Inflation

Bill Conerly of Conerly Consulting send out a monthly newsletter that I always find insightful. He is also a regular contributor to Forbes.  He  helps cut through the noise and we all know there has been plenty of noise with the investment and oil  markets jumpy, the presidential primaries on full tilt and let's toss in an opening on the Supreme Court. These are five graphics I pulled from the March...

Running out of steam?  Our first note is the US economic expansion continued this past summer, but only at a 1.5% increase according to a report released by the BEA last week.  Down sharply from 3.9 % growth this past spring. Second note is Congress did extend the debt ceiling as the month closed out.  This prevents another standoff between the White House and the Congress, and gives the government and...

Fed watching is a major pastime for investors at any level, but particularly the US stock market and the Commercial Real Estate market have been watching and waiting for every crumb of information they can glean from the central bank's quarterly gatherings. Economic news has been steadily improved all year.  Unemployment numbers continue downward.  This month the Fed finally decided it could reign in...

When will the Fed decide it is time to let interest rates rise? Members of the Federal Reserve Board have a very active end of summer, with a conference in Jackson Hole and then their upcoming Quarterly policy meeting   September 16 and 17. The majority on the Fed thinks the economy needs more time to heal and that a rate hike sooner than necessary would damage growth. John Williams of the Federal...

I've seen a number of references recently to an article in Forbes where Warren Buffet make comments on a couple of commercial real estate properties he has owned for years.   I copied the story below - Read it with a couple of things in mind : While Buffett is not a CRE investor per se, think about 1. the companies he owns and the properties they own - within their cash flow models they have...

Wednesday morning October 31st I attended a breakfast put on by Riverview Savings. You might expect that something on the morning of All Hallows Eve might be a bit frightening, but on this particular morning what we heard was actually more reassuring. Bill  Ehling Vice president at Federated Investment management flew in to consult with  Riverview Asset Management wealth managers Tuesday at dinner,...

I've mentioned before that Bill Connerly the Oregon economist who is highly regarded has consistently said he sees reasons for optimism in the latter part of 2011, even with the slow down we have expreienced.   Here is a post on his September  Businomics Blog  .   Notice he says that commercial lending has been improving, and actually surged  in July.  So while you may want to prepare a little...

As we wait for the Chairman to speak, let's review another key indicator of our economic condition.  The recently released Consumer Price Index rose a disturbing 0.5% in July, exceeding forecasts.  Such prices are up 3.6% during the past 12 months, exceeding the 2.3% rise in average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls. To no ones surprise…higher energy costs led the way,...