Happy times are near! group of top financial people think the recession will end this year

the AP has a news story people at Moody's forecast that the current recession will end by the end of the year.

They basically point to the action that Obama's administration has done to try and stimulate the economy and banks.

they see banks lending wants their bad assets are gone and expect housing sales to turn up by the middle of the year (though we wont see prices as high as they where during the boom)


It's not all good news though, because the unemployment rate is still expected to go up until the middle of next year. thought they think that it will not peak as high as it could have if no stimulus action was taking (they think we will see a peak of 10% unemployment but we could have seen a 12% unemployment rate)


Let's hope that they are right about the end of the recession being soon (though hopefully employment will pick up sooner then they foretell)

after a decade of banks skipping paying their insurance, the FDIC may now be short on cash

One of the things that stick out to me about this current economic crisis is how there are so many bad policies and practices that either help lead up to this crisis or risk making it worst.

another of these type of events is a story posted on the Boston Globe a few weeks ago that says that form 1996 to 2006 congress didn't push for banks to pay their FDIC insurance premiums, due to the banks instances and the FDIC's objections.

why because at the time the FDIC seemed to have so much money and their where so few bank failures, that congress seemed to think that as long as the FDIC seemed to have a lot of cash things would be safe.

Now because of the fact that when we where doing good economically banks didn't put their insurance bill, now if they risk going under, the FDIC may not have enough money to save them (depending on the banks size)

We are no longer in the worst recession since 81-82

...we have now passed the number of unemployment that was seen in the recession of the early 80's

the numbers are even lower then the recession in the late 50's

I guess we should be glad that we haven't hit great depression numbers, but this is all sad news.

World Economy expected to shrink this year

The World Bank has release a statement saying that they predict that the world's economy will go down this year.

This is the first time this has happened since the 1940s

everyone will be effected, but the countries that will get the worst of it will actually be the world's poorest nations.

Credit Card companies are going to make YOU pay for the bad economy

as many of you probably know by now that many credit card companies have decided to raise their rates on their customers and it doesn't matter if these people always paid their bills on time.

wondering why credit card companies are jacking up their credit card rates on you. It sure isn't because of raising interest rates because those where dropped near zero in December.

The reason the credit card companies are giving is that they are raising rates because so many people are not paying their credit card bills in this bad economy. So they are doing this to cover themselves or in other words you are being forced to pay more money on your credit card bill because someone else couldn't pay their bill (though I'll doubt we'll see people crying about that in the same way the cry over the government trying to help people that are having trouble paying their mortgage)

a big irony in this move is that by raising their rates they may insure that more people wont be able to pay of their credit card bills.

the truth is that credit card companies are raising their rates because they can. the majority of us have became over dependent on them and don't think we can get by with out it. and the laws are currently in the credit card companies favor. If you file for bankruptcy you may get out of paying a number of people but you will still have to pay off your credit cards. if you decide to close your account, your credit score will be lowered.