Fed Divided Over When to End Stimulus
WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve policymakers are divided over when to end extraordinary measures intended to encourage more borrowing and spending to help stimulate the U.S. economy, according to minutes of the Fed’s last meeting released Wednesday. The minutes of the Fed’s March 19-20 meeting were released at 9 a.m. EDT — five hours earlier than planned — after the Fed inadvertently sent them a day earlier to congressional staffers and lobbyists. The report showed that a few members want to end “relatively soon” a program that is spending $85 billion a month to purchases bonds. Those members say the costs likely outweigh the benefits. A few others saw the risks as increasing quickly and said the purchases would likely need to be reduced “before long.” Many members said an improved job market could lead them to slow purchases within a few months, and a few said economic conditions would likely justify continuing the program until late this year. (MORE: Obama’s Budget Would ...
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Was It Something I Said? Fed Minutes Cause Markets to Slump
If you get the impression that the stock market is some sort of paranoid neurotic, overreacting to every little whispered rumor and half truth, you’re not alone. I don’t mean to cast aspersions on the emotional maturity of stock traders, but rather simply to note that there is a whole bunch of money at stake every minute and nanosecond that securities are being traded. So while an average person may find the intermittent pronouncements and releases from the Federal Reserve an inscrutable bore, the stock market looks at them as vital opportunities to make money, or at least to avoid losing it. And the stock market yesterday was none too pleased with the minutes of January’s Fed policy meeting, which were released yesterday afternoon: The S&P 500 fell 1.2% yesterday and is headed down again today. What caused the reaction? The concern wasn’t that the Fed would soon back off keeping short term interest rates near zero, or that it expected inflation to rise above 2.5%, or that it was ...
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Is Walmart’s Buy American/Hire Veterans Initiative Anything More Than a PR Stunt?
Bill Simon, president and CEO of Walmart U.S., made a big splash yesterday when he announced two new initiatives the firm will launch this year: One focusing on putting returning veterans to work, with a promise to hire 100,000 veterans over the next five years, as well as a push to increase the dollar amount of American-made products the firm purchases by $50 billion over ten years. The programs received praise from the likes of First Lady Michelle Obama; Jim Knotts, CEO of the veteran-support group Operation Homefront; as well as Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing. But before we fall over each other to join these luminaries in their praise of the world’s biggest retailer, it’s worth taking a moment to dig deeper into the numbers. First, though, let it be said that the goal of hiring veterans is a noble one, and one that should in many cases make business sense as well. As Simon said yesterday in his speech announcing the initiative, “Veterans have ...
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America’s Gun Economy, By the Numbers
The shooting in Newtown, Conn., that killed six adults and 20 children on Friday has once again refocused the nation’s attention on guns and gun control. Below are numbers to give some sense of the size and scope of the gun industry in America, the federal government’s involvement in regulating that industry, and the political and economic factors that are likely to drive the debate in the weeks and months ahead. The Gun Economy 47% Percentage of Americans who say they have a gun in their home or elsewhere on their property, according to Gallup, the highest reported number in two decades $6 billion Estimated revenue generated by the gun and ammunition industry in the U.S., according to an analysis by business research firm Hoovers 310 million Estimated number of firearms in the U.S., according to the federal government, which includes 114 million handguns, 110 million rifles, and 86 million shotguns 209,750 Number of jobs related to the firearm industry in 2012, according to the National ...
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