Now... about that ‘recovery’... It’s true that there are some signs of “stabilization.” The unemployment rate is not getting badder as fast as it was a few months ago. And house prices seem to have stopped falling - for the moment. It’s also true that the economy managed to register positive ‘growth’ ...read more

So, who gets to play Lehmans in this comedic repeat...? Isn’t Greece marvellous? Paying income tax, or any kind of tax it would seem, has been entirely optional. Which should have powered its economy like 1960s’ Hong Kong. But public spending, however, accounts for 40% of GDP. So who financed that spending if ...read more

One of the constant themes of modern socialism (and Keynesianism) is the belief that we can create prosperity through government spending on roads. Mind you, roads can help an economy if they are located in places where they can aid commerce by making it possible for relatively cheap transportation that ...read more

Last year's stock market rally was impressive. But what if it was merely a case of investors taking on more risk, having been encouraged by low interest rates and all the liquidity sloshing around in the stock market, taking it higher? How would that be substantially different from banks taking ...read more

L: So, Ben Bernanke just got named ”Person of the Year” by Time magazine. I know you must have some thoughts in response to this auspicious event? Doug: I just don’t know where they find these people... On the other hand, Slime magazine has always said that those named Person of ...read more

Last week, new research from Edward Pinto, a former chief credit officer for Fannie Mae and a housing expert, began to penetrate the media fog. Pinto has documented that as far back as 1993, Fannie and Freddie were buying risky subprime and Alt-A loans, but routinely misrepresenting them as prime. Let ...read more

You can usually count on Time magazine to get things backwards, and they missed in a big way with their selection of Ben Bernanke as “Person of the Year” for 2009. Bankster Ben was wrong, wrong, and wrong again in his Federal Reserve policies and prognostications, with the result being ...read more

America is transforming itself, without forethought, debate, or pause, into a command economy. A command economy is a top-down, state-controlled economy directed by planners and bureaucrats, boards and bodies, administrators and authorities. A command economy is not characterized by mutuality of interest and agreement between parties. It relies on edict. ...read more

The U.S. government sells debt in dollars. It also prints dollars. That means it can print new dollars to pay off its debt. It needn't default, i.e. be unable to find currency to pay its creditors. If it were issuing debt in a foreign currency, say Yuan, then it would ...read more

Okay, so President Obama didn't run for office to help out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street - or so he said on CBS's "60 Minutes" show Sunday night. But maybe it didn't seem like such a bad idea once the election was over. Anyway, the net ...read more