This post provides links to a number of interesting articles I have read over the past few days that you may also enjoy.

• Robert Reich (Robert Reich’s Blog): The great disconnect between stocks and jobs, November 18, 2009. How can the stock market hit new highs at the same time unemployment is hitting new highs? Simple. The market is up because corporate earnings are up. Corporate earnings are up because companies are cutting costs. And the biggest single cost they’re cutting is their payrolls. So they let people go and, presto, their balance sheets look better and their stock prices rise. Where is this heading? No place good. Without a major shift in policy - both at the Fed and in the White House - the economics point to a big stock-market correction and a double dip. The politics point to substantial losses for Democrats

This post provides links to a number of interesting articles I have read over the past few days that you may also enjoy.

• Robert Reich (Robert Reich’s Blog): The great disconnect between stocks and jobs, November 18, 2009. How can the stock market hit new highs at the same time unemployment is hitting new highs? Simple. The market is up because corporate earnings are up. Corporate earnings are up because companies are cutting costs. And the biggest single cost they’re cutting is their payrolls. So they let people go and, presto, their balance sheets look better and their stock prices rise. Where is this heading? No place good. Without a major shift in policy - both at the Fed and in the White House - the economics point to a big stock-market correction and a double dip. The politics point to substantial losses for Democrats

This post is a guest contribution by Dian Chu*, market analyst, trader and author of the Economic Forecasts and Opinions blog.

The dollar’s value against major currencies has fallen in recent months as the US fiscal outlook worsened and amid expectations that interest rates will remain close to zero for some time to fight the economic downturn.

This week, the euro broke above the psychologically important level of $1.50 driving gold prices to record levels, prompting many global central banks intervening on currency markets to slow the dollar’s fall (Fig 1).

How did we get here?

Since the financial crisis last fall, currency markets have taken their cues mostly from stock markets. When stocks plunged in March of this year, investors rushed to the safety of US government bonds, pushing the

Thursday October 30, 2008 Navivest

The U.S. Commerce Department today, put out a report that showed the Gross Domestic Product or GDP, contracted at an annualized rate of 0.3%. Economists were looking for a rise of 0.3%.

The GDP which is the broadest measure of a nation’s economy, is the sum total of all the goods and services that a country produces. As such, a shrinking GDP means we are producing fewer goods and services, which would then mean less people employed, and all the other negative economic implications that come with that.

The number should not entirely be a surprise. Employment is already at 6.1% a 0.7% jump in September, from the 5.4% August 2008 rate. Consumer sentiment for October 2008 showed a reading of 57.5, a steep drop from the September reading of 70.3. Forecasters had been looking for the number to come in at 64.5.

Furthermore, major corporations have