- Consumer credit falls for fourth straight month. “There’s absolutely nothing encouraging about these numbers from a standpoint of ‘recovery,’” Karl Denninger writes. Perhaps more disturbing is the negative revisions. “They effectively erased the alleged ‘improvement’ in the rate of decline that was allegedly ‘reported’ last month.”
- Paul Krugman wants to know what went wrong as high unemployment continues to plague the economy. “It’s now obvious that the stimulus was much too small; yet there’s virtually no chance of getting additional measures out of Congress,” Krugman says. “From a strictly economic point of view, we could still fix this: a second big stimulus, plus much more aggressive Fed policy,” he adds. But politically, we’re stuck…I’d like to say something uplifting here; but right now I’m feeling pretty bleak.”
- Bank lobbyists successfully watered down financial reform, Simon Johnson writes, except for one key aspect: the Kanjorski Amendment. The amendment “gives federal regulators the power and the responsibility to limit the activities or even break up big banks if they pose a ‘grave risk’ to the financial system,” Johnson says. “The debate on big banks and the dangers they pose is far from over.”
- Apple’s (AAPL) next release of its Apple TV set-top box will let viewers watch individual TV episodes for 99c, according to the NewTeeVee blog. In a move reminiscent of how AAPL launched what became the world’s biggest music retailer, it’s apparently trying to get TV programmers to allow episode rentals for less than the current $1.99 or $2.99 fees.
- The housing bust, which first hit the working class, has made its way up the ranks and now is hitting the affluent pretty hard. About one in seven homeowners with loans of more than a million dollars are seriously delinquent, NYT reports, while only one in 12 mortgages under $1M are delinquent. The “message here is that high income borrowers aren’t taking the Freddie/Fannie/bank bluster about strategic defaults seriously,” Yves Smith says.
- Adobe’s (ADBE) next version of Flash will support 3D graphics, if the session lineup for the company’s MAX 2010 conference is any indication. The session, flagged in a CNet post, promises “a deep dive into the next-generation 3D API coming in a future version of Flash Player.”
- Percentage of S&P 500 stocks trading above their 50-day moving averages has spiked up to 28% amid this week’s big rally, Bespoke Investment Group reports. “For bulls, this means there could be a long way to go before the rally runs out of steam. For bears, this shows that even after a pretty big rally, breadth remains rather weak.”
- Sure the New York Stock Exchange is flying both the Dutch and Spanish flags, but don’t be fooled by the alleged display of World Cup nonpartisanship. NYSE CEO Duncan Niederauer asked exchange employees to wear orange in support of colleagues in The Netherlands (where NYSE operates an exchange) before Sunday’s final with Spain, says spokesman Ray Pellecchia, emphasizing in a blog post that his own blue-and-orange tie is “NOT a Mets tie.”
- Deflation worries are still prevalent. “Debate rages about whether the trend is a warning sign for the economy or merely statistical noise,” James Picerno notes at The Capital Spectator. “To be fair, outright deflation isn’t here yet, nor is it certain (or even likely) that it’ll turn up.” But the risk remains. “And with the outlook for a jobless recovery looming, this is no time to soft pedal the D risk.”
- Reuters blogger Felix Salmon is pessimistic that there’s an easy solution to the long-term unemployment issue plaguing the US. “Maybe unemployment is simply a problem to which there is no good medium-term solution, let alone any short-term fix,” he says. “Certainly the government can’t directly employ the unemployed, and although I’m a big fan of arts subsidies as a way of creating jobs, that kind of thing is only ever going to have a marginal effect.”
