Hello faithful BJM readers,
I just wanted to send over an apology if the site has been behaving a little strangely these past few days. We had a perfect storm of several events: Feedburner went down for about 12 hours (which disrupted RSS and email distribution), right about the time we decided to tinker behind-the-scenes […]
We are now sixteen months into our bear market, and fourteen months into our recession.
And if we give in to our worst impulses, we can lengthen both well beyond their normal, allotted lifespan.
I’m referring to the dangerous turn towards protectionism and the open hostility to free trade.
It crops up in several manifestations.
During last year’s campaign, […]
Time was, I enjoyed starting the day with freshly brewed coffee and the morning newspaper.
That was when there was a balanced mix of good and bad news. Nowadays, the mix is bad….and worse.
Which brings us to the dreary little item that caught my eye the other morning, by AP reporter Christopher Leonard “Bank Fees […]
So far, in parts I and II, we’ve talked about downsizing of both office space and homes as a rational response to the economic convulsions resulting from the recession.
So, why stop there?
Why not downsize the mega-states of California and New York while we’re at it?
This trend was well underway even before the onset of the […]
What do we do now with all the McMansions we bought during the real estate bubble?
The real estate lobby helped to bring on this glut through their relentless legislative logrolling.
Nowhere else will you see a household consumption expenditure tricked out to such wretched excess.
The surge in prices before 2005 was fueled by cheap money engineered […]
Free market capitalism has gotten a bad rap from famed economist Joseph Schumpeter’s immortal use of the phrase..”creative destruction”.
The listener tends to hear mostly the destruction part better than the important modifier—creative.
You need to absorb the complete dynamic. It’s hard to feel sorry for typewriter manufacturers who have gone out of business, when you […]
Here we go again.
In our collective zeal to lighten the burden on residential mortgage holders, we risk the hazard of doing permanent damage for future borrowers.
First, some background.
We allow banks to charge higher rates on credit card debt, because it is unsecured. The banks know that a large contingent of borrowers will never repay, […]
Be careful of what you wish for…you may just get it.
The so-called stimulus bill has passed. All three of them.
It started with the TARP
Whose dimensions were scribbled out on the back of an envelope by for the former Treasury Secretary, as a percentage of GDP.
And the pols and the public fell for it. […]
