The lame duck congress is finally getting to work. The President is horse trading with the Republican majority to extend the bush tax cuts before the end of the year. At the same time, the Obama budget deficit commission has released its findings and the full 18- member panel will vote on these proposals on [...]

“No, I know; you *did* send me back to the future. But I’m back – I’m back *from* the future.” Marty McFly It will be the largest public offering in U.S. history. A total of $23.1 billion was raised, including $4.35 billion in preferred stock. That was no small accomplishment, given the recent sell-off in [...]

As the G20 conference gets underway today in Korea, I expect the currency war will escalate now that the U.S. Federal Reserve has launched the second round of quantitative easing. As the dollar continues to decline, our trading partners are getting back a little of their own and they don’t like it.

Now that mid-term elections have come and gone, the accepted wisdom on Wall Street is that we will now enter a two-year period of gridlock. That has been good for the stock market on average but will it be good for you and I: not likely.

This week one of my clients asked me to explain the on-going foreclosure debacle in “plain English” as she put it. It dawned on me that there may be a lot of readers out there who would benefit from the same thing, so here goes.

The IMF and its members were in no mood to agree on a unified policy of currency movements at their weekend meeting in Toronto. Finger pointing and veiled threats of retaliation were hurled at China from both American and European members, among others. Underneath all the rhetoric, I fear we are in a race to [...]

If you have been watching commodity prices over the last two months, you would think that the world’s consumers are in for another escalation in food prices last seen in the summer of 2008. Yet, short-term movements in agricultural prices do not necessarily translate into higher food bills in the long term.

“Right smack dab in the middle of town I’ve found a paradise that’s trouble proof (up on the roof) And if this world starts getting you down There’s room enough for two Up on the roof” By Gerry Goffin and Carole King Green roofs are nothing new. They’ve been around since biblical times. Here in [...]

Two years in the making, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is 2,319 pages long. It will cost upwards of $30 billion to implement and under the legislation, a minimum of 12 new government reports, 44 studies and more than 243 new rulemakings will be required. Depending upon your political philosophy, this [...]

You may have heard the term or even read the book “Black Swan” by Nassin Taleb sometime over the last few years. Most people mistakenly believe that a so-called “Black Swan Event” was all about the inability of Wall Street to manage risk leading up to the financial crisis of 2008 but that’s only partially [...]