The G-20 Meeting Accomplished a Little

On April 2 President Obama and his counterparts from 21 other countries and representatives of various multinational organizations such as the IMF, OECD, UN and World Bank gathered for a summit meeting in London. (The G-20 actually includes 19 countries plus the European Union. For this summit, Spain and the Netherlands were also invited, though they are not technically part of the G-20.) The countries involved produce about 80.0 percent of world GDP. As expectations regarding any meaningful results from the meeting were extraordinarily low, the achievements made caused rallies in global equity markets. Click here to read the full post and comment (Insights subscribers) »

Could the Beleaguered Housing Sector Finally Be Turning Up?

Nothing would change the overwhelmingly pervasive gloom and doom among economic forecasters, investors and policymakers more than convincing evidence that residential investment had finally hit bottom and begun to add to GDP growth for the first time since the fourth quarter of 2005. That would be wonderful news indeed.

We have seen the first sign of that highly anticipated event in the March 17 Census Bureau release on housing starts in February 2009. That report surprised all of us by showing that total privately owned housing starts that month were running at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 583,000 units. Click here to read the full post and comment (Insights subscribers) »