Fewer banks tightening credit

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on May 5, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Whew – three postings in one day! Sorry, but there is a lot of noteworthy news today. The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that fewer banks are tightening their credit standards. While credit remains difficult to obtain, the rush by banks to shut their credit taps in slowing down. For those of you that know calculus, the 2nd derivative has become negative. For those who don’t...
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Recession is losing steam according to Fed chairman

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on May 5, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Today Ben Bernanke, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, stated that he felt that the recession was losing steam and that there would be economic growth later this year. His basis for making those remarks rest upon a bottoming housing market, an increase in consumer spending and businesses having liquidated almost all excess inventories. Bernanke cautioned that the recovery will likely be slower...
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Banks’ capital stress tests

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on May 5, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments As a person who prides himself on communicating, a blog title such as “banks’ capital stress tests” is a little bit scary. Just because I can imagine how it must look to most people. You might be thinking, “Ugh! What the heck does that mean?” Well banks are highly leveraged organizations. For every dollar that you deposit into a checking or savings account, they are...
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Off shore tax loop holes being closed : )

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on May 4, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Hello everyone! I hope that each of you had a wonderful weekend. Here in Santa Fe it rained, a rare thing here in the high desert. Today’s post is about that President of ours’, Barack Obama’s, plan to close offshore tax avoidance loop holes. I am absolutely delighted to see this happening and wow, is Barack a brave man! The practice that is going to be shut down has led to an...
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Revolt by B of A shareholders

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on May 1, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments In order for the worldwide economy to emerge from the global recession it is important that the leaders of the companies that contributed to the problems change. Sound familiar? Yup, I’ve been harping on this for a while now. So how does one go about facilitating the exit of poor executives? There are two entities that are so empowered: board members and shareholders. Unfortunately, board...
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Market response to bad GDP figures

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Apr 30, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments You probably all saw that the financial markets on Wednesday were up very strongly. This is likely attributable to the positive comments about the economy that were made in the Federal Reserve Board’s minutes. However, the rise in the markets was also in the face of what could have been interpreted as shocking and depressing GDP numbers. It is very telling that the financial markets rose,...
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First quarter GDP contraction

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Apr 29, 2009 in Blog | 1 comment For today’s second post, I absolutely have to say something about the surprising first quarter Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figure. In case you have not heard, the first stab (i.e. unrevised) at 1st quarter GDP says the economy contracted at an annualized rate of 6.1%! I have to confess that number is shockingly high. The consensus expectation by economists had been a contraction of 4.6%....
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