Crony Capitalism

Oblivion Revisited: Jerome Powell Lays More Cover For The Banking System

In a Q&A session and virtual chat covering monetary policy and the U.S. economy Jerome Powell floated another laughable statement regarding the strength and soundness of the U.S. financial system. Just like his predecessors before him, Powell is apparently willing to feed the financial media whatever it wants to hear, even it has no affiliation with the truth. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the Fed will maintain the current course of printing money like there's no tomorrow until it sees substantial progress towards its goals of 2 percent inflation and maximum employment. It is [...]

Things Get Ugly For Denton-Based Sally Beauty

Things just got ugly for Denton-based Sally Beauty supply. The international retailer and distributor of professional beauty supplies saw its stock plummet after Amazon announced its own professional beauty store. This is not exactly great news for one of Denton's largest businesses. Amazon is a virtually unregulated monopoly on multiple fronts with huge tax advantages to many of its competitors. Amazon Beauty customers will still need a license to purchase professional use products, but Amazon is playing by a different set of rules as regulators continue to turn a blind eye to Amazon's monopolistic business [...]

Jerome Powell Visits Dallas Fed – Global Perspectives In Oblivion

Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, visited the Dallas Federal Reserve yesterday to cap the Dallas bank's Global Perspectives series. Aside from pontificating about global economic perspectives, the meeting between Robert Kaplan and Jerome Powell was insightful for many reasons. Kaplan reminded the audience of Powell's policy experience which includes time as partner at private equity firm the Carlyle Group. Listening to a Goldman Sachs alum toss softball questions to a Carlyle alum is one way, I suppose, to placate a concerned public that the economy is still healthy and the Fed is on the ball, [...]

Why Is The Fed Protecting The Stock Market?

The $11 billion increase in the System Open Market Account Holdings report for February 14 has caught the attention of a number of intelligent market watchers for obvious reasons. The Federal Reserve is purportedly in the midst of a significant balance sheet normalization process whereby they are (and plan to to continue) selling large amounts of Treasuries and agency mortgage-backed securities. After amassing a portfolio of over $4.4 trillion, the Fed has used that massive hedge fund to artificially suppress interest rates and foster some serious asset inflation. The Fed was not alone in this [...]

Monkey Business – Expert Says Affordable Homes Are Going Away

Affordable homes are going away. With the prospect of rising rates, now is the time to buy a home. That is apparently the opinion of Dr. Luis Torres, a research economist with the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M. Torres, in a rather interesting piece in the Houston Business Journal seems to be confident that Houston's real estate market is on the road to recovery:  “I can say this with some certainty that the worst of the downturn is behind us.” I'm not surprised that HBJ would print a piece like this (after all it is [...]

Fed Looks At Texas’ Affordable Housing Problem, Fails To Look In The Mirror

The Federal Reserve can be commended on one thing. They never cease to provide entertainment in terms of their complete ineptitude and functional obsolescence. The Fed continues to show no remorse for the damage they have inflicted on the general population and their destruction of what was formerly known as the U.S. housing market. The latest comedy from the Fed comes courtesy of the inaugural report from the Dallas Federal Reserve Community Outlook Series titled 'The Scarcity of Texas Affordable Housing' In this fun-filled trip down the rabbit hole, the Fed examines the problem of the lack [...]

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