We highlight Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (GS), E-Trade Financial Corp. (ETFC) and The Charles Schwab Corp. (SCHW).The Federal Deficit will be almost $2 Trillion this year, or over 12% of GDP. If we exclude the WWII years, the previous peak in the deficit as a percent of GDP was 6.3% under Reagan. Next year, the deficit is projected to decline to about $1.2 Trillion, a projection that strikes me as optimistic, but even if achieved will still be a greater share of GDP than during the worst fiscal excesses of the Reagan years.Much of the deficit this year is unavoidable, as it comes from shrinking revenues as much as from higher spending. With profits down, corporate income taxes are down; with people unemployed, or having their salaries or hours cut, they pay less individual income taxes. And you can just guess what the ...

Highlights include D.R. Horton, Inc. (DHI), Whirlpool Corp. (WHR) and Fortune Brands, Inc. (FO).A recent academic paper by Atif Mian and Amir Sufi, both of the University of Chicago and the NBER, took a very close look at the effect of mortgage equity withdrawal on the overall economy during the housing bubble. "Mortgage equity withdrawal" is the more technical name for the housing ATM.It was very actively pushed by the banks during the housing bubble, with ads showing money hidden in people's houses that they were not taking advantage of. I knew it was significant, but this paper indicates that it was even more important than I thought it was. Here is an abstract from the paper:"Using individual-level data on homeowner debt and defaults from 1997 to 2008, we show that borrowing against the increase in home equity by ...