I’ve said in this space before that I love newspapers. Of the four dailies I read, the one I would take to a desert island is, without question, the Financial Times. The pleasures of the salmon-colored broadsheet include such political insights as the following from Clive Crook, the newspaper’s chief [continue reading . . . ]
Fed Chair Ben Bernanke’s historic press conference, economic policy, high-speed rail and Boeing’s travails with the 787 were among topics on KUOW’s Weekday program today. The Seattle Times columnist and blogger Jon Talton and I batted these and other issues around for nearly 40 minutes with host Steve Scher. Here’s [continue reading . . . ]
The U.S. is in such dire financial shape that it must raise taxes on the middle class as well as the rich AND curtail, via means-testing, giant entitlement programs, including Social Security and Medicare. That’s the Easter Sunday sermon from supply-side guru and former OMB director David A. Stockman via [continue reading . . . ]
Will the bond market tank when the Fed stops buying Treasury paper in a few weeks? As reported in today’s Wall Street Journal, two of the biggest players in the fixed-income market are at polar opposites. They both can’t be right. As I told a friend today, this is why [continue reading . . . ]
As reported in today’s New York Times, convicted Florida mortgage fraudster Lee Farkas related this anecdote about doing business with his commercial banker, Catherine Kissick of Colonial Bank: “One day she was at the McDonald’s drive-in, and I asked her for a hundred — which meant a hundred million — more, [continue reading . . . ]
Is the dollar’s long run as the global reserve currency coming to an end? It is if the Chinese have anything to say about it. China owns the globe’s largest store of dollar-denominated assets outside the U.S. Understandably, it wants to diversify. The world needs an “international reserve currency that [continue reading . . . ]
Richard W. Stevenson writes in Sunday’s New York Times Week in Review section that the debate in Washington over spending, debt, deficits and entitlements amounts to the most fundamental reassessment of the size and role of government since Ronald Reagan and perhaps since Franklin Roosevelt. Here’s an excerpt: The battle [continue reading . . . ]
Canadian taxes, S&P’s warning that it might downgrade U.S. debt and Zillow’s proposed public offering were the my principal topics on Weekday on KUOW today. Earlier in the hour, Weekday host Steve Scher and Vancouver Sun political correspondent Vaughn Palmer had discussed why Canadians pay much higher prices for everday [continue reading . . . ]
Anyone who thinks health-care costs can be brought under control ought to be required to read British physician Theodore Dalrymple’s* piece in the Wall Street Journal issue dated April 16. Here’s an excerpt: The British system is now capable of absorbing infinite amounts of money with minimal benefit to the [continue reading . . . ]
Richard W. Stevenson writes in Sunday’s New York Times Week in Review section that the debate in Washington over spending, debt, deficits and entitlements amounts to the most fundamental reassessment of the size and role of government since Ronald Reagan and perhaps since Franklin Roosevelt. The battle ahead “is the [continue reading . . . ]
An old joke about banking: Borrow $1,000, the bank owns you; borrow $1 million, you own the bank. There’s more than a grain of truth to that joke. People worry that China owns the U.S. because it holds trillions of our government debt. Not so much. China has accumulated roughly [continue reading . . . ]
I wish I had a Ford dealership in the Palouse area of Eastern Washington and Idaho the next few months. Wheat prices have roughly doubled the past few months. Land prices are going up. Growers inevitably feel flush. Note these graphs from the Financial Times, April 13, 2011, Page 22 [continue reading . . . ]