From the category archives:

U.S. Economy

China tariff tax–who benefits?

September 24, 2009

As posted earlier on Bull Bear Times, President Obama set a 35% tariff on tires imported from China. With this tariff about to go into effect, there have been several announcements that make one wonder, exactly who is benefiting: U.S. tire wholesalers are warning that prices to retailers will increase by about 15%. Others suggest the [...]

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Economic outlook–Fed Open Market Committee

September 24, 2009

The Federal Open Market Committee–headed by Ben Bernanke– suggests an increase in economic activity and an expected strengthening of the economy: The financial markets have improved. Activity in the housing sector has increased. Household spending is stabilizing although job losses, slow income growth, reduced housing wealth, and tight credit are restricting a real improvement. Businesses [...]

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Ben Bernanke and the Federal Open Market Committee

September 22, 2009

Wednesday concludes a two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee. Interest rates are not expected to change. They will remain at the historically low levels. The big issue facing the committee is how to encourage bank lending while building the health of the banking system. Banks currently are very conservative in their lending and [...]

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Commercial real estate trends

September 21, 2009

Commercial real estate prices for four property types–multi-family, retail, office and industrial–are tracked by the Moody’s /REAL Commercial Property Price Indices (CPPI). They are known for transparency and methodological rigor by tracking transaction prices. As explained at the MIT Center for Real Estate website: The index is designed to track same-property realized round-trip price changes [...]

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Retail sales up for August

September 15, 2009

The Commerce Department’s U.S. Census Bureau today released retail sales for August 2009. These are the advanced estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for August, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes. According to the report: Retail trade and food sales rose 2.7% in August from [...]

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Chinese trade policies

September 14, 2009

The Obama administration has decided to place additional duties of 35% on the import of Chinese tires to take effect September 26. Shares of Goodyear and Cooper Tire rose today while the share price of Chinese tire makers plunged in early trade Monday, led by major producer Double Coin. China considers this a serious case [...]

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U.S. Commerce Department releases trade data

September 10, 2009

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke issued the July 2009 U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services report. The release shows the following: U.S. exports increased by 2.2 percent to $127.6 billion since June 2009. Imports increased 4.7 percent to $159.6 billion. Therefore, the U.S. trade deficit climbed 16.3% to $32 billion in July. According to [...]

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The Beige Book-September 9th report

September 10, 2009

The Federal Reserve published its Commentary on Current Economic Conditions. Commonly referred to as the Beige Book, this report is published eight times a year. As explained at the Federal Reserve site: Each Federal Reserve Bank gathers anecdotal information on current economic conditions in its District through reports from Bank and Branch directors and interviews [...]

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Consumer credit falls dramatically

September 9, 2009

The Federal Reserve released their Consumer Credit Report for July 2009. According to the report,  consumer credit–the use of credit cards and other borrowing of money from financial institutions– dropped by $21.5 billion from June to July. That’s a record monthly decline. This drop in consumer debt was the largest monthly drop since the Federal [...]

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Obama repeats mistakes according to economists

September 8, 2009

The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) is the UK’s original free-market think tank founded in 1955. A new IEA publication titled “Economic Contractions in the United States: A Failure of Government” is written by economists Charles K. Rowley of George Mason University and Nathanael Smith of Locke Institute. They state, “Obama is repeating the mistakes [...]

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