Investment-blog.net: Stocks, Emerging markets, Bonds, Currencies and Commodities

What now, Dow Jones? Without a doubt, the big question confronting investors is whether the stock market has bottomed, with the Dow Jones industrial average recently up some 7% in just eight days after tumbling 36.79% from its record closing high of 14,164.53 on Oct. 9, 2007.
Many analysts may beg to differ, but some savvy [...]

By Robert Schroeder, MarketWatch
Last Update: 1/7/2009 10:26:00 AM
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The U.S. government will run a $1.2 trillion budget
deficit in fiscal 2009, the Congressional Budget Office estimated Wednesday,
offering a stark assessment of the red ink facing the country and the incoming
administration of President-elect Barack Obama.
The nonpartisan office said in a report that the ongoing U.S. [...]

Some Washington lawmakers are hoping to create a new nationwide scrappage program which would give U.S. tax dollars to consumers who turn-in older cars to have them scrapped.
Summit Racing Equipment and the more than 6,800 member companies of SEMA (Specialty Equipment Market Association) are urging lawmakers to have this potential new program scrapped instead.
The new [...]

By JONATHAN WEISMAN and NAFTALI BENDAVID
WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama and congressional Democrats are crafting a plan to offer as much as $300 billion of tax cuts to individuals and businesses, a move aimed at attracting Republican support for an economic-stimulus package and prodding companies to create jobs.
The size of the proposed tax cuts — [...]

“PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Governors of five U.S. states urged the federal government to provide $1 trillion in aid to the country’s 50 states to help pay for education, welfare and infrastructure as states struggle with steep budget deficits amid a deepening recession.
The governors of New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Ohio and Wisconsin — all Democrats [...]

U.S steel industry collapse and the markets go up. This is an example of the deep damage the economy has sustained with the only perceived solution government hand-outs! This is one small example of how bad things are but the markets rally. The end result is that 1 ton of steel will cost 1 trillion [...]

The Great Wall Street Crash of 1929 vs. Wall Street crisis of 2008
What’s wall street?
Wall Street is the historical center of the Financial District. Wall Street was the first permanent home of the New York Stock Exchange; over time Wall Street became the name of the surrounding geographic neighborhood. Wall Street is also shorthand for [...]

Obama’s plan is trickle-up economics. Create a huge government infrastructure spending bill (similar to the WPA during the depression) in hopes that it will stimulate job growth however, the blue state jobs that will be created will go to half, if not more, of the 30 million illegal alien population which in turn will send [...]

“Dec. 23 (Bloomberg) — General Motors Corp. Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner said the biggest U.S. automaker got “what we asked for” with $9.4 billion in U.S. loans over the next 24 days. Investors bet that it’s not enough.
GM tumbled the most in more than a month yesterday in New York trading, while credit-default swaps [...]

With both Barack Obama’s supporters and the media looking forward to the new administration’s policies being similar to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s policies during the 1930s depression, it may be useful to look at just what those policies were and– more important– what their consequences were.
The prevailing view in many quarters is that the stock [...]

WASHINGTON — Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. defended on Sunday plans for an expanded economic recovery plan against charges it would unwisely inflate the national deficit, saying bluntly that the incoming administration’s first and most urgent goal was “keeping the economy from absolutely tanking.”
Faced with worsening forecasts for the economy, President-elect Barack Obama is [...]

Veteran investor Jim Rogers warns that the policies of central banks and politicians are turning what would have been a recession into a new great depression, and that Barack Obama’s taxation agenda will only make the problem much worse.
Speaking to Bloomberg News, Rogers said that the crisis would at least be the worst since the [...]

A $13.4 billion emergency loan may be followed by $4 billion more in February if the new administration finds that the automakers meet conditions.
WASHINGTON — President Bush agreed to an emergency bailout of General Motors and Chrysler, giving them a few months to get their businesses in order, but left to President-elect Barack Obama the [...]

It seems that Paulson friends still need to buy some more Xmass presents. 350B$ was not enough.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Friday that Congress will need to release the last half of the $700 billion rescue fund because the first $350 billion has been committed.
Paulson said the use of the rescue [...]

In a statement, the FOMC said its focus “will be to support the functioning of financial markets and stimulate the economy through open market operations and other measures that sustain the size of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet at a high level.”
Ben Bernanke tipped the shift toward quantitative easing — in which cash is essentially [...]