The Kyoto Protocol on climate change based its targets for 2010 on 1990 pollution levels, a year chosen so that Europe need spend little money on environmental cleanup, since 1990 was the last full year of emissions by East Germany and the former Comecon countries.

One of the features that will make the second “dip” in this recession much nastier than the first will be a tsunami of consumer bankruptcy such as we have not previously seen, which will alter the U.S. economic landscape for a long time to come.

Clearly, the International Monetary Fund’s $30 billion bailout of Brazil will cost Western taxpayers money. The only question is whether it will do more harm than good to Brazil itself.

The endless repetition of bearish predictions for the U.S. and world economies grows monotonous, but I thought it worth recapitulating some of the prognostications made by UPI Chief Economics Correspondent Ian Campbell and me over the last two years, to demonstrate that our track record has been quite good, and then answer the obvious question: […]

Even in the outbreak of pessimism about the economy last week, few have touched on the effect of a prolonged bear market recession on employment patterns. Since this is a matter of huge importance to most of us, particularly young people entering the workforce and seeking a career path, I thought it worthwhile, starting from […]

While the process by which the stock market returns from bubble levels to an appropriate valuation of 5,000 on the Dow Jones Industrial Index or 600 on the S&P 500 Index is inexpressibly painful, once we have got there, we will enjoy certain pleasures that we haven’t had for many years. In these financially unhappy […]

We’re still probably at least a year from the stock market bottom, but as the market continues to drop towards what I believe to be its fair value of around 5,000 on the Dow Jones Industrial Index and 600 on the S&P 500 Index, it’s worth thinking about what should be done to get the […]

It sounds like a mathematical tongue twister, yet it is a vital question to determine where the economy and stock market are going: Do we live in an economy whose growth is primarily exponential, or primarily asymptotic?

Investors who have lost their shirts recently in WorldCom, Global Crossing and Enron can, if they want to look for fundamental causes, blame the unhappy decision taken by the Founding Fathers 226 years on Thursday.

The NASDAQ index was down 72 percent from its March 2000 high at Friday’s close. Conversely, the Dow Jones Industrial Index was down only 21 percent from its high of January 2000,while the Russell 2000 Index, of smaller capitalization stocks was down 29 percent. What’s happening, why, and what does it portend?