Working Life

   Some momentum on opening up the Fed to more scrutiny, via The Wall Street Journal: Rep. Ron Paul said he has a commitment from the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank, to advance the Texas Republican’s legislation opening the Federal Reserve to broader federal audits. In an interview Friday, Mr. Paul […]

Read the full story

   I get that people want to be optimistic. I am the eternal optimist–I still believe we can change the world to be a better place. But, I am repeatedly astounded at the willingness of people to magnify and overstate the "green shoots" people want to find in the economy. We’ve got a 16-17 percent […]

Read the full story

   There has been a lot of handwringing about the long-term debt forecasted by the Administration (a quick observation, in case there is confusion: the fiscal deficit is the annual gap between what comes into the government and what is paid out; the country’s debt is the accumulated gaps from the annual deficits). For example: […]

Read the full story

   The Change To Win Investment Group is calling for the removal of the CEO of Whole Foods John Mackey. The reason, in part: Following the publication of Mr. Mackey’s op-ed piece opposing President Obama’s health care reform proposal on August 16, 2009, Whole Foods customers have reacted with outrage: at least 26,000 have now […]

Read the full story

Political scientists and historians from Rush Limbaugh to Sean Hannity to Lyndon LaRouche to that woman with short brown hair who, I deduce, must be a scholar of German history, are comparing Obama to Hitler and his likening his health care plan to Nazism. Liberal bullies and freedom of speech haters like Barney Frank are […]

Read the full story

People are missing the point about the reappointment of Ben Bernanke to head the Federal Reserve Board. Appoint him or not, choose a Republican or a Democrat or not–until we decide to change the way we see the role of the Federal Reserve Board, and how the economy is structured, the power over our lives […]

Read the full story

   This guy–Allan H. Meltzer, a political economist at Carnegie Mellon University–is seriously delusional: Mr. Meltzer says the risk lies not in pulling back too soon but dithering too long. And he would scrap the stimulus program immediately and replace it with cuts in marginal tax rates for individuals and businesses. "It’s certainly not a […]

Read the full story

   I’m going to be on CNBC today at 1 p.m. to discuss this article in today’s NYTimes: The rich, as a group, are no longer getting richer. Over the last two years, they have become poorer. And many may not return to their old levels of wealth and income anytime soon. For every investment […]

Read the full story

   As is pretty common when it comes to the traditional media and the political insiders talking about the Federal Reserve Board, there is way too much deference given the Fed. Today, The New York Times has a story raising the question about whether Ben Bernanke should be reappointed as the Fed chair: In Washington […]

Read the full story

   Yesterday, I participated in a debate on CNBC about whether unions helped the "middle class". The most comical and childish comment came from the fellow from the Cato Institute who called unions a “leukemia” on American society. I thought of this poor fellow this morning when I read this in The Wall Street Journal: […]

Read the full story