by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Cracks In The Tech Bubble (That Doesn’t Exist)
It’s “a technology everyone is going to have,” said a Bay Area real estate broker as he explained why realtors use drones to shoot aerial videos of high-end properties. And it’s illegal. But no one is going to be able to stop it, he implied.
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Fed Flails About To Squash “Misleading” (Very Inconvenient) Unemployment Measure
The Fed uses the easing unemployment rate as proof that its heroic policies are successful and that Bernanke could ride off into the sunset with a nimbus above his head. Other official measures are less gung-ho. And the most important one has become the Fed’s nightmare.
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Giant Sucking Sound? Emerging-Markets Fiasco To Topple European Banks
It’s not like Europe is out of the woods, after years of recession, lurching from bank bailout to country bailout, and sweeping remaining fetid matters under the rug. But its banks are now sinking deeper into an even greater morass: the emerging-markets fiasco.
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Stocks Plunge: ‘And This Too Shall Pass,’ Or Something
The last stock-market bears have gone into hibernation, browbeaten and humiliated and ridiculed by years of brilliant rallies. Clinging to their analyses and the now silly notion that stocks should trade based on economic realities, they lost clients and money and their jobs.
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Crazy Abenomics Orgy In Japan Is Ending Already – Pounding Hangover Next
Kudos to the Bank of Japan. Its heroic campaign to water down the yen has borne fruit. The people may not have noticed it because it’s not indicated on their bank and brokerage statements, but 20% of their magnificent wealth has gone up in smoke in 2013.
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on What To Expect From Fed Chair Yellen In One Cartoon
Monday is Janet Yellen’s first day on the job as Chair of the Federal Reserve, and so, all wishful thinking aside, it’s crucial that we obtain, one way or the other, a clear picture of what her glorious tenure will look like.
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on No Wonder German Workers Drag Down Retail Sales – And Much Of The Economy
Not that 2013 was such a great year in Germany, economically speaking, with growth stalling at barely above the zero line. But it was a superb year for extracting taxes from hard-working people. And it shoved Germany deeper into two decades of retail quagmire.
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on The Exquisitely Reengineered Frankenstein Housing Monster
It’s back, a new and improved contraption, a synthetic structured security that on its polished surface looks like that triple-A rated mortgage-backed toxic waste that helped blow up the banks and your 401(k) in 2008. But this time, it’s different. It’s even worse.
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Stocks on Speed: Margin Debt Spikes, So Does Risk Of Crash
The Fed must have seen the relentlessly spiking margin debt. Leverage is a sign of investor confidence. The great accelerator. On the way up. And on the way down. Margin debt has a nasty, very consistent habit of peaking just when the stock market begins to crash.
