For months the stock market has resembled a smoker who knows it’s time to quit but can’t give up the weed just yet. For this smoker there’s always some occasion that seems to require one more butt. A stress situation that can only be met with a smoke. That cup of morning coffee, or the after dinner nicotine closer. Or being with someone else doing the drag you can’t watch without bumming one for yourself. That’s the recent stock market, one in which virtually everyone...

Just when you think you couldn’t get angrier about the utter stupidity of our military engagement in Iraq, another news item comes along to extend and enlarge the rage. This was a tidbit I ran across this morning in the English version of today’s Tehran Times. It reports that the speaker of Iraq’s parliament is in Iran now to discuss security cooperation between the two countries with an an eye toward checking any future incursions in the region by external forces. Like ours, for...

When engaged in an argument, it’s always wise to understand the other party’s point of view. Not to agree with this view, of course, but as a means to possibly resolve the disagreement in a way that benefits everyone. With this in mind, here’s some reasons why Iran might think it is both justified and necessary to develop the nuclear weapons that pretty much all objective observers today believe they are actively working to develop, their statements to the contrary not withstanding....

I thought I knew the history of the Great Depression in this country. I thought it lasted the entire decade of the 1930s. Maybe you thought so, too. And maybe we were both wrong. Such a mistake seems obvious when listening to present pronouncements from our economic masters about our own Great Recession that started at the end of 2007. I’ve been thinking we were still in this Great Recession, but lately the wise ones have informed us a recovery has begun. And if this is, in fact, true, then...

The Supreme Court is now cogitating over a case involving corporations and free speech that many people worry could lead to a dramatic change in our political system. Specifically, that so much corporate money might soon flow into elections that it will have a disastrous effect on who gets elected and whose interests elected officials will really represent. I think such worries may be exaggerated. In fact, the basis of these worries may well be misguided. Let em explain. Corporations already have...

O.K. I’ll admit it. I thought the stock market couldn’t get any crazier. I was wrong. Forget massively skewed valuations. Forget companies like AIG whose stock has been soaring for no discernible reason. Forget all those terrible earnings reports greeted with joy by traders because they beat analyst expectations, and because of the rosy predictions about the future from the CEOs who brought in these awful results. For a true measure of current market craziness, look to the boom in day...

Around the country they’re debating the “moral right” of doctors to refuse certain kinds of care, and the same right of pharmacists to do the same thing when it comes to filling prescriptions. But the whole question here strikes me as kind of silly. I mean, if you’re a pacifist, it’s obvious you shouldn’t join the Armed Forces where you might be called upon to kill somone. If you’ve set your heart on being a trapeze artist, it’s equally clear you shouldn’t...

The techniques that economists use to understand their specialized studies, and to decree the nostrums the rest of us must now follow, are so exotic, so elaborate, so far beyond the ken of ordinary mortals, they must be greatly simplified when transmitted to lesser minds. Thus, describing the future before us is today often reduced to single letters — V, U, W or L. In a V economic future, after things slide way down, they turn on a dime and soar way back up. In a U future, after things slide way...

For a long time I’ve been confused about what passes for economic reporting these days. The reports of late have all been saying the recession has ended. Yet they all invariably add that most Americans (sometimes referred to collectively as “Main Street”) will not see any personal improvement for many months or even years. Indeed, it seems to most on Main Street that things are actually getting worse because of more job losses, more foreclosures than new home sales, higher poverty...

When I tell friends that the next major tax debate should focus on parking tickets, the response is almost always the same. They tell me about how they were recently screwed by an overly aggressive ticket-slinger, then relate tales of similar abuse experienced by other people they know.  Sure, they finally acknowledge, parking metering and ticketing is a stealth tax. A curb tax. But a major taxing issue? Nah. This is just a nickel and dime rip-off.  Alas, they’re wrong. The curb tax isn’t...

Why is President Obama’s popularity fading? You can hear a lot of answers to this question. But for me the answer is obvious, and comes down to the two C’s—change and continuity. He promised the former, but when it comes to the most basic issues facing the country, the economy and foreign affairs, he’s governing in keeping with the latter. On this Labor Day, just consider who is setting this Administration’s economic policies. Under President Bush it was the trio of Paulson,...

Obama and his crew may think they can fool us conservatives. These folks think we can’t spot a con or an outright conspiracy when we see it. Well, Mr. President, it turns out you’re wrong about that. That value of education speech you were planning to broadcast to school kids. Sounds innocuous, doesn’t it? At least at first hearing. Well, if you have the kind of smarts we’ve got, there’s nothing innocuous here at all. You think we don’t know that one of the few...

