Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Most cats bounce at least once when they die, but not this one: after CAT posted its first annual drop in retail sales in December of 2012, it has failed to see a rise in retail sales even once. In fact, since then Caterpillar has seen 34 consecutive months of declining global sales, and 11…
The morbid joke about the Great Recession was that it turned Americans’ 401(k)s into 201(k)s. Indeed, the nation’s 401(k)s and IRAs lost about $2.4 trillion in the final two quarters of 2008, and the average loss that year for workers who had been on the job for 20 years was, according to one estimate, about…
For “subprime”, read “non-prime”. Yield-hungry investors are ready to endorse a revival of bonds backed by riskier US residential mortgages, as lenders warm to housebuyers who do not meet strict borrowing guidelines introduced after the financial crisis. More ON THIS TOPIC VW car loan securities at risk of losses EU plan to revive ABS faces…
For years, everyone involved with investing has wanted to know: When will the Federal Reserve raise interest rates? But there’s another important consideration that isn’t asked nearly enough: Can the Fed raise interest rates? That query is more than academic. With the US economy looking increasingly strong, some still think the Federal Reserve could act…
The unemployment rate is low by any historical standard at 5.1 percent. Businesses are complaining of worker shortages in industries like health care, construction and trucking. Household-name companies like Walmart and McDonald’s have announced increases to their pay for low-wage workers. Add those together, and it would seem to point to 2015 as the year…
Screenshot via financial icon Rihanna’s “Pour It Up” music video If you type “will millennials…” into Google, the first suggestion is “will millennials ever be able to retire?” It’s a question that trumps almost any other conversation about millennial life. We’re the generation least likely to be on track for retirement and most likely to…
Photo “Universities frequently compete, but this is a space we can find a reason to collaborate,” said Richard A. Matasar, a New York University vice president. Credit Christopher Gregory for The New York Times A MONTH before turning 60, Helen White received her master’s degree in sport management at George Washington University, and now teaches…
Pavlina Tcherneva’s chart showing the distribution of income gains during periods of economic expansion is burning up the economics internet over the past 24 hours and for good reason. The trend it depicts is shocking: (Pavlina Tcherneva) For a long time, most of the gains from economic growth went to the bottom 90 percent of…
‘Bring a map of New Orleans.’’ That was all that Alden J. McDonald Jr., president and chief executive of Liberty Bank and Trust Company, said when I first asked to meet him. It was the summer of 2005, less than two weeks after the city’s flood-protection system failed to keep out the storm surge created…
On July 11, 2000, in one of the more unlikely moments in the history of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Orrin Hatch handed the microphone to Metallica’s drummer, Lars Ulrich, to hear his thoughts on art in the age of digital reproduction. Ulrich’s primary concern was a new online service called Napster, which had debuted…