Americans have settled for comfort and shunned risk: In their livings they've flocked to large companies with cushy salaries and health insurance, and in their portfolios they've stopped taking direct interest in the companies they own, taking a more passive role instead and deferring to new class of professional managers.
Harry Markopolos joins the Financial Sense Newshour to describe the gripping details surrounding his involvement toward uncovering the largest Ponzi scheme in financial history, how and why the SEC turned a blind eye to his efforts, along with his thoughts on the current state of affairs in finance and big banking.
The S&P 500 and Dow both had strong intraday reversals and closed higher after suffering early morning losses. The major averages moved below their respective 50 day moving averages in morning trading and moved sharply higher.
Over the past three weeks, there have been numerous headlines insinuating that a freefall in oil prices is underway. Last week I read that the various causes were a slowdown in China’s economy, OPEC’s decision not to cut production, and America’s growing oil production.
Growth is likely to falter as the housing bubble deflates and as investment spending slows, especially in the natural resource sector.
The stock market today will likely not do much after two days of back-to-back declines and ahead of tomorrow’s all-important May non-farm payroll report.
Although the US trade deficit widened in April, the number ended up being better than expected. Furthermore, the March trade deficit was revised lower than originally reported.
The latest weekly jobless claims data remain smack on trend. There’s no evidence that QE has caused any improvement and by the same token there’s no evidence that the fiscal cliff tax increase in January or the government spending sequester has had any negative impact. QE has managed to push stocks to bubble levels however.
Ahead of tomorrow’s economic extravaganza known as the monthly labor report comes word that jobless claims fell from an upwardly revised 357,000 to 346,000 for the week ending June 1st, but the smoothed, four-week average rose for the third straight week.
Does management of Shuanghui International Holdings understand the future better than most? Or maybe, the Street and its army of overpaid analysts and gurus never understand the future.
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