Today should be very interesting!
One year to the day after Lehman Brothers collapsed and precipitated a financial crisis that reverberated across the globe, President Obama will deliver a major speech on the financial crisis at Federal Hall in New York City at midday on Monday. According to the White House: “He will discuss the aggressive steps the Administration has taken to bring the economy back from the brink, the commitment to winding down the government’s role in the financial sector and the actions the United States and the global community must take to prevent a crisis like this from ever happening again.”
As I had mentioned in our Year One Review of the Stock Market Crash, Obama and Wall Street did not get off to a great start but, even after the March crash, we are still up 20% since he was sworn in in January as the President has been EXTREMELY accomodative to Wall Street’s needs (ie. free money) so far. That has been the carrot- perhaps now it is time for the stick…
The Treasury just releaseda document entitled: “The Next Phase of Governement Financial Stabilization and Rehabilitation Policies” which, at 51 pages, is a pretty neat review of the crash as well but I still prefer mine as it saves you an hour and has much better pictures. There are many charts in the government’s documents and they are not all that encouraging. As the report concludes:
We must address the structural weaknesses in our financial system that this crisis revealed. The Administration is working to gain approval of a detailed set of proposals to reform our regulatory system to address these weaknesses and keep our financial markets and economy on track to a sustainable recovery.
In addition to Obama speaking at noon, we have 3 Fed Governors making speeches today. Duke speaks on Regulatory Reform at 8:30, Lacker talks about Financial Regulation at 12:30 (right after Obama) and Yellen gives an Economic Outlook at 3:50, just in time for a stick-save into the bell so we could have a wild ride this morning!
Asia had a down morning with the Nikkei hitting the 2.5% rule to the downside as the dollar failed 91Yen. The Hang Seng fell 1.1%, backjust below 21,000 but theShanghai gained 1.2% and got back over 3,000 so go figure. Europe isdown about a point across theboard at 8amso it’s up to the US to turn things around…
