Working Life

    I’ve maintained for a long time that the civil fines levied against Goldman Sachs ($550 million) and J.P. Morgan ($153 million) for their roles in the financial crisis scam amounted to peanuts–costs that will be ultimately passed on to consumers and shareholders. If a financial executive could aid and abet a massive fraud and […]

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   Every day, there is a new joke about the economy–though, the joke is a cruel one on most normal people and unfortunately, the transcribers of the news (nee "journalists") don’t get the jokes largely because they are (a) really dumb and/or (b) don’t really care and/or (c) are so wrapped up in being "serious" […]

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   Happy Days are here again, folks–uh, for the corporate bottom line. The people: not so much. Profits are up big time: While the U.S. economy staggers through one of its slowest recoveries since the Great Depression, American companies are poised to report strong earnings for the second quarter—exposing a dichotomy between corporate performance and […]

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   Math is a pretty simple thing–except if you are an elected member of Congress engaging in misdirection, blaming the wrong people and a healthy dose of cognitive dissonance (which requires that you reconcile conflicting realities by blaming, justifying or denying the truth). Which brings us to: why do we have deficits? Well, at least […]

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This is just silly–but, unfortunately, not entirely surprising. Chuck Schumer has grabbed on to the idiotic idea of rewarding corporate America for tax dodging and stashing billions of dollars overseas. And the senior Senator is doing a huge flip-flop–one that is bad for the country. We’re talking about one of the worst ideas ever thought […]

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   I really think the people who talk about "recovery" live in a world not inhabited by most Americans: The economic recovery that started in mid-2009 is losing steam. The manufacturing sector, once the driver of the recovery, stumbled in May as companies cut back on production and hiring. A persistent slowdown in hiring is […]

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   I mean, this is pretty funny–except it’s pathetic, bizarre and, ultimately, gives all of us a great window on the "they haven’t learned anything" culture on Wall Street and the business world in general. Jamie Dimon, CEO of J.P. Morgan (and the Ten of Hearts in the 52 deck-of cards Audacity of Greed), is […]

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   If you agree with this, from a Financial Times columnist, we are in a bad place: The Fed is divided on how far the risk of higher inflation argues for caution in maintaining, let alone increasing, the monetary stimulus provided by very low short-term interest rates and quantitative easing. Markets had come to assume […]

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    This is so absurd it made be burst out laughing in the midst of a sip of coffee this morning–and fittingly the coffee splashed over the idiotic front-page article in The New York Times (yes, I still read the actual paper version) that hails the newest words from the mountaintop, wisdom passed down from […]

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    The bad news will keep pulverizing your grey cells: housing prices sliding, stock markets weak, bond yields in the toilet, the dollar down (which I actually have argued is a good thing)…     But, do not make the mistake of thinking that means that companies are lacking for money. Nope. Times are […]

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