What's Pushing Down Treasury Bonds? A Rising U.S. Economy

Governments Help Markets Score Big in 2010...
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Guest Post: 2011 - The Year Of Catch 22
2011 - The Year Of Catch 22 As I began to think about what might happen in 2011, the classic Joseph Heller novel Catch 22 kept entering my mind. Am I sane for thinking such a thing, or am I so insane that asking this question proves that I’m too rational to even think such a thing? In the novel, the “Catch 22″ is that “anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn’t really crazy”. Hence, pilots who request a fitness evaluation are sane, and therefore must f...

Dollar could face wild ride in 2011
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- If the past 365 days are any indication, 2011 could be a wild ride for the U.S. dollar. The Dollar and euro have had a love-hate relationship. The greenback has gained more than 8% since January but one look at the chart above shows the year has been a series of ups and downs. In June, the euro tumbled to a four-year low against the dollar, when the near-collapse of the Greek Economy caught the market by surprise. Email Print Comment Progress was made in repairing the g...

Economy in 2011
As issues go, The Economy remains the chief concern of most Americans and several analysts have given a cautious thumbs-up for 2011. Economic activity strengthened in the last months of 2010 after a quiet summer, and forecasters are looking for strong growth this year. There is a consensus that the recovery is for real. Consumer Confidence has improved in recent months, Many Americans have reduced their debts and increased savings, the Washington Post noted. The stock market has made steady p...

Coin Seigniorage and the irrelevance of the debt limit
Because letsgetitdone bugged me long enough, I can cross this off my to-do list. ) If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good... If the Government issues bonds, the brokers will sell them. The bonds will be negotiable; they will be considered as gilt edged paper. Why? Because the government is behind them, but who is behind the Government? The people. Therefore it is the people who constitute the basis of Government...

Fairy Tales of the Coming State of the Union: The Government Is Running Out Of Money
In "All Together Now: There Is No Deficit/Debt Problem,” I warned against the message calling for deficit reduction that the President will probably deliver in his State of the Union Address next month. I argued that there was no deficit/debt problem and that it is essential to reject the President's framing of the issue and move on cope with the real problems of The Economy and American Society. That piece stands alone. But I also think it would be useful to examine each of the specific f...

China backs Spain to emerge from crisis: Beijing
China is confident Spain will recover from its economic crisis and Beijing will buy Spanish public Debt despite market fears of an Irish-style Bailout, a top Chinese official said Monday. The comments by Vice Premier Li Keqiang were made in an op-ed piece in Spain's leading daily El Pais one day ahead of his arrival in Madrid for a three-day official visit, the start of a European tour that will also include Britain and Germany. "Since China is a responsible investor country in the long-term o...

China backs Spain to emerge from crisis: Beijing
China is confident Spain will recover from its economic crisis and Beijing will buy Spanish public Debt despite market fears of an Irish-style Bailout, a top Chinese official said Monday. The comments by Vice Premier Li Keqiang were made in an op-ed piece in Spain's leading daily El Pais one day ahead of his arrival in Madrid for a three-day official visit, the start of a European tour that will also include Britain and Germany. "Since China is a responsible investor country in the long-term on ...

Obama ready to make tough choices on budget: aide
WASHINGTON | Sun Jan 2, 2011 11:09am EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama is willing to make difficult choices on Spending Cuts when he unveils his Budget next month, a senior aide said on Sunday. But White House Economist Austan Goolsbee said it was important not to "skimp" on important investments like education. "We are going to have to make, in the medium run, a series of tough choices, and the president's not afraid to do that, and I think you will see in his Budget that he'...

2011: Year of the bank run?
Irish bank deposits declined in November for the fourth straight month, the Central Bank said last week. Overseas deposits fled the country at their fastest pace in more than a year. The deposit flight compounds the stress on a Financial System whose massive property-lending losses already have driven the government to accept an unpopular Bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. Worse yet, it shows that the solutions policymakers slapped together in the fall of 2008 h...

2011: Year of the bank run?
2011: Year of the bank run? Posted by Colin Barr January 3, 2011 6:27 am Is a bank run about to bring Europe to its knees? Some market watchers say yes, pointing ominously to the torrents of money pouring out of Ireland. Not such a good bet Irish bank deposits declined in November for the fourth straight month, the Central Bank said last week. Overseas deposits fled the country at their fastest pace in more than a year. The deposit flight compounds the stress on a Financial System whose ma...

Bumpy Climb for Stocks in 2010...
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The Economic Recovery Marched Slowly Forward in 2010
Now that 2010 is nearly over, we can look back and decide just how the Economic Recovery fared after all. In general, the feeling was that it was going pretty well in the first half of the year, but hiccupped in the second half. But how big a step back did it take at that time? Was 2010 still an improvement over 2009? And if things didn't get worse, did The Economy make progress at a more rapid rate in 2010 than it did in 2009? This chart consists of 17 important Economic Indicators. There is a...

Obama's New Year's resolution? Fix the economy
President Barack Obama has set his New Year's resolution high for 2011: repair the struggling US economy. In his weekly radio and Internet address today, the vacationing president said recent data showed the Economic Recovery was gaining traction even as millions of Americans are still out of work. "Our most important task now is to keep that recovery going," Obama said. "As president, that's my commitment to you: to do everything I can to make sure our economy is growing, creat...

