Finance Geek

Provided by Business Insider: The number of jobs in America is growing, and with that, full-time wages are also shooting up in parts of the country. The PayScale Index tracks how many times private-sector wages have changed since 2006, and found that between Q4 of 2010 and Q4 of 2011, 18 metro areas saw at [...]

More…

The focus of the early part of 2012 is no doubt on central banks. In Europe, calls for the ECB to “monetize” troubled sovereign debt and rescue European banks are still in a loud crescendo. Back across the Atlantic, the Federal Reserve has just paved the way for QE 3.0 with its very public release of a research paper detailing how to solve the real estate depression (without a lot of actual details). Since almost all of Wall Street expects QE 3.0 to be a lot like QE 1.0, with the Fed engaging in the wholesale purchasing of mortgage bonds, there is little mystery to the timing of…

More…

Follow Yahoo!’s The Daily Ticker on Facebook here! The Consumer Electronics Show is bigger than ever in 2012, with more than 3,100 companies showcasing more than 20,000 new products. The CES show floor covers 1.85 million net square feet— that’s more than 37 football fields. Over 140,000 people are expected to attend this year’s tech-fest. [...]

More…

The financial crisis of late 2008 has been attributed to any number of causes. But we don’t want complex stories, we want simple ones that allow us to affix blame. So most investigations into the financial crisis involve determining of whom it can be said: if they didn’t behave the way they did, everything would have been just fine.
For many conservatives, the people to blame were executives at the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, whom they believe recklessly purchased mortgage-backed securities (MBS) by the billions because the government would intervene…

More…

Follow Yahoo!’s The Daily Ticker on Facebook here! It’s election year and there is one issue, as is usually the case, on the minds of voters. It’s the economy, stupid. Both the tax rate and unemployment rate are typically of highest concern. But it is the jobless rate, in particular, that has become a barometer [...]

More…

The euro showed some signs of life this morning, rising against the dollar after falling to a 16-month low Wednesday. Analysts say any euro gains are limited and more likely a correction from the massive selling over the past few weeks. Today’s decision by the European Central Bank to leave short-term interest rates unchanged at [...]

More…

Follow Yahoo!’s The Daily Ticker on Facebook here! Despite recent headlines cheering positive trends in the economy, there is still much to be concerned about, according to FICO’s new quarterly survey of bank risk professionals. More than two-thirds of risk managers are seriously concerned about the debt loads held by students in the country. 67% [...]

More…

Controversy swirls around President Obama’s recent “recess” appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Unfortunately, far less has been heard about the president’s three “recess” appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, a small independent agency that oversees some 6 million workplaces in which unions represent employees.
On January 4, the president declared, “But when Congress refuses to act, and as a result, hurts our economy and puts our people at risk, then I have an obligation as President to do what I…

More…