Ottawa doles out $60-billion in tax relief

This week, on Thursday, February 14th, Bernanke spoke, markets fell. Confidence in the Fed Chairman wanes. From a fundamental perspective, until something is done to bail out the credit insurers, so they maintain their AAA rating from Moodys and S&P, market rallies will be corrective. This is an economic nuclear bomb at 32,000 feet This is about bank solvency, bank risk-based capital, the bank credit function, not about the insurers themselves. Should a downgrade come to the insurers, billions of municipal bonds will effectively become illiquid, joining the trillion of CDOs (mostly subprime loan securities) that have already become illiquid. Without a bailout here, we are headed for a depression. Period.

None of this is lost on the markets. Technical analysis doesn't predict the news, it just recognizes those periods (Bear markets) when a cacophony of bad news, macroeconomic screw ups, frauds, etc... read more

Housing market's freeze deepens

Investors may have been encouraged to buy back into stocks due to a rise in the dollar, whose decline over the last several months has contributed to worries about inflation and a possible drop in foreign interest in U.S. investments.

Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Avalon Partners, said the dollar's advance came after European Central Bank chief Jean-Claude Trichet said the United States and Europe remained economically intertwined.

The comment suggested to investors that strength in other countries could help stabilize the U.S. during its rough patch.

Fears of a global economic slowdown have been weighing on stocks around the world.

As expected Thursday, the Bank of England lowered its key interest rate by a quarter-point, its second cut in three months, while the European Central Bank left its key rate unchanged at 4%. read more

A financial nudge from Uncle Sam

Some members of Central Agencies Working Group on Regulatory Reform acknowledged that if the sale of State-owned enterprises were not carefully planned, the whole privatisation exercise might end up transforming the State monopolies into private monopolies.
Despite this, it was clear that the enabling legislation to prevent this was not put in place.
So far, there is no major incoherence with respect to PNG competition policy and law but there are a few grey areas that require attention, especially with respect to the PNG's competition laws.
If mishandled, some provisions of the Act would unduly restrict a firm's ability to freely complete.
The provisions of the Part III of the ICCC Act are too vague and complicated for a businessman, lawyer or a judge to figure out what to do or to figure out which among the many detailed provisions are likely to be enforced. read more