The price on a barrel of light, sweet crude fell as low as $35.13 just before the Christmas holiday as stockpiles of unused gasoline continued to grow.  It’s hard to imagine that less than a year ago the United States witnessed a record-high $4.11 per gallon at the pump; a time when several econo...

Reporters and photographers jostled and pushed against each other in front of Bernard Madoff’s Manhattan apartment last week, vying for a photo or a word with the disgraced investment coordinator.  Madoff smiled slightly as he moved past, declining to comment after returning from the Federal cour...

Friday morning shares of Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp. surged on Wall Street (with private owned Chrysler cheering in the background) as news of President Bush’s $17.4 billion auto industry bailout sunk in with investors.  The President approved the immediate release of $13.4 billion fr...

Tuesday the stock market began with some modest gains, including a 1% increase for the Dow Jones, and several stocks rallying after Monday’s losses.  Nearing the close of the stock market, in an unprecedented move, the Federal Reserve announced that it had cut its key interest rate to 0-0.25%, do...

The Associated Press was abuzz late Thursday night with news that Bernard Madoff, former chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market and founder of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, had been arrested over an alleged $50 billion fraud scheme.  Madoff founded his small firm in 1960, and has since bee...

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) released its latest survey over the weekend, showing 10% of American homeowners at least one month overdue on mortgage payments or in the process of foreclosure.  This marks a 9% increase from just three months prior, a 7.3% increase from a year ago, and the h...

It wasn’t the $34 billion Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp., and Chrysler LLC requested, but Monday Democrats drafted a proposal for a $15 billion auto bailout to aid the struggling American automakers.  The draft was then sent to the White House where it awaits the approval of the Executive B...

The Proposal The leaders of Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp., and Chrysler LLC ditched their corporate jets for fuel efficient hybrid cars and drove the five hundred miles to Washington this week, intending to make a second appeal to Congress for a bailout.  The CEOs move to driving fuel effici...

The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) validated on Monday that the economic expansion which started in November 2001 had ended, and the U.S. had entered a recession as of December 2007.  This announcement followed evidence of slow retail sales over the Thanksgiving weekend (despite an inc...

Though there were indications of a rescue on Friday November 21st, on the evening of the 23rd, the U.S. Government announced the bailout of financial giant Citigroup. The following Monday morning Barack Obama announced his economic team, appointing Timothy Geithner (the man who contributed to the W...