Articles

Cash has quickly converted from the best asset class to the worst in 10 short weeks. Is it trash?

Have homeowners been helped by last year's Countrywide settlement?

If you are awake before 6AM and turn on CNBC, you will see that the mood outside of the US is dramatically different from that in the US.

The French, in their search for a fixed rate of return that beats the 0.75% offered in savings accounts, have added an entirely new meaning to Best Cash Cow.

Dave Kytes, the managing director at Novantas, a consulting company that serves the banking industry, believes that banks that require more capital will raise their deposit rates.

Bank seemed like obvious shorts a couple of weeks ago. Lot of bright folks went in and we've just seen the sharpest ball-breaking short-killing rally ever.

Obama's strategy is to spend, spend, spend and to give his Democratic controlled House and Senate all the pork barrel that they want. When he has a chance, he'll stand in front of the media and make a big deal about cutting government expenditures, but it is all for show.

Warren Buffett says that this cycle's lows, near 6500 on the Dow and 670 on the S&P were still above the 1974 valuations by any metric that he follows.

Dylan Ratigan left CNBC and the ridiculous show that he created on Friday.

IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Intel, Qualcomm and Apple could be vulnerable here.

Bernanke's latest move is as bold as they come. But, its not certain to succeed.

Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke appeared on 60 Minutes and said he believed the recession would end later in 2009. He also said he believed that rates would have to rise to forestall inflation.

Putting money anywhere is risky these days. Getting any kind of decent return without a whole lot of risk is almost impossible. Treasuries yield nothing, and if inflation hits, as it surely will, even the value of the principal will drop. CDs seem to be the best bet to get some kind of safe return, but these rates are dropping fast. There is a whole range of other options from TIPS, Strips, corporates, high yields, agencies, and preferreds, but all these are either less safe or yield no more than treasuries. Only municipal bonds offer an alternative, but one has to be careful here too.

GE seems to be headed for failure. Is it?

At one point today, the Dow traded less than half of its value of May 2, 2008.