I’m not a professional historian. Neither are you probably. But there isn’t anyone reading this who does not remember the bubble in the stock market during 2005, 2006, and early 2007. And since virtually everyone has these first-hand memories, it should be abundantly clear what we should have learned from them. In those earlier years, market movers on Wall Street were making huge salaries and bonuses puffing up a bubble based on short-term and risky investments. Short-term because this...

We’ve all heard the same tragic stories. Some of us have even seen it played out. A couple decides to make their lives happier by drinking heavily. It works nicely for awhile. Then one partner sees the dangers and backs away, while the other doesn’t have the will or the ability to do so, leaving his or her mate to mourn a foolish collective error. We’re seeing something akin to that when it comes to prognostication about an economic recovery. Wall Street and Washington, the long...

Let us now make one of our regular visits to Economist World, a distant world where California’s medical marijuana experiment has apparently become adopted as the everyday alternative to a morning mocha. In a column I wrote yesterday, I pointed out how utterly detached from the rest of us economists have become. And today a number of them, perhaps having stumbled upon a new bud of unusual merit, seemed intent on demonstrating this vast schism. One closely followed fellow at a leading economic...

Of late we’ve been hearing a lot about an economic recovery. No one seems to know exactly when this might come to pass, but those who think it might happen soon all seem to agree it will be a “jobless recovery.” The economy will start to grow again, in other words, but for a variety of reasons this will not occur in tandem with a lot of presently unemployed people going back to work. In thinking about such a state of affairs, I was at first totally confused. The two words “jobless”...

If you believe conservative commentators, liberals are a bunch of whining, carping, envious wimps, always complaining about some puffed up abuse of indigents or some other lefty lament. But believe me when I say that no group whines, moans, beats its heads against the wall in torment about a perceived injustice more than the very rich or their champions. Take the 5.4 percent surtax that is part of the House of Representatives’ health care reform measure, a surtax that would be imposed on those...

A couple of nights ago I was watching the NBC nightly news. They had two stories, one right after the other, that were rather instructive. The first was about the growing shortage of primary care doctors in this country and the rush of medical students to train to become medical specialists. This report noted that average pay of primary care docs is $190,000 a year. Average pay for radiologists is $490,000 a year. And the top paying specialists, spinal surgeons, make $611,000 a year on average. That...

Sometimes you get the feeling that the government officials in charge of reanimating our economy don’t understand how this economy actually works. Last week provided a depressing example. It was announced at week’s end that the government plans to focus more on bailing out the country’s small business sector. Which raises the troubling question: how could they not have been focusing on this sector all along? Most business in this country, most employment, isn’t generated by...

We’d all like to believe that pronouncements from the Obama Administration in recent days and months are true—or at least that the people doing the pronouncing believe them to be true. Here’s a list of some things, however, that may not turn out to be totally accurate. The G-8’s commitment to check global warming will not be slowed by fears about possible negative economic impacts. Sixty Democratic senators mean that this august body can finally pass difficult legislation. A...

I worked at Bloomberg Financial News for a number of years. While there I encountered many of Wall Street’s shakers and movers. I found them, by-in-large, to be an extraordinarily arrogant lot. They really did think they were the best and brightest. They really did think that $5 or $10 million a year in compensation was chump change, and people like themselves were entitled, entitled!, to much more as a best and brightest right. The fact that almost all were indeed getting much more proved...

Another July 4th has dawned. Always a tough day for me. In public schools from the age of 6-17, in PS 177, Boody Jr. High and Lafayette High School, all in Brooklyn, New York, the same lunch was served every thursday. Franks, mashed potatoes, and sitting in a dollop of these potatoes, a pool of brown gravy smothered in sauerkraut. It has left its mark. Each July 4th since then, when someone cries out the traditional “Have a dog,” I’m thrown back to a vision of those franks. Swimming...

After plunging in 2008 and early this year, since March the Dow soared some 36 percent. In the last two weeks, however, it has taken another nasty slide. Could this a signal we are about to experience…. The Dreaded Double Dip There are few worse fears among the seers who give guidance to The Street, Than an upward turn they claimed to discern that suddenly beats a retreat. Then to save their reps, with practiced steps, they quickly do a back flip, And loudly amend: “This...

In 1971, while Americans were still debating how and when to leave Vietnam, a young officer in battle fatigues named John Kerry testified before Congress. I don’t remember his exact words during that appearance. But it came down to something like this: What do we tell the family of the last soldier who dies in Vietnam that it was all a mistake? Yesterday, on the same day that the last combat troops left cities in Iraq, the U.S. military announced that four more troops had died the day before...

