Finance Geek

A day after posting the best gains since mid-July, the Dow fell 2.5% to 9713 while the S&P 500 shed 2.8% and the Nasdaq declined 2.5%. The losses left the Dow essentially flat for the month wile the S&P and Nasdaq snapped their streaks of monthly

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Even with Friday’s dip, both oil and retail gasoline prices are near their highs of the year. The good news is energy prices typically peak around this time of year amid buying in anticipation of winter heating season.”Odds favor we’ll get a correcti

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RealClearMarkets: You sat down recently with Wall Street legend Teddy Forstmann to discuss your new book, The Sellout, and the genesis of the mess we now find ourselves in. Forstmann said it all began as a “cold” back in the 1970s and 1980s, and that since no one ever learned much about that cold, or did anything to treat it, it developed into the “cancer” that rocked the market and economy last year. As you pointed out during your conversation, these guys have been bailed out several times before, and that the risk-taking grew-exponentially-each time as a result. So where…

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Remember last fall, when our government explained that the reason we needed to give $800 billion to Wall Street was so the banks could lend it back to us and shock the economy back to life again?That was a happy story!And we fell for it.What happened, of

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Economy: As we said as far back as February, it was likely the U.S. economy would grow by the third quarter of this year. Well, it did - and the 3.5% rebound was better than expected. But hold the hallelujahs, at least for now.
It’s almost certain that the U.S. emerged from recession sometime during the summer, most likely in June. But those who want to credit the $787 billion “stimulus” package passed in February should likewise refrain from saying “I told you so.”
They include presidential adviser Larry Summers, who said last week that “thanks largely to the…

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The Lexus LFA is designed to compete with the hottest hot rods. It’s a breathtaking display of ego – and the last thing Toyota needs to restore its tarnished brand.

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Investors just starting out — or getting back in — could do worse than to ride the Oracle of Omaha’s coattails. Here are half a dozen of his favored stocks.

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If you’re an elected Democrat anywhere to the right of Barney Frank, and trying to defend a competitive seat next November, you’ve got to be starting to sweat.
You wake up in the morning and just like every other morning as far as the eye can see the only thing in the news is the president’s health-care reform. It’s starting to look like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are leading the Donner Party, the snowbound emigrants who bogged down in the Sierra Nevada winter in the 1840s and resorted to cannibalism to survive.
The betting is that with raw political muscle and procedural…

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A FEW weeks ago in London, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told me that 75 per cent of the terrorist plots aimed at Britain originated in the federally administered tribal areas of Pakistan. Some 800,000 Pakistanis live in Britain.
The vast majority, it goes without saying, are law-abiding citizens. But there is a link between uncontrolled Muslim immigration and terrorism.
The real historic significance of the illegal immigration crisis in our northern waters is that this could, if things go wrong, be the moment Australia loses control of our immigration program, and that would be a…

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We are still a few days away from Election Day, but party strategists, operatives and local activists are already blaming their own nominees for their defeats.
The clearest evidence that the Virginia gubernatorial race is over - apart from a blizzard of surveys showing Republican Bob McDonnell well over the 50 percent mark in the ballot test and leading Democrat Creigh Deeds by double digits in many surveys - is that White House insiders have already passed the word that it is Deeds who blew the race.
The assertion by Obama loyalists that Deeds would have done better by embracing President…

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If Medicare were a bank, federal regulators would be closing its doors, selling its operations and sacking its managers. Thanks to soaring costs, the program is fast running out of money — even though it pays such low fees that many doctors refuse to take Medicare patients. Meanwhile, Medicare fraud costs taxpayers some $60 billion a year, according to a report by CBS’s “60 Minutes,” making it among the most profitable fields for felons.
That’s our experience with government-run health insurance for the elderly. So what do congressional Democrats propose to do? Offer…

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From The Business Insider, Oct. 29, 2009: While the exact timing of an extension for the home buyer credit
remains to be seen, it appears to be a done deal and it could come
within a week.
First time buyers will continue to enjoy $8,000 credits from th

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Americans are outraged over bloated executive pay - and rightly so. When a Richard Fuld (Lehman Bros.), Stanley O’Neal (Merrill Lynch) or Chuck Prince (Citigroup) rakes in millions of dollars from a firm spiraling downward, employees, shareholders and lawmakers have every reason to question how public corporations are governed.
The distinguished Judge Richard Posner of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals nailed the problem when he wrote last year: “Executive compensation in large publicly traded firms often is excessive because of the feeble incentives of boards of directors to police…

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With prices starting to stabilize, household-name energy companies such as Exxon Mobil are returning to the head of the class. Why did investors forsake them in the first place?

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WASHINGTON-Pity poor Harry Reid. The Senate Majority Leader has been grappling with the challenge of combining the two Senate health care plans into one, legislation that must also be palatable to Democrats in the House of Representatives.
Mr. Reid’s compromise is a bill with a public plan that allows individual states to opt out. That puts him squarely in the liberal camp, because few states end up opting out of federal benefits, however hard their initial resolve. The question is whether he can carry the votes of all senators of his own party and muster the 60 ayes needed to block a…

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