The 4 Percent Solution
The current economic debate in Washington has focused on how to constrain the federal debt through fiscal policy — that is, finding the right level of spending and taxes. But ...
Does Obama Take Health Costs Seriously?
Revelations of an $80 billion bargain between the White House and PhRMA (Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America) are upsetting many Democrats. “We were never part of that deal,” said ...
The Pick of Brown’S Litter
Although investing is a subtle and complicated endeavor, everyone can benefit from a simple set of rules and principles. One of my favorite portfolio managers, Thomas K. Brown, chief executive ...
Random Observations
Heard the one about the monkey and the typewriter?
“If one puts an infinite number of monkeys in front of (strongly built) typewriters and lets them clap away, there is a ...
Reagan Whipped Inflation
One of the most enduring achievements of the late Ronald Reagan “stands all but overlooked,” my colleague Robert J. Samuelson wrote in the Washington Post last week. Reagan whipped inflation.
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The Schlangian Way
“I happen to love Cleveland,” says Elliott Schlang as we sip our drinks in the dark and stylish bar of the Jefferson Hotel, which, to my parochial Northeast Corridor mind, ...
A Boomer Portfolio
Baby boomers, as all of us born between 1946 and 1964 know very well, constitute the most important generation of the most important country on the most important planet in ...
Mr. Market’S Moods
The stock market has been suffering, like the rest of us, from the terrible news out of Iraq, but it’s also suffering from the good news out of the U.S. ...
Pulling Out a Thornburg
Five or six years ago, a friend I have known since high school — let’s call him R. — rhapsodized about a money manager who lived in, of all places, ...
Reit It and Weep?
Rising interest rates have meant falling stock prices for real estate investment trusts, or REITs (pronounced “reetz”), which are companies that own portfolios of property or, in a few cases, ...