Economics

As I sit here Monday evening with the Dow having closed down 2000 points and the 10-year Treasury yield around 0.5%, the title of this update seems utterly ridiculous. With the new coronavirus still spreading and a collapse in oil prices threatening the entire shale oil industry, recession is now the expected outcome. Most...

I went to the crossroad, fell down on my kneesI went to the crossroad, fell down on my kneesasked the lord above "have mercy, now save poor bob, if you please"Yeoo, standin' at the crossroad, tried to flag a rideooo eee, i tried to flag a ridedidn't nobody seem...

The world has moved significantly toward freer markets since the 1970s but the outcome has been less than ideal. It is incumbent on the free market missionaries to explain why.

Howard Gold had an article last week at Marketwatch: Why is the US stock market weak? Because the economy is too strong. What does it mean for the economy to be "too strong"? Isn't growth supposed to be good for stocks? Gold's reasoning is that Fed tightening is driving up the...

One of the things I've been pondering lately is the possibility that we are in the midst of a regime shift. I'm not talking about a cyclical change but rather a long term, secular one. For all of my investing career - and for almost everyone's entire investing life...

Tim Wu, a Columbia University law professor, has an intriguing opinion article in the Sunday New York Times about the link between big business and fascism. He makes the case that a lack of anti-trust enforcement has contributed to the rise of populism around the world. I don't know...

Stocks have stumbled into October with the S&P 500 down about 6% as I write this. The source of equity investors' angst is always hard to pinpoint and this is no exception but this correction doesn't seem to be due to concerns about economic growth. At least not directly. The...

The headline says up 4.5% but that was almost entirely due to a surge in aircraft orders. Ex-transportation, orders were up just 0.1% and core capital goods were down after three straight up months. Read the rest at Econoday  

I have been a fan of Japan as an investment for quite a while now. Shinzo Abe's economic reforms are, for now, paying large dividends. There are questions of course about monetary policy as implemented by the inventors of Quantitative Easing, taking monetary policy where it has rarely been....