No one goes into Walmart (WMT) and asks to pay extra sales tax. Thus sales taxes are reasonable barometers for retail sales. This week we look at how taxes are doing in a period of economic recovery.

As earnings results poured in over the past week and a half, all I could imagine were the emails from the CEOs of various American-based multinationals to our leaders in Washington.Such as one like t

The FDIC has been forced to borrow from tomorrow to pay for today. Suze Orman wouldn't be proud. Created during the Great Depression, the FDIC is the agency that provides insurance for up to $250,000

  There’s just one problem with corn-based ethanol: It takes 29% more fossil energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than the ethanol release when burned as fuel. The disparity betwee

On August 9, when I headed out for countries and parts unknown, the intraday high on the cash S&P 500 was 1018. Tuesday, upon my return, the low posted this day after Labor Day was 1018. Sell in

We’ve arrived at this particular economic moment in time by the choices we’ve made, which now leave us with choices in our future that will be neither easy, nor convenient, nor comfortabl

By nature, I'm an extremely optimistic person. One of the challenges of being in the investment business is managing your own biases, as well as juxtaposing them with the onslaught of biases produced

Equity markets had their biggest rally this year after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke outlined steps to fix the banking industry in a morning address. His remarks, delivered to the Counci

What a day it was for the market. Turnaround Tuesday definitely lived up to the hype.Citigroup (C) came out and said they had 2 profitable quarters through the first 3 months of this year; all the ba

The stock market is on a tear this morning on the heels of a statement by CEO Vikram Pandit that Citigroup (C) has a profit for the first 2 months of 2009. In a letter sent to employees Monday,