Latest Posts

  • Technology 0

    Raytheon and WDT team up to offer big data-driven weather forecasts

    As winter nears and extreme storm season ramps up, defense contractor Raytheon and Weather Decision Technologies (WDT) have announced a partnership that gives the international and commercial users of WDT’s services the same kind of big data-driven weather forecasting tools used by Raytheon customers like the National Weather Service. According to a statement from Raytheon and WDT, the licensing agreement means that both companies “will jointly develop customized versions of WDT’s applications.” This gives users of WDT’s weather prediction programs access to state-of-the-art technology enabling them to create data-driven forecasts a...
    On December 1, 2014 / By
  • Finance 0

    Holiday spending may inch up, but budget woes are apt to hold it in check

    WASHINGTON – Holiday spending will see a “modest bump” this year, but it will be held back by budget concerns of those at the lower end of the income scale who have not seen salaries grow like those who are better off. That was the finding of the annual forecast of holiday spending released earlier this week by the Consumer Federation of America and the Credit Union National Association. “Many consumers continue to reflect significant concerns about their personal finances — most especially in the realm of weak income gains,” said Mike Schenck, senior economist for CUNA. “Because of this, we expect the incre...
    On November 29, 2014 / By
  • Real Estate 0

    Phoenix real-estate guru guilty of money laundering

    A Phoenix real-estate guru and celebrity broker is facing more than 12 years in prison and $500,000 in fines after a federal jury convicted her on money-laundering charges. Jurors found Tanya Marchiol, 40, guilty this week on one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, two counts of money laundering and another count of structuring financial transactions. The verdict comes less than three weeks after Marchiol pre-empted the start of her trial by pleading guilty to three misdemeanor counts of tax evasion. She admitted willful failure to file tax returns on more than $1.4 million in revenue she earned from 2007 to 2009. Jurors agreed Ma...
    On November 25, 2014 / By
  • Entertainment 0

    How To Find The Best Sector ETFs

    Finding the best ETFs is an increasingly difficult task with so many to choose from. How can you choose with so many available ETF’s? Why ETF Labels are Confusing There are at least 44 different Financials ETFs and at least 188 ETFs across all sectors. Do you need that many choices? How different can the ETFs be? Those 44 Financials ETFs are very different. With anywhere from 22 to 541 holdings, many of these Financials ETFs have drastically different portfolios, creating drastically different investment implications. The same is true for the ETFs in any other sector, as each offers a very different mix of good and bad stocks. The Consumer...
    On November 23, 2014 / By
  • Entertainment 0

    A Tale Of Two Economies – It Was The Better Of Times, It Was The Worst Of Times

    Guest Post by Paul Kasriel, The Econtrarian As quantitative easing comes to an end (apparently) by the Fed and is taken up by the European Central Bank (ECB), let’s compare the behavior of nominal domestic demand in each central bank’s economy and venture a reason for any differences. Plotted in Chart 1 are index values of the nominal Gross Domestic Purchases in the U.S. and the eurozone, respectively. Each index is set at a value of 100 for Q4:2008. Since Q4:2008, Gross Domestic Purchases in the U.S. increased a net 18% through Q2:2014 (that is what the index value of 118 indicates). For the eurozone, Gross Domestic Purchases increased a...
    On November 23, 2014 / By
  • Entertainment 0

    Lower Oil Prices And The U.S. Economy

    For the last 4 years, the national average retail price of gasoline in the United States stayed within a range of $3.25-$4.00 a gallon. But that all changed this fall, with U.S. consumers now paying an average price of $2.82. Source: New Jersey Historical Gas Price Charts Provided by GasBuddy.com This usually is the time of year when gasoline prices tend to be at their lowest. But the current U.S. price of gasoline is exactly what we’d predict given the long-run relation between the price of gasoline and crude oil. There’s essentially no seasonal component in the price of crude. In other words, if crude stays at its current value (n...
    On November 23, 2014 / By
  • Entertainment 0

    Employee Quits Are Up: Is It Time To Raise Wages?

    The number of employees quitting their jobs is the highest it has been since early 2008, when the recession was just getting started. The number of vacant jobs is the highest it has been since 2001. The unemployment rate continues to fall. Only one thing has not changed: wage inflation. Is it time for companies to raise wage rates? A year ago I noted the upswing in quits and wrote about the 7 Employee Retention Strategies Your Company Must Have. That article talked about ways to keep good employees that did not involve higher wages. Before considering higher pay, every manager should review those retention strategies. If you are missing sever...
    On November 23, 2014 / By
  • Entertainment 0

    Fear Of “Surge In Debt Defaults, Business Failures And Job Losses” Means Many More Chinese Rate Cuts

    If admitting you have a problem is the first step toward recovery, then China is making progress. The question is progress to what, because the generic answer, “another debt-fueled boom” is no longer applicable. Recall that as we noted here initially in the summer of 2013, the very reason why China finds itself in a reformist quandary is that the traditional method of Chinese “growth” – issuing a little under $4 trillion in aggregate system debt per year – no longer works as the bad debt portion of the Ponzi scheme is rising at a faster pace than the total notional of debt itself. Which means the PBOC, wh...
    On November 23, 2014 / By
  • Entertainment 0

    The Fed Concerned About “Importing” Disinflation

    The latest Reuters poll is showing 24 out of 43 economists projecting the first rate hike in the U.S. by June of next year. The futures market is pricing lift-off by September. Citi’s latest analysis puts it in December. And all of these forecasts are running way behind the so-called Taylor Rule, which suggests that the Fed Funds rate should already be at 1.5%. Source: @Schuldensuehner, Citi In fact the U.S. economy can easily handle non-zero short-term rates at this point. The banking system is quite healthy and can easily manage funding costs of 1.5%. Corporate borrowers can deal with slightly higher rates as well. And as far as m...
    On November 23, 2014 / By
  • Entertainment 0

    Oil Price Slide – No Good Way Out

    Written by Gail Tverberg, Our Finite World The world is in a dangerous place now. A large share of oil sellers need the revenue from oil sales. They have to continue producing regardless of how low oil prices go unless they are stopped by bankruptcy, revolution, or something else that gives them a very clear signal to stop. Producers of oil from U.S. shale are in this category, as are most oil exporters, including many of the OPEC countries and Russia. Some large oil companies, such as Shell (RDS-A), and ExxonMobil (XOM), decided even before the recent drop in prices that they couldn’t make money by developing available producible res...
    On November 23, 2014 / By