Charts and tables don’t always tell you important things about the economy. But sometimes they do. And the other day I ran across three tables suggesting where our national country might be heading—and indeed should be heading. These tables showed on a state-by-state basis delinquency rates on auto loans, mortgages, and credit cards during the first quarter of this year. On all three tables North and South Dakota had the lowest rates of delinquency. It must be emphasized here that these...

I’m not a big fan of the cap and trade approach to limiting climate change just passed by the House of Representatives. I much prefer the old tried and true cap and enforce approach, employed in every successful environmental effort since the 1960s. While there’s disagreement today about whether cap and trade or cap and enforce is the best way to go when it comes to addressing man-made changes in the climate, however, there’s no disagreement when it comes to the primary criticism...

There’s definitely good news here in Glimmerland. Like the U.S. economy, which according to many recent reports from government and private analysts is stabilizing, personal finances in this country also appear to be nearing a bottom. You may have lost your job. But if you can’t find another one, that simply means your job prospects haven’t gotten worse. They have bottomed out. Stabilized. Lost your home to foreclosure? There’s now an amazing opportunity to move into a FEMA...

The Pennsylvania legislature is now debating whether or not to legalize gay marriage. One hears the usual, the predictable arguments from both sides in this debate. But the other day I heard one argument from people opposing the right of gays to marry that had never occurred to me—the possibility that if we allow this to go forward in Pennsylvania it would put us on a slippery slope that could lead to legalizing inter-species marriage. I like to think of myself as a pretty liberal guy when it comes...

The Dow dropped 3 percent last week. Today it is also sinking on reports from the World Bank and others that a supposed recovery later this year may be delayed for quite awhile longer. Could this be the end of the bull run that began in March and has featured the biggest percentage market jump in more than 70 years? One sure sign that this may be the case is a story on today’s Bloomberg website that tells of “insiders” (CEOs of large publicly traded companies) bailing out of their...

I was reading an article about health care reform when my train pulled into the station. The platform was crowded. I looked around. It took just one quick glance to see the major missing piece in today’s great health care debate. The people on the platform, a mix of young and old, black and white, richly dressed and otherwise, a perfectly random sampling of urban Americans, didn’t look all that healthy. One teenager appeared to be about five feet six inches tall and nearly as wide. And...

For years the world has been distressed and not infrequently appalled by the behavior of Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Everyone has always known, of course, that he wasn’t the real power in Iran, that he didn’t call the shots on really big issues. This was the prerogative of the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. There was nonetheless a commonly held notion, or perhaps a commonly held hope, that the President and the Supreme Leader weren’t in...

I find myself continually writing dour things about the U.S. economy. I can’t help it. I want to see green shoots and glimmers. I want things to be stabilizing. I hanker for the return of growth and other good economic tidings sometime later this year. I want to be happy and upbeat like Ben and Timmy, the gang on Wall Street, and those analysts who are endlessly surprised and delighted when their economic expectations are surpassed—which these days is almost always. My problem is that I’m...

I was watching the evening news last night and they had a story about credit cards. It seems a lot of people are no longer able to service them. In response, in hopes of getting at least something back on their bad loans, card issuing banks now often cut deals for a lot less than outstanding balances. This is not a very surprising phenomenon, given the way the economy has tanked. Banks made an enormous number of foolish credit card loans because they thought they had gamed the court and legislative...

Maybe you’ve been wondering. Where has all the money gone? With governments around the world, led by our own, pumping literally trillions and trillions of dollars into addressing the economic crisis, why hasn’t this money dribbled down to you and me and most everyone else we know? One reason, of course, is that the banks have scooped it up. Money given to these institutions in hopes they would turn around and lend it to businesses and consumers has been kept in house instead. They receive...

Today’s Great Recession, now into its 19th month, is certainly not as bad as the Great Depression of the 1930s—at least not yet. But as happy talk about glimmers and green shoots has gradually been morphing into suggestions that the recession will likely end sometime this summer, and that a recovery will begin then, it’s worth wondering what kind of economy might emerge during this “recovery”. Some hints in this regard might be found by looking to the 1930s. —Depending...

Will Pfizer prevent social revolution in this country? This question came to mind on a recent day when two seemingly unrelated events occurred. I finished reading a book about the decline of the Roman Empire. And a drug company announced an unusual giveaway plan. With regard to Rome. You think Bush and Cheney were bad? Think Nero and Caligula (the latter a nickname, by the way, that roughly translates as bootsie or half-boots…but I digress). Now that was bad governance! Throw in lead water...

As I’ve been hearing about the doctor who was recently murdered for performing later term abortions, I realized for hundredth time how cleverly the self-proclaimed “Pro-Life” people have outwitted the Pro-Choice people when it comes to using language to advance their cause. Dr. Tiller was referred to over and over again on the news as an “abortion doctor.” He wasn’t. He was a gynecologist, one of whose services (a relatively minor one) was to perform abortions....