The Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing of Eastman Kodak, founded in 1892, highlights the fact that you just don’t see many of the titans of 19th century commerce around any more. Corporate lifespans in general are getting much shorter. It goes along with the rest of life – you can’t get an appliance these days that […]

The controversy over Mitt Romney’s work at Bain Capital has led me to realize that private equity is a poorly understood business, whose economic effects have not yet been fully explored and are in many respects pernicious. This is not a knock on Romney, who in my view would be a mediocre candidate for President […]

It now seems certain that the Scottish people will have the opportunity of voting on an independence referendum, at latest in 2014 and probably sooner, with David Cameron’s government and Scottish first minister (and Scottish National Party leader) Alex Salmond disagreeing mostly on the referendum’s timing. It’s thus worth looking at the prospects for an […]

The Iowa caucuses appear to have done their usual job – dooming the Republican ticket in next November’s election. So I thought it worth looking at what another four years of President Obama might bring, and how deep might be the hole the U.S. will have to dig out of in 2017. “Be assured, my […]

According to the Mayan calendar, the Great Cycle will end on December 21, 2012, at which point the current Fourth World founded on August 11, 3114 BC will come to an end, leading us into a Fifth World of greater enlightenment. Economically, this is beginning to seem like a remarkably accurate prediction. There are a […]