Economy Blog

Jim Cramer came out on CNBC’s MAD MONEY tonight, predicting huge gains in gold and he thinks that the current sub-$1,000 per ounce prices may go to $1,600 per ounce. He started talking about Basketball’s March Madness and a “Sweet 16″ his “sweet 16″ targets all revolve around “$16″ for commodity prices. Cramer thinks that most of these gold companies have no risk to earnings with prices rising higher and higher. His new top pick in the gold sector for new buyers that haven’t bought a gold stock is Agnico-Eagle Mines Ltd. (NYSE: AEM). He noted that it is growing…
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Lower interest rates from the Federal Reserve may be helping some homeowners and buyers, but they’re not doing much to revive the depressed housing market. One key reason: Many potential home buyers are staying on the sidelines because they expect home prices and interest rates to decline even more.
That’s raising home inventories and pushing the time line for a housing turnaround further down the line. Home prices so far have declined only half as much as they ultimately will fall, said economists on a panel at the National Association for Business Economics’ policy conference today.
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Louis Navellier, on his investment blog, says Ben Bernanke is in denial. “Well, we may not have the runaway double-digit inflation of the 1970s, but we have rising inflation combined with slow economic growth,” he writes. “In fact, things are likely to get worse before they get better, so I am amazed that Bernanke is in denial about stagflation….
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Jim Cramer came out on CNBC’s MAD MONEY tonight, predicting huge gains in agriculture prices and in gold. Unlike Basketball’s March Madness and a “Sweet 16″ his “sweet 16″ targets all revolve around “$16″ for the commodity. Cramer said he is making some key changes to some of his stocks picks in each of these sectors. His first theme is agriculture. He thinks agriculture is being thrown through the roof because of ethanol. Cramer thinks that corn goes $16 and wheat goes to $16. He has been very positive on this one over and over and here were his last…
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Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has not felt the impact of slower spending. Software must be sitting outside the vortex which is dragging the rest of the economy under. Redmond’s CFO says that the company’s geogaphic diversity has helped. “We certainly are conscious of the fact we might see some economic slowdown, but overall, our business hasn’t been substantially impacted to date,” Chris Liddell said according to Reuters. Somewhere over the rainbow things may be getting worse, but Microsoft is at least hinting that its business may continue to grow even in a downturn. There is some sense sense to it. Vista…
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It was a mixed day for regional currencies.…
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After today’s close, we have yet another special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, that has filed to come public. Sidhu Special Purpose Capital Corp. filed for an initial public offering for $150 million in units. Each unit will consist of one share of common stock and one warrant with a $7.00 strike price. Sidhu will list on AMEX, although no ticker was designated. Bear Stearns is listed as the sole underwriter. WNH Holdings, LLC, is the sponsor company, and that is controlled by its chairman and chief executive officer, Jay S. Sidhu, who served as chief executive officer of Sovereign…
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Investors in Thornburg Mortgage have had to endure a lot of pain in the last three trading sessions. After disclosures of margin calls on certain investments — followed today by more margin calls — the stock has given up 68% of its value since closing Wednesday at $11.54 a share….
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Ex-CNBC guy Eric Bolling’s move to Fox is now apparently official. Fox Business Network has put out a press release today trumpeting his arrival, which must mean the legal shenanigans among Fox, Bolling, and CNBC are over.
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One month ago Microsoft announced its unsolicited bid for Yahoo. It pegged the bid at the then-effective price of $31, but it also put it at a specific ratio of Microsoft to Yahoo shares. If you used the ratio the current value of the bid has tumbled to $25.86, which is why Microsoft made clear again today that it is sticking to the value of the original offer, or $31 per Yahoo share. Let’s look at the spread between Yahoo’s share price and the $31 pegged price offered by Microsoft. A big discount would suggest that the market doesn’t think the deal will be done; while a big premium would suggest a raised bid or another bidder. A lock at $31 would make it a done deal, at least from the market’s point of view. …
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addslashes(Forget Bernanke and the Greenback — Just Buy Gold

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$$$ Someone’s not happy with our muni rating analysis. [Going Private]

$$$ Cramer: Profiting From the Agribusiness Boom [NYM]

$$$ Slots [WallStrip]

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Earlier today, a representative from the Federal Reserve was conspicuously absent from a list of witnesses slated to appear at Tuesday?s Senate Banking Committee hearing on ?The State of the Banking Industry.? Top officials from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Office of Thrift Supervision, National Credit Union Administration, and even the top bank regulator from the state of Iowa will be there, according to the c…
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addslashes(The Real Story Wrap: March 03

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It is now plain that part of the reason Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) wants to buy Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) is to use its customers as targets for Redmond’s big push into online delivered software. Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) has already made a significant move in this business with Google Apps. Microsoft announced that it will expand its offerings in the server side software business by improving its word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software. As one analyst told MarketWatch “Yahoo is essentially a software-as-a-service company by definition, so there is a lot of merit there. On a more forward-looking scenario, you could see…
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Drew Barrymore was (is?) on the floor of The Merc today asking farmers to combat rising food prices. She also discussed her million dollar donation to the World Food Programme. And that’s nice—humanity and whatnot. (And fitting—Ms. Barrymore recently got herself down to a size 4, one of the consequences of dating “Mac Guy” Justin Long being a nightly purge). It’s also interesting to see her contempt for the Fox Business guy conducting the interview (particularly circa 0:33), which isn’t quite as entertaining as the time she flashed her tits on Letterman, but enjoyable nonetheless. …
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Canadian Solar (NASDAQ: CSIQ) issued and sold $75 million in 6.0% Convertible Senior Notes due 2017 in a private placement on December 10, 2007, and in a filing today investors were given the right to resell their notes and/or converted shares. This one also reports earnings on Wednesday of this week. We’d note that Fuel Tech (NASDAQ: FTEK) is soon to report earnings, this weekend we issued a full earnings preview. Also, we’ll see earnings out of Trina Solar (NYSE: TSL) on Tuesday. Cnet News ran a great piece today showing how the American Council on Renewable Energy organized the…
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Bob Davis’ front-page story on Arizona Sen. John McCain’s economic platform — in which the Republican front-runner added caveats to a “no new taxes” pledge and disowned details of a Social Security proposal on his own Web site — triggered a richochet of reaction from bloggers on the right and left. Here’s a smattering.
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(March 3, 2008 01:43 PM, by Bryan Caplan) It’s "kidult":While many people in their forties have families and responsibilities, an increasing minority still resemble teenagers. Scary, wrinkled, grey-haired……
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Recovery at default time is different than at bankruptcy exit time. Sometimes vastly different as for Delphi.
In 2005 when Delphi went bankrupt there was some fear of a short squeeze in the underlying bonds a the number of outstanding CDS was 12 times that of the underlying bonds. An auction was held to help get a cash settlement for excess CDSs.
Recovery price: 63.375
Delphi is having some difficulty getting out of bankruptcy and c…
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