The International Monetary Fund, which met this weekend, plays an important role in third world finance, bailing out countries in difficulties and act as an arbiter with private creditors. Unfortunately, it appears thereby to be doing more harm than good.

Last week’s announcement from the Office of Federal Housing Oversight that Fannie Mae had been overstating its annual profits came as no surprise to those of us who’d been tracking the derivative-happy behemoth. However, the likely denouement will play havoc with the bond markets, the housing markets and the U.S. economy.

President Vladimir Putin’s suppression of regional gubernatorial elections last week finally put to rest the hopeful theory that Russia was finally becoming a “normal Western state.” Yet the economic implications of “Putinism” remain unclear, and there is considerable confusion among international investors and Russia’s potential business partners.

Presidential candidates George W. Bush and John Kerry are agreed on very little, except on the one issue that has become the motherhood-and-apple-pie of modern U.S. politics: entrepreneurship. Both candidates seek to encourage it and offer micromanaging policies that would do so. Like most politicians’ economics, this too may be wrong.

We’re choosing a President this fall, and supposed to be thinking about the next four years. So I thought it worth looking at today’s economic trends and the candidates’ economic policies to see where, by 2008, they may have led us.

United States Gross Domestic Product increased 3.0 percent in 2003, a pretty satisfactory performance even allowing for the approximately 0.9 percent increase in population. Yet Census Bureau figures released Thursday showed that real median per capita income declined by $63, to $43,318. So where’s the growth going, and why aren’t we having more fun?

Earnings restatements by both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and Wednesday a “Wells notice” from the Securities and Exchange Commission to Freddie Mac suggest that all is not well in the world of housing finance. That may be putting it mildly.

If you’re thinking of studying computer science in college, don’t waste your time. The great tech boom of 1965-2004 is coming to an end, and it’s not going to return. On a 40 year view, the length of your future career, there will be better opportunities.

Anthony Trollope’s 1875 masterpiece “The way we live now” is an astonishingly accurate early portrayal of the peak of a speculative bubble “the Melmotte era.” It missed in only one respect: the Melmotte Era lasted only nine weeks. Our own generation’s speculative “Melmotte Era” has lasted almost a decade, but it is in the process […]

The claim by hospital chains and pharmaceutical companies that their pricing reflects the free market is pure fiction. The alternative touted by their opponents, of transferring the whole business to the government, would undoubtedly make matters worse. So what’s a poor free market economist to believe?