After my talk to CFA Society Spokane last week, a member asked why my presentation didn’t emphasize more good news. I responded that as a former newspaperman, I’m a man-bites-dog type. Dog-bites-man, the ordinary stuff that happens every day, doesn’t make the paper. I’m slow on my feet. In retrospect, [continue reading . . . ]
For my money, the Washington Post‘s Robert Samuelson is one of today’s most accessible economics columnists. Don’t miss his column today. Excerpts: On this Labor Day, American workers face a buyers’ market. Employers have the upper hand and, given today’s languid pace of hiring, the advantage shows few signs of [continue reading . . . ]
Andy Kessler, author and former hedge-fund manager, opines regularly on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal. From his piece in the Journal August 28, here’s his nut graph on how to do it: The trick … is to drink from the fire hose of information, take it all in, [continue reading . . . ]
Mucking around recently released USDA data, I came up with the table below for a presentation to the CFA Society Spokane yesterday. I doubt the average Washington citizen appreciates what an agricultural powerhouse the Evergreen State is. Everyone knows we are the leading producer of apples. But we’re also No. [continue reading . . . ]
The Great Recession (January 2008-June 2009) was less severe and the recovery stronger than we thought at the time. But it was still the worst economic decline since the Great Depression. And the recovery remains the Great Disappointment. Uncle Sam in late July published national income and product accounts updated [continue reading . . . ]
Beginning in May 2010 and continuing for almost three years, aerospace employers in Washington State added to their payrolls at the rate of nearly 600 a month. Over eight months starting in April 2011, the pace of hiring was almost frantic, averaging about 900 a month, as Boeing scrambled to [continue reading . . . ]
The ports of Seattle and Tacoma are both spending heavily gearing up for shipping-container volumes vastly beyond anything they’ve handled to date. They both may be chasing pipe dreams that will prove costly to their taxpayers. Data from the Pacific Maritime Association shows that container “handle” at Tacoma peaked eight [continue reading . . . ]
Just back from three weeks in the Emerald Isle, two on a tour organized by the Rick Steves outfit out of Edmonds, Wash. We saw more of Ireland in those 21 days than most Irish get to see in a lifetime. I took enough photos to bore anyone to tears. [continue reading . . . ]
I was a newspaperman before I became, in order, a newsletter editor-publisher, then a self-trained economist and professional speaker. I still love newspapers. And not just the on-line versions. I still savor dead trees. Four newspapers thud on to my front porch on weekdays, five on Saturdays, two on Sundays. [continue reading . . . ]
We have not seen this movie before. We do not know how it ends. Unwinding the Fed’s Quantitative Easing (QE) programs and central banks’ near-zero interest policies (N-ZIRP), now in Year 5, were never going to be easy. But these have to be done eventually. The repression of interest rates [continue reading . . . ]
If you worry, as I do, about the future of the aerospace industry and its high-paying in Washington State, you won’t want to miss an excellent roundup of recent developments by Dominic Gates in today’s Seattle Times. Near the end of the long article, a quote from Leeham.net‘s Scott Hamilton [continue reading . . . ]
The difference between Windows 7 and Windows 8? Think Ford versus Ferrari. A twenty-something Microsoft technician, patient and unfailingly polite, and I were chatting. From Bangalore, he had taken over my Windows 7 computer, my main machine, to try to root out some unseen malady which had prevented all Office [continue reading . . . ]