Tag Archives: economy

The current economic recovery is weak, but that’s hardly news. There are many explanations for this meager improvement, but perhaps one of the most telling is a large jump in personal savings in the United States.…

I can’t sing a lick, but a tune from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific came to mind as I was thinking about the pervasive pessimism in so much economic and market commentary.…

My recent post on the government’s fiscal outlook generated several thoughtful comments.

Two readers mentioned Paul Krugman’s op-ed on Social Security in The New York Times. It is true, as Krugman points out, that Social Security is only a …

The long-term budget outlook for the federal government is bleak. What is surprising is that this is considered news.

The forces driving the U.S.’s long-term budget problem have been known for decades. We’ve also known for years that sometime in …

Several years ago at a speech in New York, I warned that “a future President Clinton or McCain would face a daunting budget challenge from population aging.” My political forecast was off, but my economic and demographic forecast is unchanged.…

In recent weeks, stocks have sold off from their recent highs. It appears that the enthusiasm that drove equity markets higher since last March may have run its course.…

I’ve had a hard time deciding which way the economic and investment winds are blowing, so I decided to make a list of the things I think have changed and those that haven’t.…

The history of bubbles is a story of excessive enthuasisms, for anything from tulip bulbs to subprime mortgages. But is there something more fundamental at work? Something more innate and psychological? It seems to me there is.

Is it the 1930s all over again? If that were true, it would be one very good reason to panic, sell everything, and put your money in a mattress. But it turns out that the comparisons between today and the Great Depression are (mostly) bunk.

Trying to understand the global financial crisis? Confused by derivatives and default swaps and the commercial paper market? Here are three ideas to explain it all.