Better Regulation
Stocks jumped up 175 points on decent earnings news from a few companies. Bonds gained (lowered interest rate) slightly.
The Dollar and Gold moved sideways with gold gaining just a little – nice to have higher gold prices.
Oil and gasoline both rose. Have you noticed the generally upward motion of oil (and gasoline)??? The trend is up for oil, and so you can just count on those extra pennies leaving your pocket at the pump.
In the news today……
Jobless Claims – were 652,000 last week, and represents a very large number. This definitely points to a higher unemployment number when it comes out.
Treasury Secretary Geithner has asked Congress for the power to better regulate the financial industry that got us into this mess. My opinion has always been that more regulation needs to be in place, as Wall St is motivated to break all the rules in the search for the Dollar. Specifically, Geithner wants:
- Hedge Funds regulated and to have to register with the SEC
- Derivatives to be regulated
- Credit Default Swaps (CDS) to be regulated – this is a $60 TRILLION market today, and is totally unregulated. This is the one that makes AIG “too big to fail.” George Soros says that CDS should be purchased by the issuing bond authority ONLY and not be sold in a market. This is probably one of the only times I would agree with Soros – except for his ability to make money in the currency market.
- the ability to measure the risk of the investments of large financial institutions. This is a failing of the current financial institutions – as even their own CEOs didn’t know how much risk they were taking.
All of these ideas are good ones in my opinion – even more authority for the SEC. The SEC just needs to be run by someone who can actually enforce the laws on the books.
Here are the last numbers for today:
Dow Jones 30 Industrial – 7925 (up 175 points)
10 Year Treasury Bond – 2.73% (down 0.04%)
Euro – $1.3519
Gold – $942 (up $4)
Oil – $54.34 (up $1.57)
Gasoline – $1.53 (up $0.04)