Economy Blog

Federal Reserve regional banks voting to slash the discount rate in January judged that risks to the economy were larger than those to inflation. The Fed released minutes Tuesday of meetings held on the discount rate during Jan. 21 through Jan. 30.
In that period, the Fed cut the rate twice: a three-quarter-percentage-point decrease to 4% announced a week before a scheduled meeting Jan. 29-30, when another, half-point cut to 3.5% was made.
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The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight home-price index and the S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index, which were both released today, are arguably the two most closely watched barometers of U.S. home prices. However, there are some key differences among them. Read a recent Capital column that compares and contrasts the two indexes….
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(February 26, 2008 03:48 PM, by Bryan Caplan) Check out Garett Jones’ new working paper, "The O-Ring Sector and the Foolproof Sector: An Explanation for Cross-country Income Differences."……
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Despite the rising wave of weak U.S. economic data.…
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Despite the rising wave of weak U.S. economic data.…
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I’m traveling and at TED in Aspen for the rest of the week. I’m also having blog technical issues here, the combined effect of both of the preceding being that posting will be light here for a spell.
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One of today’s market breakouts is Macy’s, up 7% on stronger-than-usual volume after the department-store giant reported earnings that were, on balance, not as bad as expected.
Whether it points the way to further gains is unclear at this time. The stock has, like most of the retailing sector, b…
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addslashes(Top 10 Most Searched Stocks on TheStreet.com, February 26

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On CNBC’s MAD MONEY tonight, Jim Cramer went over the agriculture sector. We recently noted ourselves about Ag-flation as wheat prices have more than doubled over the last year. Cramer noted that Cargill suspended plans for a new ethanol plant. Cramer says that this is going to create a sell-off, but it won’t mean the sector is dead and will create buying opportunities. He thinks the famine watch may end up with rationing to keep a lid on prices in a world where demand is rising rapidly. The possible famine and growing demand for food and crops for energy is…
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The PBC may be forced to raise lending rates again.…
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We do not cover every single index change, but we do cover the ones where it looks like it will impact individual stocks. Standard & Poor’s made an index change announcement this evening and noted that it was adding West Pharmaceutical Services Inc. (NYSE: WST) to the S&P SmallCap 600. The change will take place after the close of trading on Thursday, February 28, 2008. The reason for the change is because Sierra Health Services Inc. (NYSE: SIE) was removed from the S&P SmallCap 600 after today’s close of trading due to its completed acquisition by UnitedHealth Group Inc. (NYSE:…
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$$$ Deals: The Return of Billion-Dollar M&A?
In our M&A Roundup for the week ended Feb. 24, five sizable transactions make acquisitions seem in vogue again — at least for now. [CFO.com]

$$$ Massage exchange? [craigslist]

$$$ LifeCell Corp. (LIFC) [WallStrip]
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Although it looks like MBIA is now out of the woods, rival bond insurer Ambac’s fate is still murky. Reports indicate that the ratings agencies are now considering the rescue plan worked out by banks and state insurance regulators. The plan may be revealed as early as this week, and will probably involve splitting Ambac in two to segregate the municipal bond insurance business from the less healthy business of insuring riskier credit products.
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In the battle of technology behemoths, IBM is winning out over Google today. Stock charts show a dramatic reversal in the market just before 11 a.m., swiveling at 10:52 a.m. ET, t…
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addslashes(The Real Story Wrap, February 26

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Unless you work at Merrill, where you could be coughing up blood and they’d tell you to swallow (iron is a necessary nutrient).

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MBIA Inc. (NYSE: MBI) just had its “re” new CEO Joseph Brown on a CNBC interview saying that he signed back on to get MBIA’s market cap back up to $10 Billion. He noted a base rate of $3 Billion, and we show the current market cap at almost $2 Billion. The discrepancy is likely because of the latest financings, so we’ll go with his number over any of the quote systems since he is the CEO. If we take his number on a net-net “hold him to it” and imply this, that would represent a 233% return under the…
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A congressional hearing set to showcase the vocal stylings of Stan O’Neal, Chuck Prince and Angelo Mozilo with showstoppers on how they lost their companies trillions of dollars but still made out like bandits themselves has been postponed due to the sudden death of the tan one’s mom. I know what you’re thinking but let us be the first (and only?) to say there probably wasn’t any foul play at hand, considering that it was Crocodile who forfeited $37.5 million in payments tied to the BoA deal while Prince and O’Neal decided to keep their $68 million and $161 million, respectively, i.e. Moz is the least likely candidate among the three to pull a stunt. The timing is helpful, though, considering he hasn’t yet come up with a plausible explanation to account for the missing singles his staff wasn’t able to find the time he threw $500,000 in small bills out a plane window over a cattle ranch in Montana, and made them pick up the scratch during a blizzard. That one’s going to take a few days. A half-assed “Strippers” isn’t going to pass the sniff test.

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MBIA’s announcement that it was cutting its dividend brings the total number of S&P 500 companies that have reduced their dividend payouts in 2008 to six, which may not seem like a lot, but it equals the total number of dividend decreases for the first two months of the year from 2004 to 2007.
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Autodesk Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK) has posted earnings of $0.52 non-GAAP EPS on revenues of $599.1 million, while First Call had estimates at $0.54 EPS and $581.4 million in revenues. Unfortunately, the guidance is going to disappoint many since Autodesk isn’t usually a “lowering guidance” company. Net revenue for the first quarter of fiscal 2009 is expected to be in the range of $575 million and $585 million; it is lowering its previous estimate of earnings per diluted share to non-GAAP earnings per diluted share in the range of $0.46 and $0.48. Estimates are $582.6 million and $0.52 respectively. For fiscal…
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