From Paul Krugman writing in the NY Times: The Big Squander During the bubble years, many financial companies created the illusion of financial soundness by buying credit-default swaps from A.I.G. — basically, insurance policies in which A.I.G. promised to make up the difference if borrowers def ... Read more

The Treasury Department will auction off some of the stock warrants it received in exchange for bailout assistance. Over the next month, Treasury will use a "modified Dutch auction" system to unload it warrant positions in JP Morgan Chase & Co., Capital One Financial Corp., and TCF Finan ... Read more

In 1932, according to John T. Flynn, there were no federal "subsidies to farmers, … handouts to the indigent, [or] support [for] schools." The federal government did not "build hospitals [or] provide medical care."[1] And though it did undertake national defense, it did so much more cheaply than A ... Read more

From the BLS: Regional and State Employment and Unemployment Summary Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia recorded over-the-month unemployment rate increases, 13 states registered rate decreases, and 8 states had no rate change, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over t ... Read more

Palm, Inc. (NASDAQ: PALM) has sort of already fallen from grace despite all the hype behind the Palm Pre.  Throw in that Pixi too.  Discounting is trumping what may be weaker sales.  It turns out that Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) is offering the Palm Pre for Sprint for a mere $79.99.  Sprint Nextel ... Read more

Updated throughout the day. GE (NYSE:GE) and Vivendi are at odds over the NBCU valuation  (FT) IBM (NYSE:IBM) is taking advantage of the delay in the Sun (NASDAQ:JAVA) deal to be bought by Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL)  (TheStreet) The joint venture between Rio Tinto (NYSE:RTP) and BHP Billiton (NYSE:BHP ... Read more

From housing consultant Ivy Zelman commenting on the MBA Delinquency report in the NY Times U.S. Mortgage Delinquencies Reach a Record High "I’ve been pretty bearish on this big ugly pig stuck in the python and this cements my view that home prices are going back down."From Bloomberg: Housing R ... Read more

These are this morning’s top day trader alerts and active trader alerts early this Friday morning.  We have links through to each stock at VSInvestor.com with more data and analysis on each: BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: BCRX) down almost 6% on its secondary offering. Dell Inc. (NAS ... Read more

Stock promoters do not want you to look at this chart... the government does not want you to look at this chart... As risk rises, the t-bill generally rises (its yield declines) and well, there ain't no 'less than zero' involved and if there was, it would seek it out. You know, frightened money m ... Read more