Diane Gerdes's (dianegerdes) Blog

The S.S. Obama and his crew is steering our country into an untested economic frontier.   This millennium has been filled with firsts from 9/11 that prompted the revenge motivated aggressions which led to the Iraqi and Afghanistan wars, and the true terrorist attacks: the beginning of the account...

  President Obama's first 100 days probably were not what he imagined when he began courting the American public for the Presidency in 2007. The stock market was over 14,000, unemployment was at 4.5% and large bonuses with shiny expensive cars were a part of the American Dream.   Our charismatic,...

The housing market in Arizona is attempting suicide from lack of understanding and attention.    President Obama made the trip to Arizona in February to grandly announce the Foreclosure Prevention Program modifications and the new refinance guidelines. The government, with Sheila Bair's instructi...

The big, bad banks are responsible for blowing our homes out from under us.  The mortgages they devised had all of the integrity of sticks and bubblegum and were shattered when housing prices began to nose dive.  Lately, they have been tiptoeing around the media with their heads down acting meek ...

The sleek, beautiful, sexy money vehicles called Citibank, Chase and Goldman Sachs all got back on the fast track with blow-out profits for the first quarter of 2009.  The race to get back to multibillion dollar earnings and all of the perks seem to be within sights of the checkered flag. The sto...

Love was never mentioned with the announcement of two arranged mergers this week.  Pulte and Centex, two of the top five home builders are structuring a $1.3 billion marriage of debt and assets in an attempt to survive today's housing market.  With builder's orders dropping 70% since 2005, other ...

The hummingbirds are chirping, the cacti are blooming, and the trees are becoming a beautiful green.  Spring is in the air.  But wait....What is that smell?    With unemployment at 8.5% the highest since 1983, the loser twins Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac adopted by Uncle Sam last August announced t...

This week the markets did the happy dance when it appeared the frog had been kissed and turned back into the handsome, moneymaking prince of yesterday.  New housing starts are up, resale housing is on the upswing, consumer spending increased slightly, and mortgage rates are near historic lows. A ...

What happens if a company contributes to the worst financial year in the history of the world?  Why, give big, fat bonuses to your executives!    AIG is standing by the "deserved" 170 million dollar bonuses since Christopher Dodd and Timothy Geithner unknowingly placed a loophole in the stimulus ...

Wall Street is ending the week better than expected in spite of the not so perky economic news.  The stock market made modest gains after a scary ride downwards.  Tuesday's auction for the treasury bonds was successful, so that should keep our interest rates low. The soothsayers were shocked, sho...