Economy

Lots of folks are starting to panic a bit now that the stock market has shed roughly 15% in the last 10 days. And rightly so. We haven’t seen the market tank this bad since the recession started back in 2008. But this time it’s a little more interesting. Well, maybe scary is a better word. Unlike the recession of 2008, we don’t have the same mechanisms at our disposal to try and quell the panic and stimulate the economy. We’re also starting off in a worse spot. Interest rates…
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The market has completely panicked. The DOW fell -265 points on August 2nd, 2011 and -512.76 August 4th 2011, as investors fled stocks and put their money into government backed securities like short-term and long-term treasury’s. The fear of a debt default, which was completely unfounded (politicized by Obama and Geithner), has been eliminated now that the debt ceiling has been increased and the government has the authority to borrow more money. At the same time, the economy appears to be heading towards a double dip recession as the entire…
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There’s a lot of talk these days about US Treasury Bills, and a lot of folks don’t know what one is, or why they are important. US Treasuries are certificates issued by the United States Government. Think of them as IOUs or loans. The government will issue Treasury Bills when they need to raise money they don’t have, usually to fund things like war, big spending projects or in recent times, pay their bills (I won’t get into why that is bad in this post). Treasuries can be bought by…
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