Filed under: Politics, Headline news, Federal Reserve

Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker gave testimony this day before a Joint Economic Committee of Congress. He addressed the current financial and economic environment and the role of the Federal Reserve.

He discussed how the financial market environment has changed considerably since his tenure as Fed Chairman in the early and mid 1980’s. He pointed out that financial institutions like investment banks and hedge funds, whose failure can have tremendous effects on the financial system, are lightly regulated. “Systemically important investment-banking institutions should be regulated and supervised” in a similar manner to commercial banks.

Chairman Volcker stressed the need to update the entire regulatory framework, saying “It’s not simply a matter of inexperience or technical failures.” He also discussed the need to update regulations on a global basis because of the increasing coordination between world central banks.

He highlighted the difficulty faced by the current Fed in its role in the sale of Bear Stearns (NYSE: BSC) to JP Morgan (NYSE: JPM). However, he mentioned that unless a new regulatory framework is forthcoming, a similar situation will arise in the future.

Other witnesses agreed with Chairman Volcker’s call for a new regulatory framework to reflect the new financial reality but disagreed with the exact form it should take cautioning against placing too much hope on regulation as a solution to the current financial situation.

The testimony clearly indicated the need for revising the government framework that was put in place largely during the Great Depression but also made it clear that no quick and easy solution is on the horizon.

Doug Roberts is the Founder and Chief Investment Strategist for ChannelCapitalResearch.com, an independent research firm focusing on investment strategies using the Federal Reserve’s impact on the stock prices. He is the author of Follow the Fed(R) to Investment Success: The Effortless Strategy for Beating Wall Street. He previously held executive positions at Morgan Stanley Group and Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.

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Filed under: Finance, Internet

PearBudget is an on the web budget manager that makes it extraordinarily easy to keep track of your money. The service doesn’t link to your bank account, and doesn’t import information from Quicken or other desktop accounting software. You actually have to enter your expenses by hand. But this is much, much easier than you’d think.

All you’ve to do is spend a few minutes when you set up your account entering your typical monthly expenses. And then each time you pay a bill or tally up how much money you spent going out to dinner or a motion picture, you enter that information. This takes just a moment or two a day, and ensures that you actually think a little bit about how you spend your money every day, which is probably the most useful thing any budget application can do.

PearBudget is not free. There’s a 30 day free trial, after which you need to pay $3 per month to use the service, which might seem a bit steep for such simple application. But if you can live without the web interface, there is a free version of PearBudget. The application started its life as a simple but well-organized Excel spreadsheet, which is still available as a free download.

[via Boing Boing]

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