Monday, February 26, 2007

Alan Greenspan warns of possible recession

Alan Greenspan is warning that the U.S. could be in a recession by year's end.
Alan Greenspan in the financial news

What he says is true. It could happen. Also, maybe it won't. I'm not sure why such pronouncements are considered news, except that as former Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Mr. Greenspan does have a lot of built up name recognition for the news agencies to exploit.

And of course a recession would affect all of us, even income investors. Although we shouldn't be concerned with ups and downs of the stock market, a slowing down of business would affect even the companies that pay dividends, so it could reduce their dividend payments in the future.




Sunday, February 25, 2007

Welcome to this blog on income investing

This will be my excuse to keep up with economic, investing and financial news for my site in investing for income.

Right now the financial news is going on about the Conference Board's consumer confidence index which will be released Tuesday. The reading for January was 110.3, a record high. "Analysts" -- anybody the reporters can find who think they know what's going to happen -- say that the report will be down just a little bit, and that's considered good.

With home sales down and gas prices up recently, just a little dip in consumer confidence is considered good, because of course people can always find reasons to not have confidence, and this can make them cut back on certain purchases.

Of course, if you're collecting dividends from utilities and consumer staples companies you may not want to care much. After all, while people keeping their old cars longer is bad for the car industry, they'll still buy snack food and use electricity to turn on their TVs.