Author: John Mason

Recently, the Federal Reserve has held 43 meetings around the country on the financing needs of small business. These meetings began February 3, 2010. Yesterday, Mr. Bernanke hosted a forum on small business lending at the...

This is the twelfth edition of the Federal Reserve Exit Watch. The first edition was posted in August 2009. The Great Recession, many contend, ended in July 2009 and, at that time, the major task of the Federal Reserve System...

Last week the United States stock markets dropped dramatically…the Dow Jones Index fell significantly below 10,000. This week the same markets are up sharply…the Dow Jones closed yesterday at almost 10,140.Most...

The general picture I have been drawing of the banking industry is as follows: big banks are doing well; banks that are not big are not doing so well. Who do I consider to be the big banks?The big banks are the largest...

Perhaps the most benign statement about the passage of the United States financial reform bill passed by the House of Representatives last week and whose passage is pending in the Senate comes from Richard Bove, banking analyst...

For at least 18 months, I have been arguing that the United States economy is going through a transition period that is more than just a cyclical slowdown and recovery. My argument has been that the economy is going through a...

For months I have been arguing in my blog posts that the larger banks have already moved beyond the regulators although they have always been far in advance of the politicians. These latter two groups of people are attempting to...

Households, as a group, are gaining ground financially, but are still far below where they were in 2007. This, along with other weaknesses in the economy, is going to continue to contribute to the weakness in the economic...