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 […]

After an unexpected decline in the country’s third quarter GDP, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called an early election last week, while postponing implementation of a sales tax rise into 2017. The global media were generally laudatory, explaining how he could extend his program of indeterminate “reform” while stimulating the economy further by means of […]

One of the courses I did at business school was “Analysis of Financial Reports” where we learned to deconstruct all the scam accounts that had proliferated in the late 1960s boom – most of which companies, undone by negative cash flow, went bust after 1970. We were informed by the professor that the Financial Accounting […]

Japan caused a euphoric rise in global stock markets last week by raising the cap on its “quantitative easing” purchases of government bonds to 80 trillion yen a year ($720 billion, some 14% of Japan’s GDP.) Yet even with the huge “stimulus” and the declining yen to which it has led, Japan can still barely […]

The average earnings of U.S. men with only a high school diploma between 25 and 34 have fallen 25% since 1979, according to Census Bureau data. Admittedly women in the same category have done better – but their earnings have still fallen. Given that GDP per capita has risen 73% in real terms since 1979 […]

All bubbles burst eventually. Google has become a bigger political donor that Goldman Sachs. The tech sector is no longer the naïve capitalist entity that was startled by the Microsoft antitrust lawsuit in 1998. Venture capital money has flowed profusely into it for half a decade and valuations have reached to the sky. Some of […]

Bolivian President Evo Morales last weekend won re-election by a smashing margin. His eight-year rule has weakened Bolivian property rights, indulged in frequent nationalizations and demonized capitalism. Yet it has also produced Bolivia’s best growth rates in several decades, far better than the orthodox and admirable policies pursued in 1985-2003. Thus Morales’ policy of making […]

The IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook, in an unholy alliance with Larry Summers, claimed this week that a surge in publicly funded infrastructure spending would provide an increase in economic output with no downside risk. The truth is almost precisely the opposite: by indulging in ill-thought-out and boondoggle-filled public infrastructure spending, governments in rich countries […]

The latest estimate by the Congressional Budget Office of the federal deficit in the year to last Tuesday was $506 billion. The deficit is expected to improve marginally this year, then jump back above $500 billion next year and worsen steadily for the next decade and thereafter. Given that we are five years into an […]