The United States is in the third and fatal stage of a great country’s life-cycle – the political stage. In this stage, money and power migrate from the financial community to the political community. The politicians get away with taking trillions out of the productive economy and spending them on ...read more

In science and technology, knowledge builds up as people make new mistakes: Technology may, like digits in an actuarial table, improve and compound, accumulating gradually over time. But in love, finance, and the rest of life, people make the same old mistakes, over and over again. As soon as the ...read more

No history recalls what the 5,000 or so Normans must have felt when they saw the English coastline in 1066, nor what they had for breakfast, or how their wives and daughters missed them at home on that day. Nor does it tell us how the peasants in Toncarville coaxed ...read more

Recently we here in the U.S. celebrated the 233rd Anniversary of our Independence Day.  It is, as I hope you remember from your history lessons, the day upon which Congress approved the Declaration of Independence. The legal separation from England, however, actually occurred on July 2, two days earlier. This ...read more

As a menthol smoker, nothing got me more upset than that infuriating passage in the recent tobacco bill that explicitly gives the FDA authority to ban menthol. It's so clear what's going on, I can't stand it. I think Linda got most of it right the other day. This bill is ...read more

There I was, surrounded by thousands of barrels of Kentucky’s finest -- seemingly, enough bourbon to get every of-age taxpayer in the U.S. a little tipsy. By any stretch of the imagination, this place was paradise. Rolling hills as far as you could see and the air was thick with ...read more

Societies that use tax law as a way to achieve political or social goals are societies based on envy and resentment. That is, how a nation treats taxes tells you something of the character of a nation. So when you hear anyone say that the level of taxation in a country ...read more

In the newspapers there is much discussion of what General Motors should do. This discussion has gone on for many years. Until now, it was a conversation carried on by serious analysts and auto industry experts. They all said the same thing: GM needed to clear out its management, dump ...read more

Those of us bellying up to the Whiskey Bar really prefer to discuss economic matters, but politics are impinging ever more heavily on the exciting pastime of making money through analysis, seeing patterns, and forecasting behavior and business trends, whether we believe in fundamentals, technical analysis, or our own private ...read more

People of good intentions and progressive predilection are scratching their heads wondering just how President Barack Obama managed to turn himself into George W. Bush Lite with sugar-on-top just twelve weeks after that fateful walk down the US Capitol's east stairway to the waiting helicopter. I'm hardly the first observer ...read more