Tom Keene has been doing a series for Bloomberg Radio this week on the new book, The Road Ahead for the Fed. You can listen to Tom's interviews with me or three of the other authors who contributed to the book by clicking on a link below.

John Taylor James Hamilton Myron Scholes Allan Meltzer

You can also find my chapter from the book here, or order the book from Amazon.

It takes more than two to make a trend.  JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) yesterday (Thursday) became the second major U.S. investment bank – following Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) – to this week report windfall profits for the second-quarter. That’s helped fuel a four-day advance in U.S. stocks that’s seen the Dow Jones Industrial Average surge 7%.

Unfortunately, these two decidedly positive developments don’t necessarily indicate that better days have arrived for the U.S. banking sector.

To the contrary, many analysts – including Money Morning Investment Director Keith Fitz-Gerald – say these profits are merely a mirage created by an obscure accounting rule that allows banks to transform “toxic debt” on their balance sheets into income.

JPMorgan, the second-largest U.S. bank, said that that second-quarter profits were $2.7 billion, a jump of 36% from a year ago and 27% from the

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Charles Nenner, whom I have highlighted here on numerous occasions, is speaking live on BLOOMBERG RADIO.  You may check it out here:

CHARLES NENNER LIVE RADIO. 

Then click radio on left hand side below Breaking News and Live TV feature spot

If you are not familiar with Mr. Nenner check out my other posts:

Charles Nenner Calls For A Retreat

Charles Nenner Research: Most Recent Interview

Charles Nenner Looks Into His Crystal Ball…Again

 

Post from: The CrossHairs Trader

CHARLES NENNER ON BLOOMBERG RADIO

Related posts:CHARLES NENNER LOOKS INTO HIS CRYSTAL BALL…AGAINCHARLES NENNER RESEARCH: MOST RECENT INTERVIEW

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A "W" Recession?

Martin Feldstein has recently raised the possibility that we might experience a relapse into recession in 2010 (a perfect symmetrical W), with the next dip in 2010. In my view, this means (1) we should have opted for a bigger and better composed stimulus package, and (2) the timing of expenditures in the stimulus package might not be as problematic as many commentators have indicated.

"I think we"re going to see a temporary substantial improvement," Feldstein, the former head of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a Reagan administration adviser, said today in an interview on Bloomberg Radio. "I emphasize the words temporary and substantial."

Feldstein -- a member of the private panel that dates the start of recessions and recoveries -- suggested the economy will contract into next year, and that the pattern of economic turnaround will be more of a seesaw than what he

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I’m confident that the trend for REITs will be down through the end of 2009. That’s why I suggest buying the UltaShort Real Estate ProShares ETF (NYSE: SRS. Current price $18.52) as a way to profit from weakness in the REIT sector. But fasten your seatbelt! SRS will be volatile!

REITs may appear cheap, but they are very dangerous to hold right now. A basic tenet of corporate finance is that a company or a sector is only creating value for shareholders if its return on invested capital (ROIC) exceeds its weighted average cost of capital (WACC). If its WACC exceeds its ROIC, it is destroying value. This describes the situation facing the REIT sector for the next few years.

Most REITs cannot float unsecured debt at anything less than 10% or 12%, so their cost of capital is high and rising. At the same time, due to the

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I’m confident that the trend for REITs will be down through the end of 2009. That’s why I suggest buying the UltaShort Real Estate ProShares ETF (NYSE: SRS. Current price $18.52) as a way to profit from weakness in the REIT sector. But fasten your seatbelt! SRS will be volatile!

REITs may appear cheap, but they are very dangerous to hold right now. A basic tenet of corporate finance is that a company or a sector is only creating value for shareholders if its return on invested capital (ROIC) exceeds its weighted average cost of capital (WACC). If its WACC exceeds its ROIC, it is destroying value. This describes the situation facing the REIT sector for the next few years.

Most REITs cannot float unsecured debt at anything less than 10% or 12%, so their cost of capital is high and rising. At the same time, due to the

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I think we’ve all been there…we’ve made a trade, we’re happy with that trade, and yet our reasoning behind the trade was wrong! Today I’d like everyone to welcome Bob Iaccino from TraderOutlook.com. Some of you might reconognize the name, and that’s because Bob is a frequent contributor on CNBC, CNBC Asia, Bloomberg Television, Bloomberg Radio, CNN, CNN International, Fox News, and several other media outlets as a special guest analyst. Yeah he’s all over the place and he knows what he’s talking about.

Enjoy the special Sunday guest blog, please post comments to Bob or about the article, and spend a few minutes on TraderOutlook.com and watch his forex videos!

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I remember one of the smartest human beings I’ve ever mentored, in my 15 years in the markets, explaining a trade he wanted to place. Let’s call him “Neal.”  Neal told me that the Fed needed

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Notes from the Investment Underground

April 14, 2009

Palermo Viejo, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Richard Russell: Why this is a bear market correction… That latest outbreak of investor credulity… 25 biggest earnings-per-share movers and shakers heading into earnings season… Banks to be allowed to screw up indefinitely… The great “too big to fail” fraud… Bailouts costing $42,105 for each U.S. citizen… Bush-Obama tag team piles on debt at the rate of $60,000 a second… Bob Higgs on C-SPAN… China wises up… And more!

*** This Richard Russell quote is a must-read for investors thinking about buying back into stocks. Russell, now in his 50th year of publishing the excellent Dow Theory Letter, believes we are now witnessing a bear market correction.

The essence of Dow Theory has to do with VALUES. At the March low the price/earnings ratio for the Dow was 25.79 and the dividend ...

I did a long interview today with Tom Keene of Bloomberg Radio on the current recession and Federal Reserve policy. You can listen to it by clicking here.

The finger of blame for this crisis should be pointed at the Fed, says Ed Bugos. Its interventionist activities created an unsustainable bubble. A recession is just the process of correcting these mistakes. Worse still, Ed says the Fed’s current actions are proof that it is not about to change this approach. Expect more inflation, and a bull run in gold.

This from The Daily Reckoning:

Occasionally I hear the odd guest on CNBC or Bloomberg Radio who lays blame for the crisis in exactly the right place - the Federal Reserve System in the U.S….or central banking more broadly.

These extremely influential institutions ostensibly exist to regulate prices, employment and interest rates by way of control over the money supply. They do this by inflating bank reserve credit, on which the banks can pyramid, thus essentially abrogating the role of interest rate determination by the market.

That is, the central bank

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