The Sunshine Report

Veritas Financial Partners
Information about finance, the economy and business. Entertaining and informative. Seeking Alpha Certified Mark Sunshine Chairman & CEO

Archive: Apr 2009

  1. Mark to Market Accounting Is Still Out Of Control And Is Spreading To Main Street

    4

    The account­ing pro­fes­sion still hasn’t got­ten mark to mar­ket account­ing right. The rules and their appli­ca­tion remain a seri­ous dan­ger to the econ­omy and gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion is needed to save Main Street from being the next vic­tim of fair value account­ing. On April 9, 2009 the most recent changes to mark to mar­ket account­ing were […] [read full story]

    Posted in: CITIGROUP, Economic Statistics, economy, FAS 141R, FAS 157, FAS 159, FASB, Finance, Mark to market accounting, Morgan Stanley, Politics, Public Policy

  2. Why First Capital Supports The 9/11 HelpAmerica Foundation

    0

    I want to tell let every­one know why First Cap­i­tal con­tin­ues to sup­port the 911 Hel­pAmer­ica Foun­da­tion.  We sup­port the Foun­da­tion because it sup­ports Amer­i­cans sol­diers who sac­ri­ficed them­selves for their coun­try and, as a result, need our help. No mat­ter how hard the U.S. Gov­ern­ment tries to help all of the wounded vet­er­ans and […] [read full story]

    Posted in: 9-11 HelpAmerica Foundation

  3. China Economic Growth Claims Lack Credibility

    0

    On April 16th the China National Bureau of Sta­tis­tics (the “NBS”) announced with great fan­fare that the Chi­nese econ­omy was spe­cial because even in the face of an emerg­ing global depres­sion China was able to con­tinue to grow at a rapid pace in the first quar­ter of 2008. Accord­ing to Chi­nese offi­cials, the head­line Chi­nese […] [read full story]

    Posted in: Asia, China, Finance, GDP, Politics

  4. The Japanese Economic Lesson – Demographics Matter, A Lot

    5

    The U.S. has been try­ing to learn from Japan but keeps on get­ting all of the lessons wrong. In the early 1990’s Japan’s econ­omy quickly tran­si­tioned from being an “eco­nomic mir­a­cle” to an eco­nomic “bas­ket case”. The con­ven­tional eco­nomic wis­dom is that the Japan­ese eco­nomic dis­as­ter was caused by a com­bi­na­tion of a burst­ing real […] [read full story]

    Posted in: Credit Crisis, Demographics, Economic Statistics, economy, Finance, Japan, Politics, Public Policy

  5. Afghan Follies by Tom Berner

    2

    Between early 2004 and early 2005, I spent a year in Afghanistan as the Senior Legal Advi­sor in an exper­i­men­tal State Depart­ment unit called the Afghanistan Recon­struc­tion Group (abbre­vi­ated ARG). This posi­tion gave me con­sid­er­able author­ity to talk to whomever I wanted to talk to, in the Afghan gov­ern­ment (up to the level of Vice […] [read full story]

    Posted in: Afghanistan, Finance, Politics, Public Policy

  6. Supply-Side Economics Isn’t The Answer For Today’s Problems

    0

    There is a time and a place for supply-side eco­nom­ics but this is nei­ther. Supply-side advo­cates seem to be fol­low­ing the eco­nomic “chicken soup the­ory”; tax cuts and less reg­u­la­tion are like chicken soup, talk­ing about chicken soup makes every­one feel bet­ter and if actu­ally pre­scribed prob­a­bly won’t make things worse either. But, the prob­lem […] [read full story]

    Posted in: Bush Administration, Business Environment, economy, Finance, Fiscal Policy, Politics, Public Policy, REGULATION

  7. Christmas Sales May Not Be A Wash Out This Year

    3

    Believe it or not it is time to start to think about Christ­mas sales. This is the sea­son when retail­ers start to indi­cate amounts and prices for Christ­mas goods and early indi­ca­tors of retailer orders are rel­a­tively strong and seem to be gain­ing momen­tum. While Christ­mas is still nine months away, because of design, pro­duc­tion, […] [read full story]

    Posted in: economy, Finance, Public Policy, Retail Sales