A bit of good news to go with the bad. New unemployment claims are down in the past few months, with the moving average for monthly claims dropping to just over 600,000, about 37,000 below the all-time high reached in the early spring of 2009. That doesn't mean they aren't high, but at least we're not in a screaming nosedive.
For the first time in 10 months, the International Energy Association raised its oil demand forecast. That helped send oil prices higher, true, but it also is a clear sign that the global industrial production machine has bottomed and could reverse in the near term, if it has not already done so.
Lastly, the U.S. Treasury FINALLY decided to regulate pay of executives at ailing banks. Frankly, they should regulate pay of every company that received TARP and still enjoys FDIC guarantee coverage. I mean, there's no such thing as a free lunch, right? Sure, some "talented" execs might leave. But perhaps a little less talent might be just the thing for reverting the banking sector from a cowboy outpost to the staid business it's supposed to be.
Alex Salkever is the Director of Research at Piqqem.com, a stock prediction community powered by the Wisdom of Crowds.
Alex Salkever is the Director of Research at Piqqem.com, a stock prediction community powered by the Wisdom of Crowds.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-12-2009 @ 5:32PM
clikdawg said...
Jeez -- enough mit der "green shoots", OK? It was a stupid phrase when he first uttered it; it has continued to be a stupid phrase; and it always WILL be a stupid, meaningless attempt to put a smiley face on a deteriorating situation ... sort of like your attempt, Alex, to paint 600,000 newly unemployed as "good news" because the figure wasn't a little bit higher (which it probably will be by the time they get done revising this week's figure upwards next week).
What, have y'all been instructed to use that phrase and use that phrase and use that phrase until The Public is forced to either actually visualize the mirage it describes as clearly as we're supposed to, or puke, whichever comes first ... ?
You can't get blood out of a stone, mon ami, and you can't make people without jobs pump up the economy by declaring what amounts to a False Spring.
Is this how you use to imagine yourself, Alex -- as a toady pumping out the propaganda for a bunch of thieves?