Britain’s Labour Party has now committed to re-nationalizing many of the utilities that were privatized to such fanfare under Lady Thatcher in the 1980s. Reluctantly, we should admit that in certain respects, the Labour Party has a point; monopolies owned by private equity groups, as have appeared in the water industry, offer no accountability to […]

Rarely can two economists of such eminence have been made to look foolish so quickly. In 2015, Robert J. Gordon wrote a book proclaiming that the lousy productivity growth that we had seen in recent years was the best we could expect, and in January 2016 Paul Krugman reviewed it enthusiastically in the New York […]

According to a Fed report this week, U.S. consumer credit increased $28 billion in November, the largest rise in 16 years, with credit card debt rising at annual rate of 13.3%. This is of course a sign of consumer confidence, another sign that President Trump’s administration has revolutionized the U.S. economic outlook. However, it is […]

2018 looks to be a jolly year; it has the potential for no less than four kinds of financial disaster: a major “fringe market” crash in crypto-currencies with credit implications, a stock market crash of the old-fashioned kind, a massive bond market crash as yields return to reality and a recession, which Trump-haters no doubt […]

Governments and large institutions are becoming increasingly negative on the crypto-currency markets, as they grow to significance within the overall world economy. Yet crypto-currencies are only the tip of the iceberg. Even as modern communications technology has enabled governments to snoop, pry and punish with unprecedented efficiency, so it has brought new means for individuals […]