Martin Wolf of the Financial Times introduced me years ago to the idea that the white-shoes banks (think Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and Credit Swiss) play by different rules than you and me. They privatize gain (taking enormous bonuses when times are good) and socialize loss ( by [continue reading . . . ]
Don’t miss Mohamed El-Erian’s latest column in the Financial Times. I’ve posted a brief excerpt in the Food for Thought section.
I’m nuts about newspapers. Always have been. I still crave the real thing, newsprint. Of the four newspapers that I read every day, I find the Financial Times by far the most interesting. It is full of commentary — on markets, especially on politics and economics. I never fail to [continue reading . . . ]
Health care in general and Medicare and the Rx drug benefit in particular constitute the asteroid that threatens our financial extinction. Social Security was technically in surplus — taking in more in taxes than its outgo in benefits — until the recent economic unpleasantness. Social Security might attain surpluses again if [continue reading . . . ]
from Harvard professor Kenneth Rogoff in the Financial Times, April 5, p. 13 Even if today’s government bonds seem pristine by the standards of pre-revolutionary France, future scholars will see our tax systems as Byzantine labyrinths funnelling money to powerful interests, creating staggering inefficiencies. They will surely be incredulous to [continue reading . . . ]
China’s one-child policy portends a shrinking work force, yet China will grow old before it grows rich. Here’s the relevant material from today’s New York Times: China’s rise has depended partly on a huge spurt in the number of workers as a percentage of the population. This surge has created a cheap, [continue reading . . . ]