed...

Paulson and Bernanke would have us believe that there’s no alternative to giving banks $700 billion in public funds. That unless we do so, individuals and businesses will be starved of needed cash. But in fact there is a much better solution to our current financial crisis. One that gets money directly to the people who need it, people who will use it for the right purposes, and not to banks that will probably use government bailout money to pretty up their own books, pay for takeovers, or...

The near-term economic future of the United States and everyone in the country is being decided now by Congress as it works on the Administration’s proposed $700 billion Wall Street bailout package. But the job has to be done, the whole convoluted and complicated package has to be written and passed by week’s end. Why? Not because world markets require it be done in such haste. What brought markets back so strongly last week was not an actual transfer of hundreds of billions of dollars...