Retail Therapy For Investors

November 29, 2011

Shopping may or may not be good for the soul, but the Black Friday blowout certainly seemed to be good for the stock market.

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Green Shoots For A Frozen Housing Market

March 3, 2011

Almost exactly two years ago, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told “60 Minutes” that he was beginning to see “green shoots” in the economy. Like the first buds after winter, he said, these events and statistics were signs that the economy would soon grow again. Now I find myself spying hints of green in the housing market, the first part of the economy to enter the recession’s deep freeze. The …

If Things Are Getting Better, Why Are We So Miserable?

September 22, 2010

You have heard by now that the recession is officially over. Do you feel like celebrating? Probably not. This week’s announcement from the National Bureau of Economic Research confirmed what we already knew, which is that the Great Recession has been over for quite a while — officially, now, since June 2009. The downturn that began in November 2007 therefore lasted 18 months, making it the longest U.S. economic contraction …

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Alcoa Can’t Wait

July 13, 2010

Alcoa kicked off what I expect will be a tepid, though not disastrous, round of quarterly corporate earnings reports yesterday, taking its usual spot as the first member of the Dow Jones Industrial Average to give its results. How does Pittsburgh-based Alcoa, the largest U.S. aluminum producer, get the word out so consistently fast? And why does it go to the trouble? It certainly isn’t easy. The company operates in …

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How Low Interest Rates Sap Economic Growth

June 14, 2010

Conventional wisdom tells us we need record-low interest rates to help the global economy recover from the Great Recession and bring about a more prosperous future. Let me respectfully point out that, in this country, we have had low interest rates — ranging from pretty low to astonishingly, jaw-droppingly low — for the past 15 years, and we have arrived at a future that is not what we were aiming …

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Deferring Divorce In Hard Times

March 29, 2010

Hard times are doubtless putting a strain on a lot of marriages, but many couples may have to put up with one another longer than they would like. The Washington Post recently reported that divorce rates declined in 2008, as the financial crisis spiraled into the worst recession in generations. David Goldberg, a divorce lawyer and mediator in Gaitherburg, Md., said that in his 44 years of working in family …

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