While economists and economic policy-makers in Washington struggle mightily to make sense of a slew of often conflicting economic data, from the perspective of most Americans there’s really only one that matters, one that touches them most directly in their daily lives — the Misery Index. First kicked around in the 1960s, it came into wide-scale public view in 1980 in the wake of an oil shock that sent petroleum prices soaring and the economy into a tailspin. The Misery Index number is computed...

Just making mega-millions (or a billion or two) a year doesn’t automatically earn you recognition as a member of The Street’s elite. Certain patterns of speech and behavior must also be mastered. Here’s a few tips for those who aspire to join these ranks. On every possible occasion mutter that you don’t suffer fools gladly. Also instruct employees and others dependent on you for a livelihood to spread the word that you’re someone who doesn’t suffer fools gladly....

It’s the oldest political trick in the book, the one used most often by rulers of a nation badly out of economic balance. Divide and rule. Turn the victims of your system against one another. Turn their attention away from the true cause of their problems. We’re seeing an absolutely masterful version of this tried and true manipulation today not only in Wisconsin this weekend, but around the country daily in a variety of guises. It was just a little more than two years ago that the massive...

I know. I know. In these perilous economic times I should be perpetually outraged about the awful governance coming out of Washington. But sometimes the sheer nuttiness, the utter incompetence, the astonishing lack of understanding of basic economics that motivates the actions of those who our failing political system raise up to positions of power, just can’t help but reduce me to helpless fits of laughter. Here’s the day’s choicest example in this regard (though the day is still...

When pols in Washington lie, it’s business as usual. When they actually seem to believe the nonsense they’re spouting, however, it gets scary. President Obama’s recent comments about Social Security suggest that with respect to this issue, the man is so deeply immersed in kinky Beltway thinking he’s lost touch with reality. The president has been criticized for not taking on the entitlement overhangs in his new budget proposals — entitlement programs that along with the...

Here’s the American economy today in a nutshell: Austerity for the poor and middle class; fat city for the rich. Much of this woeful tale is encapsulated in budget numbers coming from both Washington and state capitals. With regard to the former: Late last year two “compromises” between Mr. Change and Hope and Republican bullies in Congress are projected to cost the Treasury $800 billion over the next decade — about $80 billion a year. One “compromise” extended lower...

I’ve been shopping at the same food market for years. It’s not one of those fancy ones, with produce carefully and individually examined by certified food policemen. Nor is it one of those markets that feature an enormous selection of fine imported items and the choicest meats from around the world. It’s just the kind of place where most Americans get their basic grits on a regular basis. And boy, did I get a shock when I did my marketing there today! I can’t say that I have...

With a new party taking a major share of power in Washington, bringing with it smaller government priorities, it’s time to think about dramatic moves to reorganize the federal bureaucracy. It’s time, in other words, to consider abolishing the present merit-based system of federal employment, and bringing back the old spoils system of hiring and firing.  There’s nothing particularly revolutionary about a government system that employs people based on their relationship to a ruling...

Julius Caesar’s second wife, Pompeia, was rumored to be involved with another man. There was no proof, but Caesar divorced her anyway because, as the saying went then and now, Caesar’s wife must be beyond suspicion. Which brings us to the matter of the health care law that will soon land in the Supreme Court for a final decision about its constitutionality. One justice on that court is Clarance Thomas. His wife, Virginia Thomas, according to a newspaper account “is rebranding herself...

It’s silly to wonder how the U.S. economy is doing. We have two vastly divergent economies in this country, one for the rich, who are often linked in one way or another to Wall Street; the other for the poor and the increasingly-ground-down middle class. The former economy is doing just fine, thank you. Not so the latter. Here’s a couple of numbers that encapsulate this neatly. According to an estimate reported in the Wall Street Journal, compensation for the worthies on The Street came...

I used to be bothered by core rate blather about inflation. I thought it preposterous. I believed it was merely designed to ease people’s worries about the true rate of inflation by pretending that food and energy, two absolute necessities of human life, could be excluded from a “core rate” measure because they’re “volatile” — as if most other factors that go into computing inflation are not also volatile from time to time. But core rate thinking doesn’t...

By the time the Federal Reserve completes its plan to funnel another $600 billion into the U.S. economy by buying treasuries and mortgage-based bonds from banks, it will have added an estimated $2.3 trillion to the nation’s overall money supply. And it has done this without causing inflation — at least the official inflation rate posted by the government. How has this been possible? What’s the secret of this amazing monetary feat? Here’s the explanation. The primary effect of...

You won’t read the following headlines in newspapers or online this year. But that doesn’t mean if wouldn’t be a more interesting world if you did: Cold Fusion Achieved In North Dakota Refrigerator Congressional Republicans Opt To Focus On Compassion Toward Poor And Needy Congressional Democrats Put Principle Above Expediency President Obama Appoints Robert Reich As His New Lead Economic Adviser Bin Laden’s Conversion To Judaism Surprises Many Quarterly Financial Reports Somehow...

