James Grant, Editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer, will be interviewed by NBR Anchor Paul Kangas about recent Wall Street trends, the outlook, and some favorite stock picks.

Watch Nightly Business Report on your local PBS station:
http://www.pbs.org/nbr/site/onair/upcoming/upcoming/

I try to watch this each evening, but if I miss it, they post the transcript the same night.

House Of Cards: The Mortgage Mess
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/01/25/60minutes/main3752515.shtml

Great 60 Minutes piece featuring Jim Grant. I love this part, 'you had to apply NOT to get a loan'. He is spot on.

"I mean free money. I mean you had to apply not to get a loan, almost. Sometimes you have to apply to get a loan, you almost had to apply not to get one," Grant says.

http://finance.yahoo.com/taxes/article/104939/Stimulus-Payments-to-Go-Out-Ahead-of-Schedule

The federal government, eager to boost the flagging economy, will start distributing special stimulus payments Monday—four days earlier than expected.

"Beginning Monday, the effects of the stimulus will begin to reach households," President Bush said Friday. "This money is going to help Americans offset the high prices we're seeing at the gas pump and at the grocery store."

Interesting coincidence that the FOMC rate-setting meeting is Wednesday, a day before people were originally supposed to start seeing their direct deposits/checks.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/04/18/cneuro118.xml

Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's newly elected premier, has called for a change in the ECB's mandate, proposing a dual mission akin to the US Federal Reserve's mandate to promote growth as well as fighting inflation. He has the support of France's Nicolas Sarkozy.

...
Just as market tops are marked by expectations that economic strength will persist indefinitely, stock markets hit bottom when an economic downturn is taken as full fact, when conditions are widely expected to get substantially worse, and when investors have largely given up on any hope that the economy will improve in the foreseeable future.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080329/ap_on_go_pr_wh/fed_overhaul

"...In an effort to deal with the problems highlighted by the current severe credit crisis, the new plan would give major new powers to the Federal Reserve, according to a 26-page executive summary obtained Friday by The Associated Press..."

A sad day for the notion of the Free Market - something that has made the U.S. shine for decades.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aCQcbgTBPlPE&refer=home

March 18 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve cut its main lending rate by three quarters of a percentage point to 2.25 percent as officials try to prop up the faltering economy and restore faith in the U.S. financial system.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080316/jpmorgan_bear_stearns.html

NEW YORK (AP) -- Just four days after Bear Stearns Chief Executive Alan Schwartz assured Wall Street that his company was not in trouble, he was forced on Sunday to sell the investment bank to competitor JPMorgan Chase for a bargain-basement price of $2 a share, or $236.2 million.

Stunning. BSC closed at $30 on Friday and was as high as $159 in the past year. Ouch. 2 bucks.

Don't worry, the crisis is "contained"...

http://money.cnn.com/2008/01/18/news/economy/cure.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008012107

http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/yourlife/58763;_ylt=AjvK3FvizBjl6hK1lpqOxSO7YWsA

Simply put, the media and the short-sellers on Wall Street are trying to scare us into having a recession. Since the nice people who read this have some interest in facts and figures, here are a few reasons why things aren't so bad.