Until July 18th, 2015, I thought former President Donald Trump was just another skirt-chasing New York braggart. That day, I became a “never-Trumper,” because that was the day he trashed American hero John McCain. He didn’t merely disagree with McCain, he trashed him. It was ugly! Later, after McCain died in 2018, Trump ridiculed McCain’s family for having “the world’s longest funeral.” That day, I…
I am comfortable discussing dementia, having seen it so many times in friends and clients over the years. Nonetheless, I attended a two-hour update yesterday. There are currently about 6.8 million Americans with dementia. 89% are cared for by a family member, 66% of whom are women. The five most common types of dementia are (1) Alzheimer’s early or late onset, (2) Vascular Dementia, (3)…
For years, I have cautioned my Democratic friends that the immigration issue was a cancer on the Democratic party, and because my Republican friends belong to the Party of No, there has been no hope of any compromise, at least not since Newt Gingrich was Speaker. Democrats view immigrants as human beings to be cared for, which requires a “comprehensive” solution, including housing, healthcare, education,…
We’ve had at least three “tech summits” where “tech titans” come to Congress and confuse legislators. In last week’s summit, the tech titans asked for better regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) , as sloppy regulation could destroy the tech sector and maybe the country. Sounds innocent enough! The previous tech summit was just a bitch-session, where my Republican friends complained that the mass media was…
On this date for the past twenty-two years, most adult Americans recall the horror of watching commercial airplanes crash into the World Trade Center and the subsequent collapse of those towers, killing almost three thousand people. Personally, I recall cars driving on sidewalks. While my office in Downtown Alexandria was in sight of the Pentagon, I didn’t see the plane crash into it. Of course,…
Since 1687, one of Issac Newton’s “Laws of Motion” has been, loosely speaking — there is an equal but opposite reaction. Maybe, that was also the birth of binary thinking. Longtime readers will recall that my blog posts in late 2015 and 2016 about Donald Trump were not popular with the MAGA crowd. I wrote then and still believe that he is a egocentric egotist,…
It is often joked that economics is like two blind guys trying to describe an elephant. Blind Democrats and Blind Republicans often “see” things differently. The Blind Democrats can see that: (1) GDP growth is better than expected, (2) inflation is falling faster than expected, (3) unemployment remains remarkably low, (4) the stock market, especially tech stocks, is booming. The economy is doing fine! Of…
Just suppose you had a good credit score of 760, but you want to improve it to 800, an excellent score which few people achieve. So, you hire a financial planner, who tells you where to live, who to have dinner with, who your kids should play with, where your spouse should shop, what church you should attend, etc. Expecting to see your credit rise,…
Mitch McConnell is an 81-year-old member of Kentucky aristocracy and has served in the U.S. Senate for 38 years. During live television this week, his face suddenly “froze” for twenty seconds. I’ve seen that look before. It was on my late mothers face, when she had a mini-stroke. (Nobody should not be ridiculed — paging Fox’s Greg Gutfeld!) I was hopeful that the Republican leader…
Is it fair to punish good and decent people who cause great problems? How about good and decent companies who cause great problems? Social media is a pleasant to spend time, while their associated algorithms manipulate the vulnerable. It is 90% good and 10% bad. Of course, all the social media inventors were focused on the 90%. Last week, the President met with large companies…
Harry Markowitz was born in Chicago in 1927 and studied under the legendary economist, Milton Friedman, at the University of Chicago. Much later, Markowitz was awarded the Nobel prize for developing Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT). Traditional investing requires memorizing minute details of stocks and comparing them. In fact, there are about 14 thousand stocks with millions of data points, which is enough to choke the…
Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson famously sang “Mama, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys”. That’s good advice, Mamas . . . but don’t let them grow up to be economists either! If you do, your kids will spend their lives learning obscure economic theories and studying endless economic data, that politicians & voters ignore! Invariably, the political party controlling the White House…
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I’m reluctant to say anything positive about CNN. It annoys my Republican friends and confuses my Democratic friends, but I appreciated the CNN production of “The Fourth in America” which just presented music and fireworks from across the nation with absolutely no political bias. Like the V-8 commercials . . . thanks, I needed that! Confession is good for the soul, and I confess to…
With all due sympathy to the respective families, it has been painful to watch the slow-motion tragedy at the Titanic gravesite. Predictably, critics who enjoy labeling others as stupid are promptly labeling the dead as stupid. I object to that! I remember a Master Sergeant telling me on a rainy Friday night long ago that “unless you look death in the eye, lieutenant, how do…
It takes some discipline to write an economic blog about something unimportant. Today’s inflation report showed that inflation has decreased for eleven straight months – ELEVEN STRAIGHT MONTHS. Expecting year-over-year inflation of 4.1%, it is only 4.0%. That’s a long way from 9.1% last year. The Fed’s goal is a mere 2.0% rate of inflation. Of course, wringing the last percentage point out of inflation…
Sometimes, a book will color your perspective forever. Such a book for me was The $elling of the President 1968 by the late Joe McGinniss. He changed the way we look at elections. Some professors would tell us that elections are contests between “philosophies and visions.” Others explain that elections are contests between mere personalities. McGinniss would argue elections are marketing contests, like the sales…