Just when you thought the economy couldn’t possibly get any better (you do think that, don’t you?), word comes from Davos that these current best of economic times are just the start of even greater and more wondrous economic times to come. Davos, of course, is where 2,500 of the world’s richest folks, hedge fund mangers, CEOs and the like, along with those who control much of other people’s wealth (pols and central bankers) get together annually to discuss how best to further...

Joe Lieberman won’t be running for reelection in Connecticut next year. No surprise there. He didn’t stand a chance at the polls. This might not end his political career, however. I’m thinking he would make a perfect running mate in a presidential campaign of Sarah Palin. This may sound odd at first because of some very obvious differences in their stands on certain social issues. And with another candidate on the top of a Republican ticket, that alone would be enough to disqualify...

In December the CPI jumped 0.5 percent. This increase was not only the result of a huge 8.5 surge in gasoline prices, but also increases in food, health care and airline prices. The stock market shrugged this off as if it were some kind of aberration, a one-time fluke. Unfortunately that is not likely to be the case. What usually keeps inflation in check best is a recession of the kind this country has been experiencing for years — financial talking heads and government officials’ twaddle...

I used to go to comedy clubs when I needed a laugh. Now I just wait for official numbers from the government to be released, and the wonderfully funny interpretation of these numbers by economists and happy talkers in the financial press, and what I’m hearing after today’s CPI (Consumer Price Index) release is an even bigger hoot than usual. The CPI rose 0.5 percent in December, a huge amount (6 percent on a per annum basis) and the largest increase in the last 18 months. But was there...

Percy Shelley called poets “the unacknowledged legislators of the world,” which at various times and in many places they truly were. Robert Frost said “poetry is a way of taking life by the throat,” and also opined that “poetry is the best possible way of saying almost anything,” Both these views are also certainly true. Which raises this question: In America today, why doesn’t poetry exercise its power to shape legislation, grab more lives by the throat, and...

When it comes to the most flagrant forms of officially sanctioned hypocrisy in this country, it’s hard to beat the blather about health care rationing. The very word “rationing” in this context brings down howls of sanctimonious denial from officialdom. When Arizona recently refused to fund some heart transplants for financial reasons, the action was loudly decried as a terrible aberration. It wasn’t. It was merely a high-profile example at the state level of the same sort...

The only thing holding up official recognition that employment worries in this country are a thing of the past is a residual optimism among some sectors of the American public. This may sound like a contradiction at first, even an absurdity. But consider these numbers. We need about 125,000 new jobs a month in this country to keep up with population growth. The economy during all of 2010 created on average of just 94,000 new jobs a month. Things were a bit better in December 2010 when 103,000 new...

I grew up in a working class neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. Many of the people living there were members of public service unions. They were cops, firemen, sanitation workers, social services employees, teachers. It wasn’t a ritzy neighborhood but it was comfortable. The houses were small, many attached, but exceptionally well tended, It was a very safe area. People there all owned cars, and while few had attended college themselves, most were sending their own kids off to college because...

The economy is back. It’s rolling, baby. I know this because the experts on Wall Street and in Washington have all detected signals that a recovery is now well and truly underway. The stock market, a harbinger of economic news so infallible that it’s one of the 10 leading indicators used by the Fed to determine the direction of the economy, is also at record levels after that unfortunate downward turn it took in 2008. So with all this glorious economic news I was wondering. How’s...

It’s become a hackneyed theme of Hollywood sci-fi movies. A very high tech system developed to serve people’s basic needs or defend a country against nuclear missile attack gains sentience and begins operating for its own benefit instead of the benefit of its human creators. Humanity then has to fight for its survival in very unfavorable circumstances. That hasn’t happened in equity markets. Well, not yet anyway. What has happened is that Wall Street’s biggest investment and...

I’m not a big fan of Christine O’Donnell, the Tea Party favorite and unsuccessful candidate for the Senate from Delaware. Indeed, whenever one of her “I’m you” commercials appeared on my TV, I got up and shouted: “No you’re not.” But whatever the merits of recent reports that say she may be under investigation for inappropriately using campaign funds, I have to say that laws that make this illegal strike me as wrong. Why shouldn’t candidates...

Sometimes a single paragraph in a single newspaper story tells you (if somewhat obliquely) the prime reason economic policies around the world are so wacky these days. That’s the case with a story that appeared in the New York Times on December 24th. It was headed “Bavaria Booms, but Germans Feel Economic Malaise.” Here’s the oh, so poignant paragraph in that story:. “This disconnect — bullish economic indicators combined with simmering discontent even among the employed...