Peach Pundit has posted already today about Governor Deal’s plan to have the Georgia Legislature (now dealing with redistricting) move the proposed regional 1% transportation sales tax vote from July 2012 during the primary to November 2012’s general election. I…
Category: Economics
How today’s stock market rebound compares to other good days . . .
Yesterday I posted a chart of how Monday’s selloff compared to other bad days in stock market history. So here’s a chart, via Calculated Risk, of the S&P 500 today compared to other days. It was certainly a curious day.…
AJC: “Georgians think twice about major decisions”
When stocks crashed in 2008, I knew people who were relatively near retirement age and had inexplicably left nearly all their savings in the markets. So they resigned themselves to working a few more years — or as long as…
Really, how high did everyone think stocks could go in this economy?
I’ll begin this post with a bit of candor: I moved almost all of my retirement savings out of stocks in the early part of 2010. So I missed the big run-up of the last 15 months, and I missed…
How today’s stock selloff compares to other bad days . . .
I’ll be back later with some thoughts on today’s huge losses on Wall Street. But for now, via Calculated Risk, is this chart with historical data on the S&P 500. As you can see, this was the 12th worst day…
In keeping with recent trends, lower gas prices as economy weakens
I’m only simplifying a little when I say that when we have recently seen the economy weaken and recession fears increase, gas prices have slipped. That’s a good thing in a weakening economy, but gas prices are still well above…
SMN on a new community struggling in aftermath of housing bust
Adam Van Brimmer has another interesting and detailed piece about a specific sector of the Savannah housing market today in the Savannah Morning News: Berwick victim of poor timing; will be a ‘viable’ market as economy improves, Realtors say. The…
Washington Post: How we “detoured” from surplus to debt
Did Americans not know we were running up massive debt over the last 10 years? Was everyone just ignoring all the bad numbers because of . . . well, what exactly? I’m thrilled that average Americans are now concerned about…
Key things to know about S&P’s rating downgrade of U.S. debt
Last night’s rating downgrade of the U.S. debt by Standard & Poor’s will probably have minimal economic impact. In an increasingly uncertain global economy, U.S. debt still looks like a pretty good buy so we’ll see little if any change…
Two slow recoveries in the last decade for U.S. economy
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the United States added a seasonally adjusted 117,000 jobs in June. That’s a fairly weak number, but it was higher than expectations after some of the weak economic data that was recently released.…
How today’s stock selloff compares to other bad days
Stocks fell dramatically today, but we’ve seen plenty of larger one day declines. In terms of percentage drops for the S&P 500, we actually had 11 days with worse declines in 2008 and 2 more in the opening weeks of…
Ezra Klein: “Where will the recovery come from?”
I’ll have more to say later about today’s big stock sell off, but some might be interested in a post I made a little over three weeks ago: Thoughts on the Main Street/Wall Street disconnect In today’s Washington Post, in…
Markets do not like what they see in debt deal, current data, and future policies
The Dow was down 2.19% today, the Nasdaq 2.75%, and the S&P 500 2.56%. Obviously, the markets were not buoyed by the debt deal, signed today by Obama, that averted a default. No, the markets were apparently looking at fresh…
With debt ceiling crisis averted, back to the economic grind
It’s been long and ugly, but it looks like we’ve averted a debt crisis and default. As I’ve noted here before, there wasn’t a crisis about our debt — investors around the world have been more than happy to buy…