I’ve been an economics and financial writer for 30 years. I used to enjoy my work. I used to take pride in it. The markets were kinky, sure, but that made the writing more fun. And even though a slew of picaresque and flagrantly self-serving characters might for a time generate oddball quirks in markets and even the overall economy, even in the midst of the most extreme bouts of irrationality there were still always plenty of grounded reporters who consistently treated such foolishness in an...

We’ve all heard the same argument in different contexts—the argument that the public has no right or need to know important information because some officials think it would hurt the public’s interests if the information got out. We’ve heard it when the issue is police brutality. Oh, no, we’re told, if that’s examined too closely, it would hurt the morale of police officers who protect us. We’ve heard it when the issue is a possible war crimes or torture. Oh,...

The great debate in economic circles these days is whether there’s a turnaround going on in the American housing market. To help determine whether this is occurring, computers used to defeat a Russian chess master in a mere 32 moves have been employed, along with mathematical models that are rumored to have been salvaged from a UFO that went down in Roswell, N.M. in 1947. Yes, this is a tough one to figure, alright. Great brain power and the highest order of economist training is being applied...

Saying that the stock market’s behavior has been crazy in recent months is like saying the weather has been crazy this summer. The market and the weather always act in crazy ways. Still, at least in the market’s case, sometimes even the folks stacking the deck get a bit queasy about the craziness. That’s happening now. You look at the financial press and financial web sites, and many recently shameless promoters of an undeserved stock market boom are backing off and suggesting a...

The country is now remembering the Woodstock weekend’s 40th anniversary. I missed that big mud slide four decades ago. I was bumming around Europe at the time after doing my military service. But Woodstock and my bumming have something in common — both, in very different ways, represented the very acme of American economic life. I don’t want to pretend that the Ozzie & Harriet generation’s lives were the best most Americans have ever led. Racism, sexism, conformity and other...

I heartily approve of the government’s Cash For Clunkers program. It’s a pleasure to finally see money going directly to consumers for buying a new product (a car) and thereby aiding a troubled auto industry. But I also think this program is discriminatory. Why, after all, should only old and no longer wanted vehicles get a government subsidy? Why should only motorists get a government buying aid? And why should only car makers enjoy the resulting spin off benefits? I not only write...

The Fed says the recession is almost over. Many leading economists now say it has already ended. You hear this latter view on TV nightly, and if you visit financial web sites, it’s repeated over and over. All of which brings to my mind a simple question: Whose recession has ended—or is even ending? Imagine an emergency room. Six months ago a patient was brought in. He was bleeding very badly and required endless transfusions. He had a dozen broken bones in all parts of his body and tumors...

There comes a time when the Obama Administration has to show it’s really serious about changing the way Wall Street operates. That time has arrived. And the key decision in this regard involves a new wave of bonuses that banks are planning to give their best “producers” — on top of the $1 million-plus bonuses that more than 5,000 of these Wall Streeters got last year during the great market meltdown. A federal official has the right to challenge this new round of bonuses because...

The government wanted to reanimate the auto industry. It allocated billions to car makers to help them produce more energy efficient vehicles. This might reduce our dependence on wasteful polluting vehicles in a few years, or it might not. Just by offering cash for clunkers, however, within one week tens of thousands of inefficient gas guzzlers were replaced on our roads by more efficient, less polluting cars. The government wanted to reanimate the real estate sector. It concocted elaborate, brilliantly...

Wall Street has changed the way I view the world. And I must admit, for the better. Things that used to bother me or make me sad now make me happy. My previous problem was in not seeing the bright side of almost anything. Take the weather where I live. It has been hot. Really hot. Today it reached 105. But since the three weather forecasters on local TV stations were predicting 107, the 105 beat expectations and I feel cooler in consequence. Sometimes I have a few too many before leaving my favorite...

At the time of this writing the Dow is again on the rise. Why? The U.S. economy shrank 1 percent in the last quarter, beating analyst expectations (now there’s a surprise!). But let’s forget for the moment that our economy has been shrinking for four straight quarters, the first time this has happened since records started to be kept on such things; and that the only reason this latest 1 percent shrinkage beat the 1.5 percent expected was because of a huge drop in the quarterly trade...

I thought reportage of the recession could no longer surprise me. I was wrong. The cover story in Newsweek, declaring that the recession has ended, THAT surprised me. By now I’m used to Wall Streeters, government types, economists and financial journalists exclaiming that economic reports that show things are getting worse more slowly really show they are getting better; that awful profit reports that beat the expectations of a few invariably wrong analysts are good profit reports; that improved...

There are many problems with writing for a living, the most obvious being that it’s a lousy way to make a living. You not only have an endless need to justify to others why you are not only caging a free meal from them as a prelude ot asking for a loan, you have the equally difficult task of explaining why you think the projects you are currently working on have a good chance of making you as solvent as, say, a 711 store clerk. Well, whatever the state of the economy, the meal caging and loan...