While oil prices have been volatile in 2014, stock prices haven’t. The U.S. stock market has continued the gradual upward move it began in 2009, while the VIX volatility index peaked very briefly in October at 31, far below the level of almost 90 touched in 2008. Politics has been turbulent, and the oil price […]

In 2012, Robert Gordon postulated the thesis that innovation was slowing to a halt, so that we should not expect to continue getting the productivity gains we had enjoyed in the 19th and 20th centuries. He propounded four “headwinds” that were causing this: demographics, education, debt and inequality. At the time he wrote, this column […]

The market rejoiced on December 5 when the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 300,000 new U.S. jobs had been created. The general consensus is that the 3.9% third quarter U.S. GDP growth is the harbinger of a brighter trend – the Economist’s team of forecasters has U.S. growth at 3% in 2015, up from […]

The OPEC meeting at Thanksgiving failed to agree on any oil production cuts, sending oil prices down an immediate $5 per barrel. Their action made it clear that, for the first time since 1972, there is no cartel able to control the oil market. At first sight, that looks like excellent news for America’s consumers, […]

The U.S. economy enjoyed an especially attractive 1990s, with middle-class wages even increasing substantially, because of the Peace Dividend that followed the Cold War’s ending. Regrettably at present the U.S. and its allies appear to be facing a combination of threats combining the worst of the 1980s with the worst of the 2000s. In that […]