Investors anxiously await Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) minutes, like the details of the April 28-29 meeting released Friday. But despite the Fed’s monetary policy purchase of $4 trillion in bonds to drive interest rates to near zero, Fed Chairman
Many experts reckon the first cyberwar is already well under way. It’s not exactly a “cold war,” as the previous generation understood the term, because serious damage valued in millions of dollars has been done, and there’s nothing masked about the hostile intent of state-sponsored hackers. What has been masked is the sponsorship.
Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen recently joined the rising chorus of economists and former Fed officials warning about the risks of irrational exuberance by bond and stock investors paying bubble-inflated prices. Conspicuously silent about the risks of stock investing over the last 6 years, Yellen’s comments quickly tanked the bond market. But with the NASDAQ tech-heavy index up 500% since the bottom of the last crash, Yellen seems to be warning this bubble could pop.
With University of California tuition more than doubling in the last decade, about two-thirds of Californians now rate affordability at America’s largest public college system as poor. Despite Federal Reserve warnings about default risks for student loans, the UC system intends to raise tuition by 5 percent next year and 21.5 percent over the next 5 years.
Farmland prices that had been enjoying a 28-year bull market finally turned down in 2014. Despite real estate, stocks, bonds and commodities crashes over the period, farmland had never had a down year since 1986. However, the Wall Street Journal has reported that farmland suffered a loss of 3 percent last year, “reflecting a cooling in the market driven by two years of bumper crops and sharply lower grain prices, according to Federal Reserve.”
Calling Sen. Rand Paul’s rhetoric regarding the Federal Reserve “dangerous and irresponsible,” the Wall Street-backed establishment GOP is pushing back on what’s become a Paul talking point.
The Federal Reserve has declared economic growth “solid.” But several new reports show most Americans are treading along a dangerous financial tightrope, where one slip could be devastating.
After six years of Obamanomics, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen is still citing “stagnant wage growth as a sign of continued problems in the labor market,” and the immediate future isn’t looking much better.