Where Spending Needs To Go Up
U.S. undergraduate institutions award 16 percent of their degrees in the natural sciences or engineering; South Korea and China award 38 percent and 47 percent, respectively. America ranks 27th among developed nations in the proportion of Students receiving undergraduate degrees in science or engineering. America has been consuming its seed corn: From 1970 to 1995, federal support for research in the physical sciences, as a fraction of gross domestic product, declined 54 percent; in engineering,...

2011: Has that much really changed?
I want to start by wishing everyone a very happy New Year and by thanking my colleague Danielle Citron and all of the permanent authors of Concurring Opinions for inviting me back to guest blog. I truly enjoyed my time as a Guest Blogger last January, and I look forward to participating on the blog during the next few weeks. 2010 certainly was an active year—we saw Congress pass landmark Legislation (see here and here), voters overhaul the political landscape in the mid-term Elections (see...

China will continue to buy Spanish debt: Vice Premier
Madrid | Mon Jan 3, 2011 3:58am EST Madrid (Reuters) - Chinese officials have faith in Spain's Financial System and will continue to take part in government Debt auctions, China's Vice Premier Li Keqiang wrote in an editorial in El Pais on Monday. "China is a responsible, long-term investor in the European Financial Market and particularly in Spain, and we have confidence in the Spanish financial market, which has meant the acquisition of its public debt, something which we will continue to d...

China will continue to buy Spanish debt: Vice Premier
"China is a responsible, long-term investor in the European Financial Market and particularly in Spain, and we have confidence in the Spanish financial market, which has meant the acquisition of its public Debt, something which we will continue to do in the future," Li wrote. Spain has come under increasing pressure from international debt markets on concerns it may be forced to follow Greece and Ireland and seek an EU/IMF Bailout, but while bond yields have risen, demand for Spanish debt remai...

The Great Deficit Con
Deficit Panic, TARP Financial Collapse and Other End-of-the-World Stories By Dean Baker Populist.com Hollywood used to be the place where creative people went to cook up outlandish horror plots. But Hollywood has been displaced. Now people go to Washington to spin their wild tales of looming disaster. The national agenda has been dominated by such tales over the last two years. Most recently we have had the story of the Bond Market vigilantes doing to the United States what they have already d...

Stocks mixed on last day of strong year for market
NEW YORK (AP) - Stock indexes are mixed in midday trading on a day that many investors are taking off. Trading volume is at one of the Lowest Levels of the year. All major market indexes are up more than 14 percent for the year as a result of record corporate earnings. The NASDAQ is up 18 percent after dividends. That's led some investors to lock in gains or sell underperforming stocks to reap a tax benefit. The Dow Jones industrial average is up 3 points, or less than 0.1 percent, to 11,572....

Summary for Week ending January 1st
by CalculatedRisk on 1/02/2011 08:55:00 AM Note: here is the economic Schedule for Week of January 2, 2011. Below is a summary of the previous week, mostly in graphs. • Case-Shiller: Home Prices Weaken Further in October S&P/Case-Shiller released the monthly Home Price Indices for October last week (actually a 3 month average of August, September and October). Click on graph for larger image in graph gallery. The first graph shows the nominal seasonally adjusted Composite 10 and Com...

Stocks dip on last day of strong year for market
NEW YORK (AP) - Stocks have ended a rocky 2010 quietly. The major indexes are little changed and trading volume was at one of its Lowest Levels of the year as many traders took the day off. 2010 shaped up to be a good year for most investors despite ongoing concerns about The Economy that sent stocks skidding at times. According to preliminary estimates, the Dow Jones industrial average and Standard & Poor's 500 will finish the year up 14 percent, including dividends. The NASDAQ composite index...

The Closing Bell: Will Optimism For Stocks Return?
The Stock Market is ending 2010 on an up note, and investors are slowly growing more hopeful about The Economy. Still, it wasn't always so easy to sustain that optimism. A weak Job Market and a banking crisis in Europe left a lot of investors quivering this year. Liz Ann Sonders, the chief investment Strategist at Charles Schwab, has been looking on the bright side for a long time, and she has been seeing signs of a turnaround. "In the spring of 2009, I felt very strongly that I had to apologize...

Hiring boom in 2011, even at 9% unemployment
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- After three years of economic pain, a growing number of Economists think 2011 will finally bring what everyone's been hoping for: More jobs and a self-sustaining recovery. "We're looking at some leading indicators on employment, and they're all flashing green lights," said Bernard Baumohl of the Economic Outlook Group, a Princeton, N.J. research firm. Email Print Comment Though most Economists still expect a painfully high Unemployment Rate of about 9% at the en...

Stocks: New year, same old risks
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- As we kick off 2011, investors are hoping to put some of the stomach churning market swings behind them. But there are still challenges that could cause some bumps in the ongoing road to recovery. On the bright side, we're a year-and-a-half out of the Recession, and stocks are back to their pre-Lehman Brothers bust levels. All three major indexes finished 2010 with double-digit percentage gains. Email Print Comment The Dow Piano Here's what the market sounded like in 2010...