Finance Geek

Tuesday brought another round of housing data and another opportunity for optimists to seek signs of a bottom, including a Commerce Department report showing a 7.2% year-over-year increase in June median home prices and a drop in the supply of new homes on the market. But these positive signs were more than offset by the [...]

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Of all the verses in the “China-is-Awesome” hallelujah chorus, none is chanted louder than the fact that China is leaving everyone in the dust in “green” energy, especially wind and solar power. The latest Clean Energy Report from the Pew Charitable Trust gushes, “Private investment in China’s clean energy sector increased by 39 percent in 2010 to a world record $54.4 billion. China also is the world’s leading producer of wind turbines and solar modules. In 2009, it surpassed the United States as the country with the most installed clean energy…

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The political posturing in Washington over a the debt-ceiling debate is reaching new levels of brinkmanship. President Obama last night again pleaded for compromise on a debt deal. Meanwhile, House Speaker John Boehner said the time to compromise has come and gone. The AP reports if a deal is no reached by August 2nd it [...]

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The U.S. is inching closer to default, and in Washington the two sides are digging trenches whose depths rival the Mariana Trench. And yet the markets don’t seem to care. Over the weekend, both President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner insisted a deal needed to be completed before the Asian markets opened on Sunday [...]

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“Failure in market economies, while endemic, seems to go hand in hand with rapid progress.” Tim Harford, Adapt: Why Success Always Starts With Failure, p. 11.
The current refunding of Greece’s profligate government was presented in the mainstream media as another story of a government operating beyond its means. While this is true, the bigger, economy-retarding story behind the story is why Greece was saved.
Greece’s government has since its origins in 1821 spent half of the time in arrears to creditors, and its difficulties have seemingly never merited global attention….

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In any scientific endeavor, one must quantify a phenomenon in order to understand it.
The CBO projects revenues for 2011, 2012, and 2013 of $2.23 trillion, $2.56 trillion, and $3.09 trillion, respectively. A simple proration of these numbers to account for the last two months of this fiscal year, fiscal year 2012, and the first three months of fiscal year 2013 reveals total revenues of $3.70 trillion, or $2.61 trillion per year.
President Obama’s fiscal year 2010 budget request, the Orwellian-titled A New Era of Responsibility: Renewing America’s Promise, was $3.55T, which would…

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A security “noob” mistake has left the batteries in Apple’s laptops open to hacking, which could result in a bricked battery or, in a worst case scenario, fire or explosion. This was revealed on Friday after Accuvant Labs security researcher Charlie Miller disclosed that he plans to detail the hack at the annual Black Hat security conference in early August.

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We all knew that once Apple starting enforcing new rules for in-app purchases, it would change how media companies do business on the iPhone and iPad. Now, we’re beginning to see just what that looks like for companies trying to avoid giving a 30 percent cut to Cupertino.

Amazon, Kobo and Barnes & Noble on Monday …

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Worries over the weekend that markets would shudder if no debt-ceiling deal were reached Monday have all but disappeared. Even with no deal reached, the Dow was trading down just 80 points to 12,600 around 3:15 p.m. EDT Monday while prices slipped slightly on 10-year Treasuries. Gold, on the other hand, continued its upward trajectory [...]

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Chinese officials have demanded the closure of two imitation Apple stores in Kunming, reports Reuters.

After an American blogger in Kunming posted photos of ??a beautiful [Apple store] ripoff?? last week, Chinese officials began to investigate around 300 shops in the area, finding five fake Apple stores. Two of the stores, lacking the proper business permits, …

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The phone-hacking scandal has done great damage to the stock of News Corp. and to the public image of its owner and founder, Rupert Murdoch. But the biggest harm may have been to another asset: the company’s social license. And I’m not talking about the prospect of Rupert and Wendi Murdoch not getting invited to [...]

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Research in Motion, whose Blackberry handsets dominated the mobile phone scene only a few short years ago, announced Monday it was cutting 2,000 jobs — about 11 percent of its global workforce — as it falls further behind the curve now defined by the iPhone and Android-powered smartphones.

In cutting workers for the first time in …

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The phone-hacking scandal has done great damage to the stock of News Corp., and to the public image of its owner and founder, Rupert Murdoch. But the biggest harm may have been to another asset: the company’s social license. And I’m not talking about the prospect of Rupert and Wendi Murdoch not getting invited to [...]

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As Congressional negotiators and the President struggle to obtain a deal to raise the federal debt ceiling, securities markets may soon panic at the prospect of those negotiations failing.
Be clear, the United States does not have to default on its bonds. After August 2, it still will collect taxes and other revenues exceeding $180 billion per month; and interest payments on the national debt eat up less than $30 billion. If the Treasury prioritizes expenditures-as the state of Minnesota did during its recent shutdown-it could pay interest on bonds, roll over bonds coming due, and pay Social…

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With time ticking on the debt ceiling deadline and the negotiations in Washington at an impasse, former President Bill Clinton suggested last week President Obama should put an end to default talks by unilaterally invoking the 14th Amendment. Clinton was referring to Section 4 of the amendment - which was ratified more than 140 years [...]

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