For the last twenty-five years, the Fed flow of funds accounts reveal two dominant forces supporting US stock and bond markets. Stocks: Stocks have been driven upwards by corporate executives and mutual fund managers who have backed stock-buybacks/executive option schemes to mutual advantage. As described in the article, “The quarter-century buyback […]

An important lesson of the current economic crisis should be that it is not always wise to depend on rating agencies and commercial providers of financial data to do investment research for you. Standard & Poor’s, Moodys, Bloomberg, Fitch, Thompson, and Morningstar: That’s pretty much the list of companies that deliver financial information […]

The rest of the world holds $16.9 trillion in dollar financial assets, and China owns a large, although indeterminate, portion of these assets. With Nancy Pelosi, Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, and Harry Reed having taken over monetary policy from a weak, inexperienced President Obama and with the Democrat-controlled Congress freely enacting highly inflationary spending programs — […]