The U.S. public is unprecedentedly pessimistic about the prospects going into 2013, with 56% “fearful” against 40% “hopeful” according to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll. When one looks at the world’s markets, and at the policies that have been almost universal since the crash of 2008, one can see the rationale for their pessimism. […]

To keep the spirit of Christmas usefully at bay, and reinforce my proudly-held Grinch-like reputation, I will this week examine the little-known discipline of Sado-economics, the use of economic policy to punish the disfavored. It is a policy tool used more than you might think, and it sometimes has some virtue, since it reverses the […]

As Ben Bernanke unveils yet another attempt to print enough money to restart the moribund U.S. economy, its true #1 need becomes increasingly clear. It’s not lower tax, and only indirectly lower government spending and a better education system. In an era when global competition from middle-income and low-income countries has intensified beyond all historical […]

We learned last week that bad debts on U.S. student loans now exceeded those on all credit card debt. Yet politicians, educators and economists continue to advise American youth to aim for a college degree, on theory that it represents a job for life. However according to the Economic Policy Institute the unemployment rate for […]

“Sexual Intercourse Began/In Nineteen Sixty Three/Which was rather late for me/Between the end of the “Chatterley” ban/And the Beatles’ first LP” wrote the British poet Philip Larkin in his poem “Annus Mirabilis.” Those lines have always been popular, since they seem to express a change in the global zeitgeist that happened around that year. But […]