Existentialism was made for days like yesterday. Man’s inhumanity to man was demonstrated with the evil brilliance of Putin who blew up the Ukrainian dam, causing an unknown loss of life, billions of dollars of destruction, and effectively forestalling the expected military counter-offensive of Ukraine. It could be a turning point in this war. Later in the day, the venerated sport of golf was forced…
In 1958, a New Zealand born economist named William Phillips noted an odd relationship between inflation and unemployment. The “Phillips Curve” was born! For years, it was believed that the way to lower unemployment was to increase inflation, and the way to decrease inflation was to increase unemployment. This “inverse relationship” was hailed as an intellectual breakout . . . until the stagflation of the…
With kudos to the President and the Speaker, we now have a tentative deal to raise the debt ceiling. Of course, there is always something for each person to disagree with, and here is mine. The deal on the table merely postpones the expiration of the new debt ceiling for almost two years. We’ll have another opportunity to lose our AAA credit rating in January…
I yield to no person in my disdain and disgust with both the MAGA Republicans and the ANTIFA Democrats. However, because it has been so long, I sometimes worry about losing my appreciation of MODERATE Republicans and MODERATE Democrats. Thankfully, I have friends like Bob & Leslie, who sent me an birthday card saying: “The most important party today is not the Democratic Party or…
Most people see me as a big-bad-guy. What they don’t see is a big-bad-guy who cries . . . once a year, every year . . . on Memorial Day. On Veterans Day, above the hollow roar of “thank-you-for-your-service”, we pay respect to veterans who are still living. On Memorial Day, we honor the dead veterans who died in service. Unfortunately, the honor due to…
There’s an old Latin proverb that said “necessity is the mother of invention.” Unfortunately, that provided very little comfort during 2011, as politicians wrestled with increasing our maximum debt ceiling, just like they’re still doing today. The last time I lost sleep about our economy was July 30th of that year. The next day, President Obama announced that the debt ceiling would be raised and…
When I was in my early teen years, a new family moved two doors away. They had a daughter a few years younger than myself. Her name was Shirley, and she was challenged with Down Syndrome. Like most all victims of that terrible disease, she was invariably happy and friendly. My parents always insisted that I treat her normally. In fact, my father insisted I…
According to Greek mythology, Pandora opened a box that had been left in her husband’s care, releasing “sickness, death, and unspecified evils”. That was 700 B.C., which means the world has already survived some 2,723 years since the box was opened. In 1945, the phrase “black box” was first used to describe a electrical box that did things – even though people were “without knowledge…
My father will be 100 years old in four months and has been a deep red-blooded Republican all those years. Humorously, in 1981 when Barbara Mandrell sang her classic “I was county when country wasn’t cool,” my father joked that he hated the media before hating the media was cool. I remember that whenever I agree with him about the media . . . like…
I’ve never been in a movie theater when someone yelled “FIRE”, but I’m told that people completely overreact and panic, but I have been in an economy when someone yelled “INFLATION” and people do completely overreact. One more time — this is not your father’s inflation! He got burned by inflation decades ago! Full year inflation for both 1979 and 1980 was double-digit, 13.3% in…
Military officers should look and act dignified but not prissy. For myself, this indignity training consisted of “low-crawling” (on our belly) across a sewage-drying facility in Fort Benning, Georgia. It was probably only 50 yards across (4″-6″ deep), but it seemed like a 26-2 mile marathon. I suppose nobody could possibly be “prissy” after that? While awaiting deployment, some important person died, whose name I…
Halloween is a silly recurring event that scares children. The Debt Ceiling debate is a stupid recurring event that scares adults. At least Halloween adds a tiny bit to GDP with candy and costume sales. Because increased uncertainly is bad for business, the Debt Ceiling debate only subtracts from GDP in delayed capital expenditures, like factories. The Debt Ceiling debate has never reduced spending by…
Since 1976, there have been nine films in the “Rocky” franchise, costing about $270 million but with revenues of about $2 billion. The first in the series won a well-deserved Best Picture Oscar at the 1977 Academy Awards. In each, Rocky or Creed is the lead character, and he suffers greatly. In fact, he becomes a bloody mess just before rallying and becoming great again.…
When I was with Citicorp out of New York, my biggest customer was Trammel Crow of Dallas. He was a man of immense wealth and absolute integrity. One of my first duties in underwriting his credit was to verify a story that he repaid a debt he didn’t know about and had no legal requirement to repay. It was only about $240 thousand and had…
Last week, inflation in Argentina reached 501 percent – staggering but not even near the worst in Argentine history. Partially as a result, the Argentine president promptly resigned. I was in Argentina two months ago and noticed that prices were cheap when spending American dollars. (The only over-priced items we noticed was anything to do with their World Cup victory this year.) With soaring interest…
One of the many problems with guns is that they make everything more complicated! When my father handed me my first gun, there was no paperwork, but that was in the last century. It wasn’t complicated. Today, when a decedent owns a gun, it will be an asset in settling an estate, but it can get very complicated, especially for the executor or administrator, exposing…
