After a decade of ultra-low interest rates, we have become used to ultra-high asset prices – in big city real estate, stocks, bonds, tech start-ups, art and collectibles, and pretty well everything else you can think of. It is too depressing to think of the damage that will be done by the inevitable bursting of […]

By a vote of 298 to 56 on September 4 and a second similar vote on September 9, the House of Commons voted to approve an election on October 15, yet because of a supermajority provision unknown to the British constitution, Parliament was not dissolved. A Parliament you cannot dissolve is no longer a democratic […]

We seem doomed to another round of monetary “stimulus” from the Fed and the European Central Bank, at a time when real interest rates are already substantially negative. This has caused crazy leverage all over the global economy, with such madness as Boeing (NYSE:BA) in a highly cyclical business, operating entirely without stockholders’ equity. Very […]

Former prime ministers Tony Blair and John Major, of opposite British political parties, have united in wishing to nullify the 2016 referendum on leaving the European Union. This well illustrates the unpleasant tendency for politicians to find commonality and unity in thwarting the wishes of their electorates. Within individual countries, the strength of this tendency […]

President Donald Trump has instituted an entirely new type of diplomacy with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il, and it seems to have worked, at least in the short-term. By building a personal relationship with “bad guys” Trump has avoided the poisonous Bush-era chemistry whereby Western “Axis of Evil” insults drove them ever further into destructive […]