House of Representatives House Bill

CNBC Link: http://www.cnbc.com/id/33539388

President Obama’s Weekly Address: Small Business Recovery

  

3rd Quarter GDP

Today's report by CNN said that the US GDP grew by about 3.7%, the first growth in almost a year. On the other hand, the growth could have also been the government's infusion of money into the financial and auto markets.

http://bit.ly/KVibn #cnnmoney

10,000 Part 2

The stock market has been closing around 10,000 points lately but cannot seem to stay above the coveted mark to show the recovery and stability of the United States stock markets. Although many will give many different speculations as to why this is so, there are only a few fundamental reasons for this.

(1) The market needs time to recover.

(2) There is a lack of flow of funds to ensure the stability at the levels financial leaders want to be at.

and

(3) There are simply too many people in the market trying to do the same thing and many doing the opposite and/or taking advantage of the system.

Instead of focusing on one aspect of the problem at a time (i.e. bailout money, lack of/inadequate regulation, bonuses/excessive compensation, etc.), we have to take all the factors as a whole and go from there. Individually, these issues would shake the system, but would not cause it to collapse. Taken as a whole, you get the present result. Finally, time is needed for the situation to get on stable footing. One year may seem like a lot of time, but this problem took years to build up so years may be needed to fix it.

Dubai - World's Tallest Building

10,000

The Dow has reached the closest it has been to  10,000 points in nearly a year since the financial crisis began. The market is currently being led by Intel and JPMorgan Chase.

Read the full article here on CNN.

Health Care Reform Bill

Yesterday, the Senate Finance Company approve over $800 billion in funds to support the health care reform bill proposed by President Obama to run for 10 years. The vote passed 14-9 with only one republican vote going for the bill.

Weak Dollar / Replacing Oil’s Currency

It would seem that the world market is of mixed minds. One one hand, nations are enjoying how the dollar has weakened, resulting in cheaper American based goods and services. On the other hand, this weaker dollar has resulted in a loss of faith in the dollar. This has led many to question why the world should be backed in the so called strongest currency in the world. Some nations have felt that maybe one start would be to change the currency of oil from the American dollar to some other currently stable currency such as the Euro. The first thing to do is to see how other currencies react to the weaker dollar to see if they can handle the stress of being on the world market versus the old more local based currency trading. The full CNN article can be read here.

Mortgages Under 5%

CNN reports that one good result of this financial crisis is gradually lower mortgage interest rates for new home buyers. It would seem that the system is slowly normalizing as the recent rapid rise of the housing market had over-inflated prices. In economics, this normalization is met at an equilibrium point where the rates would be at a place where consumers and suppliers are in agreement. The markets are rarely at this point as everyone cannot be in agreement all the time. The equilibrium point is a good point to measure how off base the market is. The full CNN article can be read here.

8% Boost for IRS

The White House is looking to give additional funding to the IRS to crack down on those who use off shore funds to get around United States tax laws. They estimate that an additional $17 billion can be collected by the end of 2010 with these additional funds. This comes on the heals of off shore banks working with the United States to help crack down on these tax evaders. The full article can be read on WSJ.com here.

President Obama’s Budget Change

President Obama announced where he plans on making his budget cuts. He wants to start by changing tax rules for families making over $250,000/year. Although he blames much of the current economic troubles on the previous administration, it is not limited to the administration as it is also falls on the private sector’s greed and irresponsibility. Although is budget cuts would help reduce the deficit, as baby boomers retire and look to collect more in social security and Medicare benefits, this deficit could rise again. More on the president’s plans can be read here.

Curse of 10,000

In short, this "curse" is based on the trend that the Dow has trouble staying above the 10,000 mark.

Full Article: http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/yftt_348728/The-Curse-of-Dow-10,000?tickers=^DJI,^GSPC,SPY,DIA,QQQQ,^IXIC