The Sunshine Report

Category Archive: economy

1. The Inflation Monster Is Tame

   0 Post on March 11, 2011

   Despite the quick run up in gaso­line prices, the U.S. econ­omy isn’t about to be eaten by the infla­tion mon­ster. While it is a good bet that some­time in the next few years the Fed will have to deal with ris­ing infla­tion, now isn’t the time to change mon­e­tary pol­icy in an effort to slay […] [read full story]

   Posted in: CPI, Deflation, Economic Statistics, economy, Finance, Inflation, M2, Monetary Policy, Oil, Public Policy

2. Renminbi to Replace the Dollar as King of Currencies? Not Likely

   0 Post on March 7, 2011

   There is a lot of spec­u­la­tion that the dol­lar is los­ing ground to the Chi­nese ren­minbi and that sooner or later the Fed will share the global stage with Chi­nese mon­e­tary author­i­ties. Chi­nese gov­ern­ment offi­cials and Jere­miad west­ern eco­nomic fore­cast­ers who claim that the ren­minbi will replace the dol­lar as the world’s pre­mier cur­rency cer­tainly […] [read full story]

   Posted in: China, Economic Statistics, economy, Finance, M2, Monetary Policy, Money Supply, Public Policy, Seeking Alpha, Trade, Trade Finance

3. SBA Policy Restricts Small Business" rel="bookmark">28-Year-Old SBA Policy Restricts Small Business

   2 Post on January 27, 2011

   It’s tough to explain why the Small Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion favors banks over non-banks in its flag­ship SBA 7(a) loan pro­gram. For the last 28 years, the SBA has refused to license a sin­gle new non-bank lender and has restricted the abil­ity of exist­ing non-bank 7(a) lenders to finance their port­fo­lios. [read full story]

   Posted in: BANKS, Credit Crisis, economy, Finance, SBA, Small Business Lending

4. Obstacles To Small Business Lending

   0 Post on January 19, 2011

   On Jan­u­ary 13th I attended the FDIC Small Busi­ness Forum titled Over­com­ing Obsta­cles to Small Busi­ness Lend­ing and got an extra­or­di­nary glimpse into why many small busi­nesses are miss­ing the recov­ery.  Even though the forum pan­elists agreed that “what’s good for small busi­ness is good for Amer­ica”, they had few ideas about how to ener­gize […] [read full story]

   Posted in: BANKS, Bernanke, Credit Crisis, economy, Finance, Public Policy, REGULATION, Regulatory Reform, SBA, Small Business Lending

5. What to Learn From Florida’s Mortgage Meltdown

   0 Post on January 10, 2011

   If any­one wants to see a real live mort­gage melt­down in progress, they should visit Florida where, accord­ing to the Amer­i­can Secu­ri­ti­za­tion Forum, more than 50% of secu­ri­tized non-agency Florida res­i­den­tial mort­gages are greater than 60 days past due. [read full story]

   Posted in: BANKS, Credit Crisis, economy, Finance, Mortgage, Public Policy, REGULATION

6. There’s A Better Alternative To Cutting Social Security…

   1 Post on January 6, 2011

   Here’s a sug­ges­tion for Sen­a­tor Gra­ham and every­one else that that thinks ham­mer­ing older Amer­i­cans is the way to fix a future demo­graphic imbal­ance; con­cen­trate on get­ting more young Amer­i­cans into the econ­omy so that the demo­graphic grenade doesn’t explode. [read full story]

   Posted in: Demographics, economy, Finance, Public Policy

7. It’s Not Too Late For Congress To Fix The Derivatives Market

   1 Post on December 13, 2009

   The finan­cial reform leg­is­la­tion that passed the House last week doesn’t fix the deriv­a­tives mar­ket but there is still time to make it right. The Sen­ate hasn’t passed its ver­sion of the bill and all Sen­a­tors need to do is include a pro­vi­sion stop­ping the Fed­eral gov­ern­ment from pre­vent­ing enforce­ment of state and local crim­i­nal […] [read full story]

   Posted in: BANKS, Credit Crisis, Credit Default Swaps, economy, Finance, Politics, Public Policy, REGULATION, Regulatory Reform

8. Why The Government Jobs Policy Isn’t Working

   2 Post on December 3, 2009

   The U.S. econ­omy is going to be sick until job growth returns and unem­ploy­ment is sig­nif­i­cantly reduced. Pres­i­dent Obama’s eco­nomic team doesn’t seem to know how to stim­u­late jobs growth and what they have tried so far isn’t work­ing very well. While Obama’s pol­icy seems to have stopped jobs from dis­ap­pear­ing, that is very dif­fer­ent […] [read full story]

   Posted in: BANKS, Credit Crisis, economy, Finance, Politics, Public Policy, Small Business Lending

9. Japan’s Demographic Time Bomb Is Imploding

   3 Post on November 5, 2009

   Accord­ing to Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Japan is quickly turn­ing into devel­oped world’s sick­est econ­omy and could soon tip into an uncon­trolled down­ward spi­ral. Evans-Pritchard reported last week in the Tele­graph that Japan is reach­ing the point of no return where it won’t be able to meet its oblig­a­tions and could enter a debt death spi­ral. While […] [read full story]

   Posted in: Demographics, economy, Finance, Japan, Public Policy

10. Home Sick Shows How Work Incentives Matter

    3 Post on November 3, 2009

    Last Wednes­day the New York Times Economix Blog pub­lished an arti­cle writ­ten by Casey Mul­li­gan that was billed as a sum­mary of how work incen­tives change employee behav­ior. I expected Pro­fes­sor Mul­li­gan to edu­cate read­ers as to how work and com­pen­sa­tion incen­tives change worker behav­ior and effect busi­ness. I quickly real­ized, how­ever, that the real […] [read full story]

    Posted in: Casey Mulligan, economy, Finance, New York Times