Successive meetings on oil at the American Enterprise Institute Wednesday and on the world’s monetary system at the Cato Institute Thursday brought the current problems with the world economy sharply into focus. There’s far too much money currently sloshing around the world, and not nearly enough oil. The combination of the two will make for […]

Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan referred this week to “froth” in the U.S. housing market; others have debated whether it is a “bubble” at least on the two coasts. Whether froth or bubble, the secular rise in house prices over the last 5 years has made long term changes in American life, most of them for […]

In his campaigns for President, Ross Perot used to talk about a “giant sucking sound” of U.S. manufacturing jobs moving overseas. From a Korn Ferry/New America Foundation symposium Wednesday on U.S. manufacturing’s decline, the sound can still be heard. It would appear however that the fault may lie in our own actions — thus the […]

Next Monday, March 10, is three years from the peak in the U.S. stock market, March 10, 2000, when the Nasdaq composite index closed at 5,048.62. In bear market terms, this is a very long time. Three years from the September 1929 peak, the stock market had already touched its nadir, in June 1932 (at […]

Even in the outbreak of pessimism about the economy last week, few have touched on the effect of a prolonged bear market recession on employment patterns. Since this is a matter of huge importance to most of us, particularly young people entering the workforce and seeking a career path, I thought it worthwhile, starting from […]

William Hogarth’s 1747 classic “The Industrious Apprentice and the Idle Apprentice” may be about to demonstrate its continued pedagogical strength in the international economy, where Japan and the United States have enjoyed contrasting fates for a decade.

The economic news in the last several weeks has been almost uniformly positive. The commentary from our competitors has been even more so, tending to dismiss as laughable the possibility that the recovery may be only temporary, that a “double dip” recession may occur. Consequently one is driven to ask: Are we in a bear […]

My esteemed colleague at United Press International, Ian Campbell, wrote in a recent “GlobalView” column that he believed oil prices would trend down over the next several months, dropping to about $17 a barrel.

While I was writing about the Asian economy last week, I was struck by one fact: The only country of the 10 surveyed whose economy and stockmarket have performed well in the last few months is Malaysia, defier of the IMF, the currency markets and conventional globalist economic wisdom. Moreover, as reported by United Press […]

As the 24 United States airmen patiently await their release from Chinese custody, there is another hostage that is going to vault up the world’s priority list if U.S.-China relations continue to deteriorate: the $350 billion of foreign investment in China.