In a holiday-shortened business week (in addition to Presidents Day in the U.S. on February 15, Chinese and other Asian markets will be closed from two days–February 15 and 16–to all week (China, Taiwan, Vietnam), the markets are likely to continue to monitor Greece's shaky finances–the lede story in February 14′s New York Times charged "Wall Street" with responsibility for leading Greece down the primrose debt path, with Goldman Sachs said to be the lead Pied Piper.
After two snowstorms last week disrupted life in the nation's capital, and led Congress to adjourn for the week, the government is getting back to business this week.
On Wednesday, February 17, the Treasury Department is scheduled to release the latest Federal budget deficit. It was originally set to report on February 10, the same day that the Census Bureau, apparently immune from snow, reported the U.S. trade deficit numbers for December 2009. In his weekly column in The New York Times, former Bush Administration official and current Harvard Professor Gregory Mankiw takes a look under the hood of Obama's 2011 budget.
On Tuesday, February 9, President Obama met Congressional leaders at the White House to discuss the economy and jobs; on February 11, the White House expressed support for the bipartisan jobs bill introduced by Senators Max Baucus and Charles Grassley.
On February 10th, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, recently given a second term as Fed Chairman, released the testimony he planned to give before Barney Frank's House Financial Services Committee on the Fed's "exit strategy" for the extraordinary steps it took in the financial crisis.
The Fed's Open Market Committee releases on February 17 the minutes of its January meeting.
Over the past weekend, the FDIC took the unusual step of responding to a viral YouTube video that criticized the bank insurer led by Sheila Bair over its actions regarding IndyMac bank; the FDIC issued a statement questioning the video's "blatantly false claims" on February 12.
As for economic reports, on February 17, housing starts and industrial production for January; on February 18, the January Producer Price Index; and the Conference Board's leading economic indicators, and we hear about inflation in January on February 19, with the release of the Consumer Price Index.
Is there a connection between high taxes and social mobility? An editorial in the February 13-14 weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal (page A12) told of a new report from the Boston College Center on Wealth and Philanthropy which found a decrease in state-wide wealth following an increase in the top income tax rate.
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