Blog Posts by Stacy Curtin

Aside from the €10 billion Cyprus bailout, U.S. housing data will be another key factor for the markets this week.

Housing starts rose 0.8% in February to an annual rate of 917,000 homes, the U.S. Commerce Department reported Tuesday. That's a 27.7% increase from the year before.

On Monday, the National Association of Homebuilders said homebuilder confidence for new single-family homes fell in March for the third consecutive month. Existing home sales for February will be released Thursday.

While housing may have shown signs of improvement in recent months, perma-bear Gary Shilling, an economist and president of A. Gary Shilling & Co., a financial consultant firm, is not convinced a recovery is in the making.

"It may have bottomed, but I am not sure it has a strong recovery," he tells The Daily Ticker's Lauren Lyster in the accompanying video. "I think the risks are on the downside."

Related: This Is Housing Bubble 2.0: David Stockman

Rentals are hot these days he says, while mortgage

It's been more than five years since America's biggest banks caused the worst financial crisis in decades. Questions still remain over how to minimize the risk of another financial shock.

Indicative of this "business as usual" environment is JPMorgan's so-called London whale trade that has cost the bank and its investors nearly $6.2 billion. A new report by a Senate investigation subcommittee shows that JPMorgan, the country's largest bank, ignored risks, misguided investors and did its best to circumvent regulators.

Related: 'London Whale' Isn't Dead Yet: JPMorgan Is Out of Control, Rosner Says

One of the most vocal proponents for breaking up the big banks is Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher. He told The Daily Ticker last year: "If you are too big to fail, you're too big."

"There is an inherent injustice in being too big to fail because you are implicitly getting a subsidy from the government," Fisher told us. "[Banks] don't have to be these giant depository institutions that are

While Western nations have been mired in slow economic growth over the last few years, third world economies have flourished. According to Peter Blair Henry, dean of New York University's Stern School of Business and author of the new book Turnaround: Third World Lessons for First World Growth, there's a lot the West can learn from emerging markets and their governments.

"We are in a position right now where first world countries, like the United States and countries in the Eurozone, look a lot like third world countries from thirty years ago," says Henry. "The key idea is that today's emerging markets, which used to be third world countries, turned themselves around by applying three things: discipline, clarity and trust."

His three tenants are predicated on lawmakers working with each other, not against each other, and putting ideologies aside for the sake of the greater economic good.

"Emerging economies turned themselves around once the leaders in those countries were able to

If the U.S. economy fell into another recession, American banks would likely face a loss of $462 billion, according to the the Federal Reserve's annual examination of the health of U.S. banks. Seventeen of the nation's largest banks would survive the economic crisis, according to the Fed.

Of the banks tested, Ally Financial is the only institution that is at risk of collapse in the face of another downturn. Surprisingly both Goldman Sachs (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS) barely received a passing grade and JPMorgan Chase (JPM) performed only slightly better.

Related: ECRI Insists We're In A Recession--We Just Don't Know It Yet

Citigroup (C) outperformed all of its peers after failing the test in 2012. Last year the test results showed that a total of four banks (including Citi) would not withstand an economic shock; the other three were Ally, MetLife (MET) and SunTrust (STI).

What does this mean about the state of the U.S. banking system? William Cohan, Bloomberg TV contributing editor,

North Korea threatened a pre-emptive nuclear attack on the U.S. Thursday as the U.N. Security Council prepares to vote on tougher sanctions against the country for continuing to pursue its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

"Since the United States is about to ignite a nuclear war, we will be exercising our right to preemptive nuclear attack against the headquarters of the aggressor in order to protect our supreme interest," the North's foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement according to Reuters.

Pyongyang views the U.S.-South Korea military exercises in the region as a serious threat and has ramped up its rhetoric about nuclear action.

Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group, a global political risk research and consulting firm, joined The Daily Ticker remotely from New Dehli to discuss whether Washington should be concerned about the North Korean threats.

"It is classic propaganda," he notes. "This is clearly meant to say in the sharpest terms they do not want

The debate over whether or not to prevent sequestration cuts is over. As of last Friday, $85 billion in spending cuts will take effect this year and another $1 trillion in cuts will impact the economy over the next decade.

But if you thought the debate over America's finances was over, think again. Two more fiscal roadblocks loom: the continuing resolution to keep the federal government operating and yet another debt ceiling deadline.

The Daily Ticker recently spoke to David Walker, former U.S. comptroller general and CEO of the Comeback America Initiative. He said Washington policymakers were "a global embarrassment" because they continue to play a game of chicken over taxes and the deficit at the expense of the American public.

John Paul DeJoria, billionaire co-founder and CEO of John Paul Mitchell Systems and owner of Patron Spirits, joined the show to discuss this dysfunction in Washington and the impact it had on business and the private sector.

"This is having on business is a

The deadline for Congress to prevent yet another fiscal crisis is upon us.

On Friday, $85 billion in automatic spending cuts are set to take effect if our elected officials fail to act. Over the next decade, a total of $1.2 trillion in government cuts to both domestic and defense spending are expected to impact the U.S. economy. This is the sequestration process that was agreed to two years ago, which was supposed to be headed off before reaching this point, as The Daily Ticker Henry Blodget details in the accompanying clip with Yahoo! Finance senior columnist Michael Santoli.

Related: U.S. Consumers Hit by Payroll Tax Hike, Rising Gas Prices: Up Next, Govt. Austerity!

On Sunday, The White House released a new state-by-state report detailing the "devastating impact the sequester will have on jobs and middle class families across the country if Congressional Republicans fail to compromise to avert the sequester by March 1^st."

Here are some details:

• California would lose $87.6 million

Google's (GOOG) stock is on a tear, hitting new highs and breaking through $800 per share this week. The stock is up roughly 30% year-over-year and more than 10% year-to-date. During mid-day trading, shares were selling for $8.00.57.

Now at least two analysts on the street think the stock could hit $1,000. CLSA raised its price target to $1000 as cost-per-clicks improve and a Bernstein Research analyst called YouTube "an underappreciated asset" and mobile "a large value creation opportunity."

At the same time, Deutsche increased its target to $935 from $800, also because of the potential in mobile.

Long-time Google bull Howard Lindzon, co-founder and CEO of Stocktwits.com, joined The Daily Ticker's Aaron Task to discuss Google's upward momentum. "It makes sense for analysts to do this," he says. "There is a lot of momentum around this brand."

The recent, renewed interest in Google is due in large part to a number of major announcements made by the company, including:

• Google Glass: The