“It has been counted and counted, weighed and divided” said the writing on the wall at the Biblical feast of the doomed Belshazzar. Sounds like an economic forecast to me, in particular one for the thoroughly unpleasant 2005 that seems likely to unfold.

Fannie Mae’s accounting mishaps, the renewed protest over stock option expensing and the attempt not to count the transition costs of social security reform all emphasize one thing: Washington DC, whether or not the world capital overall, is unquestionably the world capital of Ponzi financing schemes, swindles that work for a year or two and […]

In his campaigns for President, Ross Perot used to talk about a “giant sucking sound” of U.S. manufacturing jobs moving overseas. From a Korn Ferry/New America Foundation symposium Wednesday on U.S. manufacturing’s decline, the sound can still be heard. It would appear however that the fault may lie in our own actions — thus the […]

British prime minister Tony Blair is said to be aiming Britain’s General Election, which must be held before June 2006, for May 2005, about the earliest he can reasonably hold it without attracting a storm of criticism. For the sake of his re-election, he’d better not delay it – because the British economy could be […]

My colleague Martin Walker wrote last week of the possibility that U.S. economic profligacy could have its principal adverse effect on the European Union economy, through the deflationary effect of an overvalued euro. Fun though this might be for President George W. Bush to contemplate, and attractive though it is to think of French president […]

The U.S. savings rate was a dismal 0.2 percent of Gross Domestic Product in the third quarter of 2004, and nobody but economists seemed to care. Once foreign central banks stop financing the United States’ twin trade and budget deficits, this will have to change, or crisis will ensue. Changing the ingrained U.S. spending habit […]

According to exit polls, the most important single issue to the U.S. electorate on November 2 was moral values. It thus probably wouldn’t be smart for the re-elected George W. Bush administration to indulge in a wholesale relaxation of corporate reform measures – it’s likely that committed Christians oppose business fraud as much as they […]

Election campaigns always involve sweeping under the rug a lot of long term questions, particularly economic questions. The election is now over, the rug looks pretty lumpy, and the day of reckoning has arrived, when problems that cannot be left for another four years must be addressed.

According to Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute, traders regard Fannie Mae (NYSE-FNM) stock as the best pure punt on the election, sure to benefit if Democrat John Kerry wins. Punters who try this, and are able to use Fannie Mae’s accounting, can then decide post facto Wednesday whether the punt was a speculation […]

Through a warp in the space-time continuum, there landed on my desk this morning the Bear’s Lair for Monday, November 3, 2008. It makes gloomy reading.