Let’s pretend that the United States economy is a football team. The coach calls the play. The running back runs right up the middle and is thrown for a loss. …
QE RIP
So the Federal Reserve Board has made it official. This is the end of quantitative easing. It’s quits for QE. Bond buying has gone bye bye. Quantitative easing has been…
Prozac Nation
It’s all stress-free bliss these days … at least for anyone who’s not paying attention. Has someone been putting anti-depressants in the water supply? That’s one way to explain Wednesday’s…
Attention Deficit Capitalism
“Democracy would not be democracy, rule of the people, without at least a modicum of political attention and activity from its citizens.” …
Polar Vortex or Recession Redux?
The recovery that wasn’t a recovery may have come to an end, as the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that gross domestic product dropped by 1% during the first quarter…
Wishful Thinking Does Not Create Economic Recovery
This was going to be the year. Remember the predictions of 3% economic growth? More recently, the consensus was 1.2% growth for the most recent quarter. It turns out, though,…
The Economic Recovery That No One Noticed
The average recovery since the end of World War II has been 58 months. The current “recovery” has just reached that milestone. So maybe we should be celebrating. But what’s…
No Records This Month
Markets go up and markets go down, so maybe it’s not surprising that January’s stock market performance has less exuberance to it than the performance to which we’ve become accustomed.…
The Economy Is Booming – Unless You’re A Consumer
At least it sounds like good news. The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis announced that the economy grew at a rate of 2.84% during the third quarter. That’s up significantly…
The Off-On-Off Economy
The economy recently has been full of stops and starts, ups and downs, good news and bad news. Optimists will say that progress is being made, as we’ve moved beyond…