Perhaps the most lasting impression of the Great Recession is that it made $1 trillion seem small. It seemed like a financial apocalypse, as the U.S. stock market lost half…
Happy New Year: Meh.
Well, it’s a brave new world for us cynics. Somehow, we all survived another year, but it wasn’t easy. It was a good year for terrorists (Paris, San Bernardino), despots…
Taper Tantrum Two
Call it Taper Tantrum Two. Two of the 12 members of the Federal Open Market Committee suggested on Thursday that it’s time to raise interest rates, causing the Dow Jones…
Yellen’s Soliloquy: To Raise or Not to Raise
To raise, or not to raise – that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The barbs and insults of outraged pundits and journalists Or to…
Economic Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is “a long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from…
How Low Can You Go?
The weather has done it again. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics last week reported annualized growth of a piddling 0.2% for the first quarter of 2015. The culprit, of…
The Markets Need Psychotherapy
“The whole idea that the stock market reflects fundamentals is, I think, wrong. It really reflects psychology. The aggregate stock market reflects psychology more than fundamentals.” Robert Shiller, Nobel Prize-winning…
Sprinkling the Fairy Dust of Illusory Riches
When the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) calls central bank market rigging “the fairy dust of illusory riches,” it’s time to pay attention. The BIS is the central banks’ central…
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…