The powers of the Presidency may wane as the President becomes more and more of a lame duck, but in the last year of his Presidency even the most unpopular and powerless President has one ability remaining: he can booby-trap the economy for his successor. In American history, there are a number of examples of […]

It is a well known mathematical axiom that stock markets and other markets are “persistent” – in other words, trends in those markets continue for longer than they would if price movements were truly random. However it has become clear in recent months that trader psychology is even more “persistent” than the markets themselves. Thus […]

It is now clear that the credit crunch was not due simply to bull market over-optimism, but resulted very largely from the failures of a number of the financial models that have been a staple of the last generation. As the crunch spreads its malign tentacles ever wider into every corner of global economic life, […]

It was revealed Thursday that the George W. Bush administration intends to present a budget showing deficits of $400 billion for each of the fiscal years to October 2008 and October 2009, at a time we are close to an economic peak. Given a normal recession, that means the next “trough” deficit will probably be […]