Peridot Capitalist

There will be no way to argue that the job market is healthy until we see sustainable job growth but this morning’s monthly non-farm payroll data (preliminary figures for November show net payroll declines of only 11,000 workers, the best monthly performance since December 2007) continues to show that the trend in layoffs is moving [...]

There is chatter today that Congress is considering new tax breaks for corporations that hire unemployed workers. On the face of it this might seem like a good idea; incentivize companies to start hiring again. The only problem is that this is yet another example of a tax cut that won’t work. Proponents of tax [...]

Per one’s request, my latest quarterly letter to Peridot Capital clients included a section on the current macro-economic outlook for the United States. The question they wanted me to address had to do with possible hyperinflation resulting from ever-increasing budget deficits at the federal level. As with any question like that I try to completely [...]

From the Associated Press this morning:

“Construction of new homes jumped in May by the largest amount in three months, an encouraging sign that the nation’s deep housing recession was beginning to bottom out. The Commerce Department said Tuesday that construction of new homes and apartments jumped 17.2 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual [...]

For those of you who don’t know Merrill Lynch chief economist David Rosenberg, he has been very bearish on the U.S. economy for a long time, long before the recession hit. Some give him credit for predicting how things would play out, while others criticize the fact that he was years early and therefore missed [...]

Terry submits an email saying:
“Tax cuts to increase American companies’ ability to compete, lower corporate tax rates, lower capital gains rates and repatriate that $500B plus overseas that companies don’t want to pay 35% confiscatory tax rates on. Stop pandering to the lowest common denominator and grease the skids for what [...]

As President Obama gets ready to sign the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act later today, a common question is, will it work? Of course we won’t know for a while, but my honest non-partisan opinion is “a little bit.” There is little doubt that parts of the bill are positive for our country and [...]

Market strategists call it a “bottoming process” or “building a base.” The chart below shows the S&P 500 over the last three months and you can see what they are talking about. Earnings estimates keep dropping, job cuts keep pushing up the unemployment rate, GDP continues to contract, but the S&P has been going sideways [...]

What a shame. The $800 billion+ stimulus bill being crafted in Congress isn’t that impressive. Sure, there are some very good ideas that made their way into the legislation that will create jobs and improve the efficiency of our economy (infrastructure spending on roads, bridges, and the power grid, for example) but it seems for [...]

Tim Geithner and Larry Summers were the top two candidates for Treasury Secretary in the Obama administration, and today at noon ET we will officially hear that both are joining Obama’s economic team. Geithner will head up the Treasury Department and Summers will be director of the National Economic Council. Having both of these men, [...]