Federal Reserve

Downgrades Don’t Matter

by Wolf Richter •  • Comments Off on Downgrades Don’t Matter

… if you can print money and are in control of the credit markets. Look at Japan. That doesn’t mean the underlying problems don’t matter.

Your Dollar—up to no Good

by Wolf Richter •  • Comments Off on Your Dollar—up to no Good

In case you didn’t stay up all night watching the spectacle, and tearing out your hair: Your very own… … your favorite one, the one you worked so hard to earn and even harder to save, yes, the ever shrinking one, well, it dropped to a new all-time low against the Japanese yen in Tokyo. And…

We Should Give them a Calculator

by Wolf Richter •  • Comments Off on We Should Give them a Calculator

The raw numbers are ugly. The federal budget deficit is nearly 40% of total spending; that is, for every $1,000 the government spends, it collects $600 in taxes and borrows $400. Doesn’t anyone do any math in Washington?

Your Dollar

by Wolf Richter •  • Comments Off on Your Dollar

…is falling off a cliff again, hitting ¥78 and €0.69. You can sit idly by and watch it get demolished, or you can do something about it.

Our Chinese Bay Bridge

by Wolf Richter •  • Comments Off on Our Chinese Bay Bridge

The high-speed train fiasco in China makes us worry about our San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge whose gigantic one-tower landmark suspension segment was fabricated, you guessed it, in China. In return for some paltry savings, if any, California gave up enormous economic opportunities.

A Modest Proposal

by Wolf Richter •  • Comments Off on A Modest Proposal

What galls me the most in this entire imbroglio of our debt ceiling is the hypocritical approach of our politicians: A Congress that authorizes every dollar that gets spent, gleefully accumulating a pile of debt so vast it’s hard to wrap your brains around it; and administrations who have been eager to borrow and spend as directed by Congress.

Night of the Living Debt

by Wolf Richter •  • Comments Off on Night of the Living Debt

The worldwide night of the living debt continues with Greece, Italy, and the US. And so I mention them, nasty as I am, in the same breath with Japan.