The bond and treasury markets are at times confusing to investors. Generally they are considered a safe form of income in relatively stable economic times. Investors enjoy a small but stable flow of income. In today’s environment, however, there may be a bit of uncertainty.

The Federal Reserve has reduced interest rates to help spur the economy, thus making treasury notes and bonds more attractive. Unfortunately, this same agency has also issued quite a bit of debt, as it relates to the “rescue package.” Generally speaking, this means that at some point interest rates will need to rise to keep foreign/domestic investors buying these treasury bills and government backed bonds. When this occurs yields on these products will drop. The question is when and how to keep an income flowing until, but before, interest rates rise.

There are a few ways to look at this issue. The first is quite

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The markets were up today led by energy stocks as oil settled at $72.68.  The Dow Jones was up 0.37% closing at 8770.92, with the S&P up 0.61% closing at 944.89.  The NASDAQ was up 9.29 closing at 1862.37.  Treasury prices were down as the yield closed at 3.862%.  Gold settled at $962.00 as the dollar continues to weaken against other currencies. 

In major news today, Bank of America [BAC: 12.97, +0.99 (+8.26%)] CEO Ken Lewis appeared at the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to talk about BofA’s acquisition of Merrill Lynch.  Lawmakers wanted to know from Lewis why a deal that was approved by shareholders in December with no government aid, wound up costing $20 billion dollars to taxpayers, for completion in January.  Lawmakers also questioned Lewis about knowing about losses at Merrill earlier then reported, as internal e-mails in the Fed suggested.  Some have speculated that Lewis

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It came as no surprise to me that both gold got sold off a bit the moment that the gold market opened in the Far East on Monday morning. But it didn’t amount to much, because shortly after 2 p.m. in Hong Kong…1:00 a.m. Monday morning N.Y. time…gold began a slow rise that continued right through the London open. This lasted until the silver fix in London (noon) before selling off about ten bucks. But as soon as floor trading opened on the Comex in New York, the price rose…then spiked to its high of the day…before it was gently capped and then got slowly sold off until the end of Globex trading at 5:15 p.m. Eastern time.

Silver followed a similar route, but it got sold off shortly before the Comex opened…with the selloff continuing until about 8:30 a.m. in New York. From there it rose in fits and starts

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a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_28p7XDn4Qb0/SXQJ7FPQAfI/AAAAAAAABXI/kmd_v2TykvM/s1600-h/Ben_Bernanke_printing_money.jpg"img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 174px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_28p7XDn4Qb0/SXQJ7FPQAfI/AAAAAAAABXI/kmd_v2TykvM/s320/Ben_Bernanke_printing_money.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5292866372690248178" border="0" //abr /The total volume of all the measures and plans to support the U.S. economy and to combat the financial crisis at the moment is growing in total about 8.5 trillion dollars.br /br /Here is at least a partial list of major items and their ranking at the time.br /br /Among the first measures to promote the economy include a plan to reduce the tax burden from February 2008, comprising in total approximately $168 bln. Bunch of bail out supports came after a September storm, rescue Bear Stearns in volume $29 bln, taking over mortgage giants Fannie May and Freddie Mac estimated at $200 bln, rescue AIG and Citigroup so far estimated at $152.5 or $325 bln, adoption of $700 bln TARP plan, and promised to help ...