Crash Survival Zone

By Paul Krugman

Ben Bernanke’s testimony over the past two days gives us our best clue yet about where the administration and the Fed are going with bank rescue. And the answer seems to be … nowhere.

Simon Johnson and James Kwak read it the same way I do:

This is another sign of the serious brainpower that [...]

Nobel Prize-Winning Economist Joseph Stiglitz: Obama Has Confused Saving the Banks with Saving the Bankers

Stiglitz says the Obama administration has failed to address the structural and regulatory flaws at the heart of the financial crisis that stand in the way of economic recovery. Stiglitz also talks about why he thinks Obama’s strategy on Afghanistan is [...]

by Paul Krugman

I’m trying to be sympathetic to the various plans, or rumors of plans, for bank aid; but I keep not being able to understand either what the plans are, or why they’re supposed to work. And I don’t think it’s me.

So the latest is that we’re going to convert preferred stock held by [...]

“The economic malaise that plagued Japan from the 1990s until the early 2000s brought stunted wages and depressed stock prices, turning free-spending consumers into misers and making them dead weight on Japan’s economy.
“As recession-wary Americans adapt to a new frugality, Japan offers a peek at how thrift can take lasting hold of a consumer society, [...]

dshort.com

By Paul B. Farrell

Dateline Mumbai, India. Ready for your final question on the Slumdog Game Show? Yes? Good. The prize, twenty million. The question: Will America’s recovery package of stimulus handouts, bank bailouts and home foreclosure relief plans work? You must pick one of three answers:

1. Yes, I know Obamanomics is putting America on the [...]

By James O. Rohrbach
“Buy-and-hold” investors who’ve seen their life savings crumble in this punishing market may want to consider shifting to a “trend-following” strategy instead.
Buy and hold works in an upward trending market, but when faced with an extended bear market, emotions will eventually come into play. Buy-and-hold investors know their strategy tells them to [...]

The government faced mounting pressure on Monday to put billions more in some of the nation’s biggest banks, two of the biggest automakers and the biggest insurance company, despite the billions it has already committed to rescuing them.

The government’s boldest rescue to date, its $150 billion commitment for the insurance giant American International Group, is [...]

by Martin D. Weiss, Ph.D.

The nation’s largest banks are so close to collapse and the world economy is coming unglued so rapidly, a major Wall Street meltdown is now imminent.

Specifically, it’s now increasingly likely that virtually all of our forecasts of recent months could come to pass in a very short period of time, including [...]