Business/Economy
Currency devaluation explained with baseball cards
Another G20 summit is taking place (you might remember G20 from this post last year) and this time around, the major topic is the U.S.’s “forced” devaluation of the dollar thanks to QE2. Without going into the positives or negatives of quantitative easing (I’ll leave that to the politicians and finance experts), let me at [...]
What is QE2? A sequel worth watching!
In case you haven’t heard, the Federal Reserve promised to buy $600 billion in Treasuries over the next eight months at a rate of $75 billion per month in the hopes that giving commercial banks more reserves would encourage them to lend more and, therefore, stimulate the economy. I’ll let the economist in you debate [...]
Dow Jones has a satisfying September
For one reason or another, the stock market often takes a breather in September, but not this year. Despite a couple down days to finish the month, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 7.7% for September, the best September since 1939! The real debate is whether the market will sustain these gains, but at [...]
Groupon = Fastest growing company…ever?
When the company’s name is starting to become a part of the daily vocabulary (“hey, I got a ‘Groupon’ for that place”), you know the business is taking off. Groupon’s CEO and Founder, Andrew Mason, “has managed to build the fastest-growing company in Web history,” according to Forbes Magazine. “The company is on track to pass $500 [...]
Defining quadruple witching in the stock market
Today is quadruple witching day, which occurs on the third Friday of March, June, September, and December each year. Unfamiliar with the term? Quadruple witching is: “A day on which contracts for stock index futures, stock index options, stock options and single stock futures (SSF) all expire.” 1 I already know your next question: what’s [...]
How can GM have an IPO?
General Motors is hitting the business headlines again, this time for two reasons. First, the CEO, Ed Whitacre, brought in back in January to right the ship, will be stepping down and Daniel Akerson (a current GM board member) will take over September 1st. It wasn’t much of a surprise because Whitacre is 68 and his reign was [...]
Who is Jodie Fisher?
Jodie Fisher is a name trending on the major search engines, so you better find out who she is quickly while she is still in the news. The rundown: Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd was let go last week because of a “relationship” he had with Jodie Fisher (more on her later). Here’s the odd part: Fisher [...]
The EU Stress Test: It’s Not an Exercise
The financial news channels have been filled with news about the European Bank Stress Test for the last few days. If you’re not a big fan of economic news, you probably haven’t even heard of it or the controversy about it that ensued. Over a year ago, Dinner Topics briefly explained the idea of bank [...]
