The catalyst for today’s red ink on Wall Street is widely explained as IBM and its disappointing earnings report. Big Blue earnings per share in fact did surprise on the downside with 85 cents a share for this year’s first quarter, well below the roughly 90 cents that analysts were generally expecting.
Monthly Archives: April 2005
HEY, JOE, WHERE YOU GOIN’ WITH THAT CREDIT CARD IN YOUR HAND?
Has the day of reckoning for the consumer begun? No, not quite. But the economic observers who’re warning that Joe Sixpack’s debts are set to cast disorder far and wide in the economy have another statistical release to dangle in the face of the optimists.
CONSUMPTION ECONOMICS
In the good old days of energy shocks, consumers cut back when prices jumped. But cutting back is no longer popular sport in the current bull market for oil.
FOLLOW THE LEADER
The U.S. balance of trade slipped to another all-time deficit in February–$61 billion vs. $59 billion in January, reports the U.S. Census Bureau. If you thought the news would take a hefty bite out of the dollar, you were mistaken. By the close of Wall Street trading today, the dollar gained ground against the euro and yen.
BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY
Not everyone’s worrying that rising crude oil prices will impair economic growth, but you can count the bond market in as one more pessimist.
WHAT GIVES?
It’s clear that the dollar’s been falling, but what does it mean, Horatio? What does it mean? Different things to different people, comes the reply from the financial gods on high.
RHETORICALLY BESMIRCHING?
It’s not every day that a president raises questions about the bonds issued by his country. Thanks to competition, a government tends to give the other guy’s debt a hard time in one way or another.
DANGEROUS LIAISON
If you thought the subject of oil was a bit far afield for the steward of the nation’s money supply, think again. As Alan Greenspan rides into the sunset of his final months as head of the central bank he told the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association conference in San Antonio, Texas yesterday that market forces should be allowed to prevail when it comes to the price of oil.
A SIGN OF THE TIMES?
The bond market hardly needed another smoking gun, but it got one just the same today when news hit the streets that the government was taking away the floating interest rate on EE Savings Bonds.
ONE STEP CLOSER TO HEAVEN?
Fed Governor Ben Bernanke, a Princeton University economist, champion of inflation targeting, and defender of the central bank’s recent war to fight an alleged deflation, has been nominated by President Bush to chair the Council of Economic Advisers. In light of the news, does Bernanke now jump onto the fast track for succeeding Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, who by law must step down from that role on January 31, 2006.