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 . . . ]
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 . . . ]
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 . . . ]