Weak Dollars, Weak Presidencies
The late Hall of Fame football coach Bill Walsh used to say that the quarterback’s footwork often told the tale of the games. If Walsh lacked access to the scoreboard, ...
Misguided Recession Talk
You can’t open a newspaper these days without reading a recession prediction. Depending on the commentator, the U.S. economy is already in recession, or will surely fall into recession in ...
Time to Talk Up the Dollar
While stock markets continue to gyrate amidst domestic and world uncertainty, the dollar’s fall has become an even more pressing issue. Rate hikes initiated in 2004 didn’t arrest its downdraft, ...
Charlie Rangel’s Mixed-Bag Tax Plan
Representative Charles Rangel (D, N.Y.) has drafted legislation that would reduce the corporate income-tax rate from 35 to 30 percent and abolish the alternative minimum tax (AMT). Unfortunately, the tax ...
What Greenspan Says Isn’t What Say Said
Since the release of The Age of Turbulence, former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan has been variously praised and criticized for the views he has expressed on taxes, interest rates, ...
Didn’t the Rich Help Make America Great, Too?
In a recent campaign speech, Sen. Hillary Clinton said, “It is not rich people who made America great, it is hardworking Americans.” If you are rich, or know someone who ...
Yuan Interference Is a No-No
Twenty-two years ago the top treasury officials of the G5 countries met at New York’s Plaza Hotel to realign the major currencies amidst worries, particularly at home, that weak foreign ...
Fed Ease Means Dollar Strength
The Federal Reserve’s change in bias last week toward cutting the federal funds rate, along with its half-point cut in the discount rate, offers an opportunity to test the widely ...
French Lessons for the Dems
While campaigning for president last spring, France’s Nicolas Sarkozy took his message to England. He did so because with over 300,000 French ex-pats working in London, the English city in ...
Wanna Raise Taxes on the Rich?
In an excellent column featuring just a few of the many silly predictions made by mainstream economic thinkers of days past, Forbes’s Rich Karlgaard noted the back-cover description of MIT ...