Disappointing Retail Sales

November had lower than expected sales numbers. According to ICSC report “These data suggested that the holiday season got off to a weak start in November for retailers–though the tail-end of the month saw relatively strong sales for electronics and online spending, but that seemed to be at the expense of some in-store performance and [...]

More jobs cut

ADP reported that job cuts were more than estimated in November. Last month roughly 169,000 jobs were eliminated as supposed to the 150,000 expected. Reports show that the job market will continue to worsen in the upcoming 2010 even as the economic conditions are improving. 
 
Read more here.

What do the charts reveal?

Many small business owners are still very pessimistic about today’s economy. Merchant Circle reveals gloom statistics. As we can see close to 50% of more than 12,000 respondents to the survey disagree that the worse of the recession is behind us. We all have witnessed the tight lending by banks, but the once impacted more [...]

From cash in the bank to IOUs

 ”Congress is not willing to take short-term pain for long-term pain,” Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, told a Senate Budget Committee.
The country’s long-term debt load is climbing. Just the interest on it alone may total $4.8 Trillion between 2010 and 2019. This is what two wars, a decade of tax cuts, and all of the financed [...]

Looking ahead.

Is $2000/oz too much for Gold? Since the beginning of this year GLD has risen almost 25% in value and GDX, which is the Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF has increased 40.55% this year. Other than holding physical gold investors can gain exposure to gold by investing in stocks closely tied to gold mining market. [...]

Senate Shuffles Taxes

The Senate passed legislation that it would allow tax breaks for bigger companies impacted by the recession. This would include increasing taxes for multinational firms, extending/expanding the homebuyers tax credit, and for all of the unemployed out there on the street – lengthen unemployment benefits.  These proposed tax increases are looking to offset the cost [...]

401(k) Comeback?

Another “green shot” of economical recover may be the fact that the 401(k) match is making a comeback. Lets rewind to last year when during the crash and all that drama lots of major companies removed their 401(k) match due to cost savings. Now, due to some market corrections (we are definitely not out of [...]