Republicans and Democrats agree that wealth inequality, as well as income inequality, are very unhealthy for this country. In fact, they have spent decades complaining about it. However, while they were complaining, anger was building. Millions of blue-collar workers were double-crossed by politicians who wouldn’t protect them from globalization. Anger among those Americans still continues to build. Maybe, our bicameral system of government was not…
Political science professionals chuckle that the majority of people hate Congress but like their local Congressman/woman. Journalists chuckle that the majority of people hate the national media but like their local media. Investment analysts chuckle that a normal behavioral bias is a strong preference to invest in locally-based stocks. We like local . . . but then ignore it. Why do we know so much…
I have written a quarterly column for Inside Business for over fifteen years. It is a sister-publication to The Virginian-Pilot. The most recent column can be found here: A year like no other, indeed | Expert column – The Virginian-Pilot – Inside Business (pilotonline.com)
During the 1970’s and the 1980’s, the Federal government had been fighting a war in Vietnam, building a Great Society, and running up the national debt for years. In 1992, President Clinton has ambitions to increase deficit spending, which means adding even more debt, before he was blind-sided by the Great Bond Massacre. Interest rates rose from 6% to 8%, causing a trillion dollar decrease…
Bob Doll is the Chief Equity Officer for investment giant Nuveen. He may not be the best known person on Wall Street, but he is certainly one of the best-liked. Each year, he is brave enough to make ten predictions and has an enviable track record. Here are his ten predictions for 2021: Our GDP growth rate will be the fastest in twenty years Inflation…
I don’t ever recall hearing so much worry about inflation . . . while still in a recession. Inflation does not jump after a recession. It usually takes quite a while for the economy to get out of recession and to build up excess demand or develop supply problems before inflation is discussed. Everybody is pointing to home prices going up, but that is only…
Maybe it was my strict Southern Baptist upbringing, but I always feel some responsibility when bad things happen, and not many things are worse than the attack on our Capitol last week. Of course, my responsibility is tiny, but I do feel some tiny sympathy for the thugs and hooligans attacking us. Most of them come from small towns with limp economies, which were badly…
At first, Google’s search engine was a modern-day-miracle, enabling almost anybody to quickly find almost anything. And, it was FREE! Later, it was disappointing to learn their business model was legalized spying on their users, by selling information on what each user searched for. During that same period, there were increasing number of job openings for “big data analysts” and there were articles about new…
The most common question I receive is how can the stock market do so well, when the economy does so poorly? The short answer is that the economy reflects the present, while the stock market reflects the future. A better answer is that the price of stocks reflects the supply and demand for stocks. The supply of stock is not fixed, but it increases slowly. …
There was a light summer rain that day in 2002, when I had a late meeting in the Rosslyn area, across the Potomac from the District of Columbia. Listening to WTOP, the local traffic radio station, I learned the “spaghetti bowl” (the area between Rosslyn and the Pentagon) was jammed and not moving. Deciding to read instead of waiting in traffic, I pulled off on Mead…
Last year, the most common question was — how can the stock market be doing so well, when the economy is doing so badly? The short answer, of course, is that the economy is focused on the present, while the stock market is focused on the future. The object lesson is that, while the stock market and the economy are related, they are still very…
Just as there are good Democrats and bad Democrats, there are good Republicans and bad Republicans. The Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, is a good Republican. He is also smart enough to tape phone conversations with a bad Republican. America will be in a better place, when good Republicans retake the Grand Old Party.
Just as a person can consume too much food, a person can consume too much news. I have long advocated for a one-news-free day every week (except for business news). For myself, I avoid all news on Saturdays. It doesn’t really matter which day of the week you avoid the news – just one day to let your natural optimism to bubble back up. However,…