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Unemployment and Housing

Today’s news is generally slightly better. Not good. Very slightly better. Let’s take a look: The weekly release of initial claims for unemployment showed a jump back up by 30,000 last week to 554,000. On the surface that’s obviously a move in the wrong direction. But, as I have cautioned before, one week is not […]

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Bank Profits

Just a very quick note to draw your attention to the profits being announced this week by many of the big banks: while they appear to be pretty good there are some ugly spots. Morgan Stanley reported its third straight quarterly loss, and even though its profits rose substantially, Wells Fargo had to raise its […]

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Who Knew There Were Banks?

Economists sure as heck didn’t. “Before the financial crisis, most macroeconomists were blinded by the idea that efficient markets would take care of themselves.They did not bother to put financial markets and the banking sector into their models. This is a major flaw.” Professor Paul De Grauwe, a macroeconomist in today’s Financial Times. It is […]

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