In a monetary version of shock-and-awe, the Federal Reserve unleashed a massive easing move with its Federal Open Market Committee policy announcement Tuesday -- one that represents a sea change in central-bank operations.
After Chairman Mao's revolution about 60 years ago, people in the United States played the blame game by asking, "Who lost China?" Well, following the breakdown of an arduous seven-hour Senate negotiating session on Thursday night, many are asking, "Who lost the U.S. car business?"
The bailout-nation saga continued this week, as the little-three carmakers from Detroit drove to Washington to plead for a $34 billion federal package to save themselves from bankruptcy and insolvency.
New economic stats on consumer spending and business durable-goods investment show an economy that’s sinking fast across-the-board. Wall Street economist John Ryding expects a 4 percent drop in fourth-quarter real GDP.
When President-elect Obama had a chance to squash the tax-hike threat once and for all at his news conference Monday, he took a pass and let the question linger for another day. But his new economic cabinet appointments strongly suggest there will be no tax hikes next year.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has called for a pause in the financing request for the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), halting it at $350 billion.
President George W. Bush came out fighting for free markets with a strong and stirring defense of American capitalism on the eve of the G-20 World Economic Conference. Stocks soared 550 points Thursday as Bush’s luncheon speech was played live on all the major cable networks. It was as though Mr. Bush was trying to leave an economic-primer to his successor-elect Barack Obama. Markets cheered because it’s the best thing they’ve heard in many weeks.
Wouldn't it be the height of irony if Barack Obama wins this election as the Ronald Reagan tax-cutter? His tax plans are severely flawed, and his campaign narrative to support them is all wrong.
Back in early 1981, when I went to Washington to work for President Reagan, one of the architects of supply-side economics, Columbia University's Robert Mundell, visited my OMB budget-bureau office inside the White House complex.
It certainly wasn’t the big-bang across-the-board tax-reform and tax-cut plan that I and others lobbied for. But John McCain’s “Pension and Family Security Plan” unveiled today on the campaign trail does have some solid pro-growth nuggets.
Stocks are up over 700 points today, a record-breaking one-day rally. Good news is coming from the four corners of the world as the U.S., G-7, and G-20 are all working to stem the global banking crisis and credit freeze-up.
While the presidential candidates were debating in Nashville on Tuesday night, the Asian stock markets were selling off by 10 percent. Earlier in the day, the U.S. market plunged by 500 points. These were big-time drops, yet presidential debaters never talk about the stock market. Nashville was no exception.
On the morning after Senate passage of the Treasury rescue bill stocks are down 200 points. So there is no silver bullet to our economic woes.
You know what? Hank Paulson may not be the most powerful financial person in the country right now. That honor goes to Sheila Bair, the chairman of the FDIC.
A number of Republican House members and staff, along with others who are plugged in, are telling me that Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats will come back with a new bill that includes all the left-wing stuff that was scrubbed from the bill that was defeated today in the House.
The single-biggest mistake in the Paulson bank-rescue-plan marketing effort has been the failure to explain clearly how taxpayers are going to recoup $700 billion used to buy toxic assets at auction in order to unfreeze the banking system.
Honestly. A clean bill as requested by Treasury man Henry Paulson, along with John McCain’s oversight board, can help fix the credit-crunch problem. It needn’t be this hard.
We can fix this. If nothing else, that's the message I hope readers take away from this column. Of course, the "this" is the run on the world banking system. Stock markets have plunged globally, gold prices have shot up, and U.S. Treasury bill rates have plummeted to 10 basis points, the lowest since the 1950s.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is the man of the hour. This weekend he drew a clear line in the sand: no more federal bailouts. Not for Lehman Brothers. Not for global insurer AIG. Not for Merrill Lynch. Not for anyone, at least as of this writing.
It's so much fun reading the newspapers these days. The Sarah surge continues to dominate all the political news, while the Palin-McCain -- er, McCain-Palin -- ticket is forging ahead in the polls.
