Let's get this rolling...

I am finally at a point where I believe I will be able to update this daily or at the very least every other day. I certainly hope so.

There was a flurry of activity this morning in the investing world. First, Ben Bernanke had a meeting of the nerd-minds in Jackson Hole, Wyoming to discuss the state of the financial markets. Bernanke still appears to be more of an inflation dove as he said the following (presumably using a chart with two lines):
"If not reversed, these developments, together with a pace of growth that is likely to fall short of potential for a time, should lead inflation to moderate later this year and next year."
Bernanke's expectations that the economy will continue to moderate and thus bring down commodity prices continue to worry me. His apparent unconcern for inflation and a weak dollar are troubling at best. A stronger dollar would fight inflation, bring down commodity prices and nominally decrease the value of the government's deficit. A few individuals on the Federal Reserve Board have dissented with him on the past couple of rate decisions. I wonder how long he'll be able to hold them off...

GM, Ford and Chrysler have asked the government for a $25B bailout. Not surprising given the bailouts extended to Fannie and Freddie as well as Bear Sterns and IndyMac, but logically these are completely different situations. In the Bear Sterns fiasco, the government underwrote loans so that the company was able to be acquired; the shareholders and management walked away with nothing respectively. In Fannie and Freddie, they were government insured entities whose sole purpose was to extend mortgages to those unable to ascertain them through conventional means and in IndyMac, the bank was allowed to go solvent, with the FDIC insuring deposits, but once again shareholders and management left with nothing. Here, the "Big Three" are asking for money without any change to structure or management. What a joke. It's of course one of the smartest moves they've probably ever had, given that they announce this during an election, each candidate will have to walk with glass slippers as they explain why they support/don't support and why you should vote for them. If the "Big Three" spent as much time on product development as they have on the hatching of this plan maybe they wouldn't be bleeding money like a dying drunken sailor. Also, when will the moniker "Big Three" be dropped? Unless of course we're allowed to follow-up "Big Three" with whatever we'd like. "Big Three" disaster; "Big Three" failure; etc. etc.

I just read that Warren Buffett thinks now is the most attractive the US stock market has been in a long time. I'll post a full review of his comments over the weekend along with anything else of relevance that comes out of the economic symposium in Wyoming.