I had to return something to Amazon.com the other day. The process was simple. Amazon provided for printing at home a return label and a bar-code to include with the item. It took a minute to print them out. It took five minutes to pack. Per Amazon’s instructions, I dropped [continue reading . . . ]
I can’t help but think what’s going on in global markets seems like a re-run of what happened in the fall of 2008, when Lehman Brothers failed, banks had to be bailed out and the worst recession since the Great Depression ensued. AP business writer Alex Veiga neatly sums up [continue reading . . . ]
Who would have guessed that incomes are more unequal in Communist China than in the United States? Not me. A new report from Peking University, cited in the Financial Times, says the richest 1% of China’s households own a third of the country’s wealth. The poorest 25% own just 1%. [continue reading . . . ]
Population of the Evergreen State has grown about 60% faster than the national average in first half of the decade. Only seven states have grown at a faster rate; only two of those seven have more population than Washington. International migration — people moving from other countries — accounts for [continue reading . . . ]
No one will ever accuse Amazon.com chief Jeff Bezos of stinting on investment. In five years through 2014, the company’s cumulative investment in property, plant and equipment has increased more than seven-fold, to nearly $23 billion (chart). When the books are closed on 2015, the total likely will be close [continue reading . . . ]
Raising interest rates a quarter point as the Fed did this week does not change the fact that we live in a slow-growth world. Money markets and commodities markets are singing the same song in unison: Almost no inflation, and very little growth. To say that commodities prices have collapsed [continue reading . . . ]
From the award-winning British novelist Ian McEwan, who happens to be living in Paris, and who was out on the town on the night of the slaughter, writing at edge.org: The death cult chose its city well—Paris, secular capital of the world, as hospitable, diverse and charming a metropolis as [continue reading . . . ]
My good friend Vince Schuler has taken me out salmon fishing on Puget Sound several times since early August. Even a bad day on the salt chuck beats a good day at the office. Fishing has been good, catching not so much. Until today. We picked up our limit of [continue reading . . . ]
Employment has been growing faster than average in the recent past on the West Coast generally and in the Pacific Northwest states in particular. Among the states I follow as a regional economist, Montana and Alaska, both hit hard by the collapse of oil prices, rank well below aveage. The [continue reading . . . ]
So the Chinese routinely send to our shores boatload after boatload of relatively inexpensive stuff that helps fill up our box stores and helps keep U.S. inflation in check. We send back little pieces of paper that say “IOU.” The Chinese tend to invest their trade surplus in the safest [continue reading . . . ]
If you haven’t read it, get to your library (or use your library card) to read Ruchir Sharma’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal August 17 (Page A 11). He argues that with advanced economies stuck in slow-growth mode, the globe is “one shock away from recession” and that the [continue reading . . . ]
June marks the end of the sixth year since the Great Recession passed into history. At 18 months, it was the lengthiest recession since World War II, surpassing the 16 months of the other notably long-lived post-war recessions, ended in March 1975 and November 1982. For duation, of course, the [continue reading . . . ]