Peridot Capitalist

In recent weeks I have been accumulating shares of Goldman Sachs (GS) for my clients, more so now than any other time since I began managing money. In a market environment where over the course of a single year most stocks have gone from severely undervalued to fairly valued, it remains pretty easy to make [...]

There has been a lot of talk lately about the repeal of Glass-Steagal in the 1990’s and the potential that such a move contributed greatly to the financial crisis. Glass-Steagal, originally passed in 1933, had many parts to it but it is most widely known to have disallowed commercial banks that gathered customer deposits and [...]

The core difference between the Bush and Obama administrations in terms of how they doled out government bailout funds was what, if any, terms came with getting the money. Former Treasury Secretary Paulson gave out the first half of TARP funds with no strings attached. Secretary Geithner, conversely, wanted to make sure the government funding [...]

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 [...]

It is hard to argue with the success of the “Cash for Clunkers” automobile incentive program so far. With $1 billion already blown through, Congress is working on a $2 billion extension, despite most Republicans being against the program (probably because it was a Democratic idea, not because it is not working).
So far the average [...]

We have been hearing warnings for years. Just wait until China stops buying our debt… the borrow and spend cycle in the U.S. will come to a grinding halt. Since the Obama Administration has already spent about $1.4 trillion (~$800 billion on stimulus and ~$600 billion on a down payment for healthcare reform), these calls [...]

You may have heard that the U.S. Department of Energy is planning to offer $18.5 billion in loan guarantees for the construction of more nuclear power plants. Not only would additional nuclear capacity reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it would also help private energy companies boost their market positions. Federal loan guarantees will reduce the cost [...]

Before we start jumping for joy that the government stands to make a nice profit on the $68 billion of TARP money that is now eligible to be repaid, let’s consider that the gains are only from relatively healthy institutions. By forcing each of the nation’s biggest banks to accept TARP funds, former Treasury Secretary [...]