By Bill Wilson The second quarter is looking particularly grim for the U.S. economy, with forecasts being downgraded across the board by Wall Street. JP Morgan has cut its estimate for the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in half to just 1 percent annualized from its previous 2 percent expectation. Barclays has come down to 0.5 percent from its previous guess of 1 percent .  Other current estimates for a weak second quarter include Goldman Sachs at Macroeconomic Advisors at […]

By Willie Deutsch There is a fierce war in America between the sugar producers and large food manufacturers.  While most U.S. crop policies rely on subsidies, America does not subsidize sugar.  Instead U.S. sugar policy is based on sugar tariffs and domestic quotas.  U.S. Sugar […]

By Robert Romano You could almost see it coming. Predictably, after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke announced on June 18 a potential 2014 sunset to the central bank’s quantitative easing program if and when unemployment hits 7 percent , 10-year treasuries jumped from 2.2 percent to about 2.56 percent. So it is with the Fed-addicted market. Because of the inverse relationship between interest rates and bond prices, the central bank — being a major purchaser […]

By Robert Romano Republican Sen. John McCain on July 11 joined forces with freshman Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Warren to propose reinstating Depression-era separation between commercial and investment banking , known as Glass-Steagall, and a 1956 limitation on bank involvement in insurance business. For McCain, this is certainly nothing new. He had worked with Democrat Sen. […]

By Robert Romano Call it the Keynesian fallacy — an absurd hubris of politicians and pundits — who assume that government spending, because it is included in the measure of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), is somehow a meaningful indicator of national economic well being. In Jan. […]

By Robert Romano In 2009, when Pimco CEO and co-chief investment officer Mohamed El-Erian crafted the “new normal” hypothesis with colleagues, it anticipated “coming out of the financial crisis, the economy would not recover in a normal cyclical fashion,” and that “some of the recent abrupt changes to markets, households, institutions, […]

By Bill Wilson $167 billion. That is how much extra the federal government will owe every year in gross interest payments for every point the interest rate on U.S. treasuries rises. That’s bad, because since Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke announced on June 18 a potential 2014 sunset to the central bank’s quantitative easing program , 10-year treasuries have jumped from 2.2 percent to 2.57 percent. If that […]

By Robert Romano A recent New York Federal Reserve study has found that 11.2 percent of 39 million borrowers with student loans are 90 days-plus delinquent on making payments on the nation’s $986 billion of student loan debt. A pretty depressing statistic. That’s more than 4.4 million Americans joining a lost generation of opportunity — and counting. […]

By Robert Romano On Wednesday, June 18, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke announced that the central banks $85 billion of monthly bond purchases would slow down until the unemployment rate reaches 7 percent , expected sometime in 2014. At that point, he said, the program would end altogether. Investors, already concerned about rising interest rates, began a seeming panic. In the first two days since the […]

By ALG Staff As the House prepares to vote on a Farm Bill this week, there’s been an interesting development in American sugar policy. Check out this joint letter spearheaded by the American Conservative Union promoting a zero-for-zero sugar policy. Under the proposal, America will […]