Check this out about China playing a brazenly rigged game (duh) in their stock markets:
the government is pulling out all the stops to try to provoke a rally this summer ahead of the Olympic Games.
Earlier in the week, the Chinese government limited block trades in a way that it hoped would reduce the volatility that has wiped more than $2 trillion in market cap off the market since last year. On another day, it imposed a limit on casino growth in the booming gambling city of Macau, causing a surge in shares of the casinos that are already there, including the big Las Vegas boys.
This morning's New Home sales, as reported by AP, make it official:
Sales of new homes plunged in March to the lowest level in 16 1/2 years as housing slumped further at the start of the spring sales season.
The median price of a new home in March compared to a year ago fell by the largest amount in nearly four decades.
The Commerce Department reported Thursday that sales of new homes dropped by 8.5 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 526,000 units, the slowest sales pace since October 1991.
The median price of a home sold in March dropped by 13.3 percent compared to March 2007, the biggest year-over-year price decline since a 14.6 percent plunge in July 1970.
Of each dollar people earned in 2005, the top 10 percent got 48.5 cents. That was the top tenths greatest share of the income pie since 1929, just before the Roaring Twenties collapsed into the Great Depression
A few truths Johnston expands upon:
Government can have a huge effect on the US economy
The US government has not created free markets but rigged ones
In my last couple of blog entries I have suggested that data from past commodity driven recessions, as well as strongly supported evidence from the yield curve indicate that we may be near an inflation peak, and that as a result there might be a respite from this recession by the end of the year.
In a number of places on the econoblogosphere this position has been criticized, and in general the criticism comes down to two words: "Peak Oil!". I put that in caps and with an exclamation point because the argument is that "Peak Oil!" explains everything.
Ruff says that he has recently decided that this time around the U.S will experience hyperinflation ("400 percent inflation or more") rather than "a rush of brains to the head, like Paul Volcker and Ronald Reagan did in 1980" and a halt to monetary expansion, "ending inflation and the gold and silver bull market, for at least a few years."
He writes: "I spent the '70s fending off the media label of "Prophet of Doom," arguing that I expected much less than doom. It turned out to be so.
Ambrac reports loss of $6.93/share after $3.1B in subprime charges.
Ambac Financial Group Inc., the bond insurer that lost 93 percent of its stock market value in the past year, posted a wider loss than analysts estimated after $3.1 billion in charges for subprime-mortgage securities.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is probing whether credit-rating companies changed the way they graded debt as the market for products tied to subprime mortgages boomed earlier this decade, its chairman said.
``The volume of the structured-finance deals that were brought to the credit-rating agencies increased substantially from 2004 to 2006,'' SEC Chairman Christopher Cox told the Senate Banking Committee today. The regulator is looking at whether the companies ``adapted their rating approaches in this environment,'' Cox said.
Originally posted on the NoSlaves.com blog. Today is the Pennsylvania Primary, so reviewing actual positions is relevant
While the choices for President slim down to next to none, one might evaluate positions instead of joining the various cheer leading camps. Who, overall has the best trade, economic positions to stop this global train wreck?
Firstly any group name calling someone protectionist because they acknowledge the obviously massive ~5.6% GDP trade deficit, is obviously not basing their economics on anything remotely resembling reality. The reason I link to this Pro Obama group is because they want more bad trade agreements. They assessed Obama as more of a corporate free trader than Hillary. Below are some statements from the two for easy comparison contrast.
Capital Gains are the profits someone makes from investments on Wall Street. Reporter Gibson asked both Obama and Hillary on raising these taxes.
Here is the exchange:
GIBSON: All right. You have, however, said you would favor an increase in the capital gains tax. As a matter of fact, you said on CNBC, and I quote, "I certainly would not go above what existed under Bill Clinton," which was 28 percent. It's now 15 percent. That's almost a doubling, if you went to 28 percent.
But actually, Bill Clinton, in 1997, signed legislation that dropped the capital gains tax to 20 percent.
OBAMA: Right.
GIBSON: And George Bush has taken it down to 15 percent.
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