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Official: Obama Considering Next Stimulus Package
Calculated Risk — From Bloomberg: Obama’s Advisers Are Considering Second Stimulus, Locke Says President Barack Obama’s advisers are “seriously” considering proposing a second stimulus measure to boost the economy, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said in an interview. Locke said another stimulus would be “very targeted and specific and we need to be mindful of the deficit as well.” Atrios notes: "Had a pet theory that they'd wait until unemployment rounded that magic 10% mark." We could see 10% on Friday. The unemployment rate was 9.83% in ...

Hey Obama, You Can’t Reduce Debt and Have a Second Stimulus
Trading Tips with John Bougearel — by John Bougearel Oh, the double speak is thick today at the Obama administration. Just another day of spin-meistering I suppose. “The government is going to have to get serious about reducing our debt levels” Obama told Paul Volcker. Obama also recognized that recovery from this Great Recession or Depression will have to be led by the private sector. Acknowledging this is one thing, making it happen is quite another. You can’t force the private sector to expand, ad you can’t force private banks to lend. Bank lending is contracting at 15% annualized rate, while they hoard more than $1.2 trillion treasuries. Why would private ...

Evening links 11-3
Rolfe Winkler — It’s Japan we should be worrying about, not America (Evans-Pritchard) There’s no pretty way to de-lever… Buffett splits “B” shares 50:1 (Jonathan Stempel/Lilla Zuill, Reuters) This will put shares in reach of regular folks. Look for index funds to load up. Oh and by the way, this should make it easier to short Buffett too… Santelli vs. Liesman (CNBC) Santelli has a penchant for getting worked up, but how can you blame him when he’s talking to Liesman, who seems so worried about losing access to top policy-makers, he never takes a contrary position? Here comes the ...