Archive for the ‘Stock market’ Category
January 16th, 2011 | 
Author: French Critical Of UK Economy, While IMF Warn Of “Gloomy” Global …
thewealthnews.com12/16/11
The French Finance Minister, Francois Baroin, has described the economic situation in the UK as being “very worrying”, while the IMF warn of a “gloomy” global outlook.
UK Economic Data Weakens, GBP to Follow « FXTimes – Forex …
www.fxtimes.com12/15/11
The economic data from the UK this week was a disappointment and may point to further GBP weakness in the coming months as the market fully prices in further quantitative easing from the Bank of England. We review the …
The Good News
The stock market has started the year strongly, and Sterling is up against the dollar and was even rising against against the Euro, until the Chinese bought huge quantities of euro debt
this week.
The Bad News
The threat of inflation is now blindingly apparent and the Bank of England would surely have liked to raise interest rates this week, but what that would that have done to a housing market that’s already heading south; or to those people with other, shorter-term debts, whose price would have become even more suffocating?
For many of them, the day of reckoning has been long postponed, but now it may be just weeks away
The French And Support For The Euro
François Fillon, the very polite, courteous and rather successful French prime minister, went to London this week and seemed to take for granted Great Britain’s continued support of the euro, arguing that its economic future depended upon it, too. He exaggerated of course, but he did so because of the great and in my opinion unjustified fear in France that the game is up for their currency.
"Unjustified"?
Yes, because it’ hard to see why there is this fear since if the euro went under, then the French could simply return to the franc and find themselves able to widen their export markets, because everything would be cheaper.
France’s financial sector, along with Britain’s, would come under heavy pressure because of their exposure to euro debt, but these were risks taken by banks, and they would just have to bear them.
The Banks
In the same way that a Government has no business telling banks what they can pay their staff, it has no business continually bailing them out either.
The UK Government
UK politicians have encouraged the thought over the past couple of months that while things are still very difficult, and hardships inevitable, that the worst is already over, but it’s likely that what they’re really saying is that no more pain will be inflicted in the near future.
Outside Factors
What’s not being mentioned however is that factors beyond their control will soon start to kick in such as;
An external blow to the economy, whether in the shape of the euro ceasing to defy gravity, or simply more bad news from America,
Taxes
UK taxes remain far too high, and are as serious obstacle to recovery and if a recovery has to start from an even lower base, then the obsession with not cutting taxes in case some "rich" person, possibly even an evil banker becomes richer will have to be jettisoned once and for all.
Bankruptcies, Business Failures And Unemployment
Even without external shocks, interest rates must rise, and they’ll cause personal bankruptcies and business failures to rise with them and unemployment will rise too.
House prices will fall, and most likely the stock market too, but the UK cannot postpone indefinitely the final acceptance that it must live within its means.
Growth
Growth is the only way out and it will require the Government stimulating demand and although it won’t be easy, some kind of action is necessary because paralysis is nearly always fatal.
Right Wing Fringe: How Can Obama Win ?
A new AP-GfK Poll says that 52 % of American believe that Obama does not deserve to be re elected. With support for Obama waning in all quarters, its difficult to see how he can win. He has lost independents, rumor has it he …
For the first time, the poll found that a majority of adults, 52 percent, said Obama should be voted out of office while 43 percent said he deserves another term. The numbers mark a reversal since last May, …
The Revisionist Hype
Firat of all, let’s ignore the revisionist hype in so many sections of the liberal media about President Obama staging some kind of mythical political comeback!
This is a presidency with an approval rating of around 50% (according to the RealClear Politics poll of polls), that presides over a nation where just 27% of voters think the country is moving in the right direction, and just 29% of Americans think he will be returned to power in 2012.
The White House may be claiming a couple of political wins in the dying embers of the lame duck Congress after expending a great deal of political capital in the Senate over the reckless ratification of the Moscow-friendly START Treaty and the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, but these are issues barely on the radar screens of most American voters in the lead-up to 2012, an election which will be dominated by the economy and health care reform, and the political landscape still looks strikingly bleak for the “transformational president” as he goes into 2011 and 2010 was an incredibly bad year for Barack Obama, no matter how much, The New York Times or The Washington Post might try to sugar coat it.
Here are four reasons why it was a year Obama will want to forget:
1. The midterm elections were a defeat of epic proportions for the Obama Presidency, and were the worst since 1948!
When Barack Obama spoke of a “shellacking” at the midterms, it was a huge understatement.
The Republicans scored a significantly bigger win than they did in 1994, with their biggest gain in the House of Representatives in sixty two years.
And fortunately for the Democrats only thirty seven Senate seats were up for election, which most likely prevented what would have been an almost certain handover of power in the upper house too.
Republicans also made huge gains at the gubernatorial level, with the GOP now holding twenty nine governorships to the Democrats’ twenty. Republicans also picked up 680 seats in state legislatures, which is the highest figure in the modern era.
2. Conservatism grew increasingly dominant in America!
The midterms were certainly no flash in the pan, but were definitely part of the much broader conservative revolution which swept America in 2010.
As a recent Gallup survey showed, 48% of Americans now describe themselves as “conservative”, compared to 32% who call themselves “moderate”, and just 20% who call themselves “liberal”.
Conservatives now outnumber liberals by nearly 2.5 to 1, a ratio that is likely to increase in 2011.
The percentage of Americans who now call themselves conservative has risen six points since 2006 and eight points since 1994.
Barack Obama, who is the most liberal US president of the modern era, only has a natural liberal constituency comprised of just one in five Americans, which certainly does not bode well for 2012.
3. The Left lost a huge amount of ground and also engaged in a brutal civil war
2010 was a monumentally bad year for the liberal establishment in the United States, not only in electoral terms but also in terms of increasing divisions within its ranks, as well as the continuing decline of the “mainstream” liberal media.
The conservative media, from Fox News to The Wall Street Journal, had a tremendous year with increasing market share, while establishment giants from CNN to network news outlets continued to decline.
The White House very unwisely (and werhaps stupidly) took on Fox in a major offensive, and spectacularly lost.
And Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and a constellation of conservative talk show hosts had a bumper 2010 too.
In the meantime, America’s disillusioned liberal elites are increasingly aiming their fire at each other, in scenes that are reminiscent of the bloodthirsty finale of Reservoir Dogs.
The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman perfectly captured the brutal post-midterm atmosphere on the Left in a fiery broadside against the president: “Whatever is going on inside the White House, from the outside it looks like moral collapse and a complete failure of purpose and loss of direction".
4. The Tea Party became more powerful than the president at the ballot box
The Tea Party was the big victor of 2010 because it spectacularly humiliated the White House by running rings around it.
A small grassroots movement with barely any resources evolved into the most successful US political movement of this generation, sparking a national protest against the big government policies of the Obama administration, and a powerful call for a return to America’s founding principles.
The Tea Party, which was initially mocked and jeered by its political opponents, including the president, later came to be feared by the Left as it flexed tremendous political muscle.
A September, a CNN poll showed that “while just 37% of Americans are more likely to vote for a candidate if backed by Barack Obama, a far larger 50% will vote for a Tea-Party endorsed candidate".
The Tea Party continues to gain momentum following the midterms, where it scored significant successes, and a late November USA Today/Gallup poll showed the Tea Party virtually neck and neck with President Obama in terms of voter opinion on who should influence government policy.
Posted in 2012, administration, congress, democracy, Dow Jones, economy, finance, politics, polls, presidential elections, Stock market | 
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