from Gene Epstein’s departing column at Barron’s- Keep Asking the Big Questions: Compared to what? At what cost? Who pays? And, what happens next? It’s the responsibility of economists to ask and answer questions like these—and the job of economics
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From Thomas Donlan At Barron’s, Trump’s CEOs: In the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time (I like the title in the print edition better, There’s No Profit in Politics) Business executives as a group rarely show the kind of sophistication that the
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How the Democrats Lost the White Working Class– Book review of White Working Class by Joan Williams- reviewed by Joe Queenan in Barron’s: “The working class…has been asked to swallow a lot of economic pain, while elites have focused on
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from Barron’s and Randall Forsyth, Is It Time to Return to Active Stock-Picking? What’s needed, say some outspoken active investors, is a return to old-fashioned Houseman–Smith Barney securities selection, rather than the tide of passive investing washing over the financial
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from Thomas Donlan at Barron’s, What Went Wrong in Kansas Americans want government like they want services generally: “faster, better, and cheaper.” But economists know there’s a problem: The optimistic ones say, “Pick any two”; the pessimists say, “Choose one.”
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from Thomas Donlan at Barron’s, Ignorance is Not Bliss German Chancellor Angela Merkel has had the chance to take Trump’s measure in the recent NATO and G-7 meetings, and her reading was not good. She reported this to her citizens: “The
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from Thomas Donlan at Barron’s, Ignorance is Not Bliss Our trade deficit—the amount that imports exceed exports—with Germany last year was about $65 billion, or some 13% of the U.S. total 2016 trade deficit. It’s big because Germany is a big
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from Thomas Donlan at Barron’s, Ignorance is Not Bliss “Tech writer Bruce Sterling commented in 2007 that using Twitter for ‘literate communication’ is ‘about as likely as firing up a CB radio and hearing some guy recite The Iliad.’ The
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From Barron’s Stephanie Pomboy: A Grim Outlook for the Economy, Stocks by Leslie Norton In the past rates that were too high were the trigger (for a financial crisis). Not this time. No. 1, we have basically bankrupted corporate and state and
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From Barron’s Stephanie Pomboy: A Grim Outlook for the Economy, Stocks by Leslie Norton What’s caused this growth in inventories? It isn’t because companies ramped up production. Companies aren’t using cheap capital to increase production and capital expenditures, but are lavishing money
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From Barron’s Stephanie Pomboy: A Grim Outlook for the Economy, Stocks by Leslie Norton The statistics bear this out. Over the last four years, U.S. nominal GDP growth has gone from 4.3% to 4.1% to 3% to 2.4%. The deflator, the inflation
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From Barron’s Stephanie Pomboy: A Grim Outlook for the Economy, Stocks by Leslie Norton Post-crisis, the consumer has clearly pulled back. How many months did we have disappointing retail sales numbers that no one could explain? They’d say it’s too
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from Martin Conrad at Barron’s; Finding the Path to Enrichment Smith argued that man was an economic animal who, by his bargaining and exchanging in the marketplace, could benefit from the diverse talents and genius of all his fellow men.
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From Barron’s and Thomas Donlan, Trading Promises About the Trans-Pacific Partnership-Politicians are the threat to rising incomes and global prosperity. The AFL-CIO and much of the Democratic Party at large (though thankfully not the White House) are working their way
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From Barron’s, Chinese Puzzle by Thomas Donlan: Worldly wise investors and sophisticated geopoliticians sometimes forget that Chinese markets reflect the power of the country’s government more than its economy. The price of stocks in state-owned and state-funded corporations has too
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from Barron’s The Exaggerated Income Gap by Gary Byrne and Ken Glozer excerpt: Every society has an income gap. The question has always been about its size and momentum. The most commonly used statistical measure of income inequality, the Gini
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from Barron’s, The Road to Ruin by Thomas Donlan excerpts: The U.S. learned nothing from the financial crisis. The biggest problem perceived today in the Obama administration is that the rate of home ownership is at the lowest level since
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