By Robert Romano “That’s your opinion.” That was Hillary Clinton’s Sept. 26 debate response to Donald Trump’s contention that “Your husband signed NAFTA, which was one of the worst things that ever happened to the manufacturing industry.” With Trump now leading in polls in Ohio and rallying from behind in Pennsylvania, Michigan and other rust belt states — states whose […]

By Robert Romano Wall Street investors are betting that when it comes to a Federal Reserve rate hike, it’s likely not going to happen until December . But if the Fed is just planning to hike the federal funds rate anyway — which currently stands at a miniscule 0.4 percent — it should just get it over with. Rip off the Band-Aid. A […]

By Rick Manning Eight years ago, on September 15, Lehman Brothers failed, starting a rapid series of events that resulted in the bank bailouts and the country has not been the same in so many ways. While President George W. Bush famously said that he, “abandoned free […]

  By Robert Romano The global economy took a major hit on Aug. 31 when the seventh-largest shipping company in the world, South Korea-based Hanjin Shipping, filed for bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Hanjin represents about 8 percent of the volume of all trans-Pacific trade , meaning its loss threatens to severely interrupt global supply chains. Billions of dollars […]

By Robert Romano Everybody knows that interest rates are low, and have been in decline for over three decades. For example, in 1981 the 30-year fixed rate mortgage peaked at 16.63 percent. In 2015, it was down to 3.85 percent. On Sept. 9, according to Bankrate.com , the […]

By Rick Manning September of 2008 is the month that marked the freezing of the nation’s capital markets and the politically disastrous bank bailouts that helped sweep Barack Obama into the White House a few short weeks later. The nation’s workforce has changed since the banking system […]

By Robert Romano “[T]he idea is the lower the interest rate the better it is for investors.” That was Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer on Bloomberg TV attempting to put a happy face on negative interest rates, promising based on a very narrow historical dataset — negative interest rates have only been attempted on a large scale […]

By Robert Romano As originally published at https://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/economic-growth-stalls-at-wrong-time-for-hillary/ “The truth is, those looking overseas for growth opportunities are the smart ones, because if we have another four years like President Barack Obama’s past eight, you’d have to be an idiot to invest in America with this assault on […]

By Rick Manning As originally published at http://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/macys-leads-parade-of-bad-economic-news-for-hillary/ Macy’s just announced that they are closing 14% of their stores next year in an attempt to turn their company around. What is stunning is that the Thanksgiving Day Parade-sponsoring retailer only made $11 million off of $5.87 billion in revenues . This means that in the second […]

By Rick Manning As originally published at http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/economy-budget/291189-obama-lied-real-wages-died Negative 4.6 percent ! That is the difference between the 4.2 percent real hourly wage increase that the Obama administration’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) claimed American workers enjoyed at the end of the first quarter of 2016, and the revised reality of […]