By Bill Wilson — There can be little wonder as to why bankrupt states like Illinois would love to see the Federal Reserve fire up its printing presses and start buying state and municipal bond debt. At $85 billion — and counting — Illinois has one of […]

By Bill Wilson — On Oct. 26, the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ advance estimate of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the 3rd quarter (Q3) of 2012 showed 2 percent growth — not really a good number. Just to get to the 3 percent annual growth rate […]

By Bill Wilson — Writing for the New York Times on Oct. 23 , Stanford law professors Joseph Grundfest, Mark Lemley and George Triantis call for another round of quantitative easing (QE) — i.e. money-printing — by the Federal Reserve. This time however, instead of buying mortgage-backed securities or U.S. treasuries, the Stanford trio wants Fed […]

By Bill Wilson — Our annual trillion dollar deficits are “a significant national security concern because we’ve got to make sure that our economy is strong at home so that we can project military power overseas.” That was not Mitt Romney at Oct. 22’s foreign policy debate. […]

By Robert Romano — Since Barack Obama took office, the civilian non-institutional population has increased by 8.7 million, and yet only 437,000 people have been added to the civilian labor force — i.e. those working or seeking work. That’s an awful absorption rate of new population into […]

By Robert Romano — Don’t look now, but at $16.190 trillion, the national debt is just $204 billion away from reaching its statutory ceiling of $16.394 trillion — just one short year after the federal government increased the ceiling from $14.294 trillion last summer. It was the […]

By Robert Romano — Since the financial crisis began in Aug. 2007, one of the puzzles surrounding the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing program — i.e. money-printing — has been why it has not led to high levels of consumer price inflation minus food and energy. In the […]

By Bill Wilson — An excellent piece by syndicated columnist George Will on Oct. 12 urges Mitt Romney, should he defeat Barack Obama at the ballot on Nov. 6, to tap Dallas Federal Reserve Chairman Richard Fisher for Treasury Secretary. Why? Fisher is calling for an end to “too big to fail” financial institutions. Particularly, Fisher thinks it’s […]

By Bill Wilson — Speaking in Tokyo where the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank held annual meetings on Oct. 14, 2012, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke pleaded with emerging economy central banks to let their currencies appreciate. He even did it with a straight […]

By Rick Manning — The financial news has been dominated over the past couple of years about problems that various European countries have had paying the interest on the loans they have taken out to finance their government’s deficit. From Greece and Ireland to Spain and Italy, […]