…Calmly observing the changing world

One of the realities of life is that debt skews a relationship.  Mostly because the lender wants his money back, and assurances of repayment only work for so long. And if the lender is Germany and the debtor is Greece, the time has come for something even more drastic in Germany’s eyes.  Jokes about island [...]

Property rights may be under assault in the United States, but we would do well to remember that there are some places in the world where they don’t even exist.  One of those places is China. You know, the kind of place where the workers of the world unite only to find out that somehow [...]

Everyone knows that times are tough, and also that the banks have been on very shaky ground.  If you were a bank, you’d probably be pretty worried. And the banks know better than everyone else just how bad off they are.  Such a bank might think long and hard about just how to protect itself and come [...]

The whole financial news community is eager, if sometimes cautious, to call a top in gold.  ”The bubble is bursting!”, they long to say.  Nevermind that these are the same people who thought gold was overpriced at $400. What is that gold going to do for you anyway? Just listen to Charles L. Sizemore complain: [...]

When you are a small nation in the Alps and the currency of the countries around you is – how shall we say – in jeopardy, you might think you’d take some pride in your homeland.  You might think they’d pat themselves on the back for staying out of the Eurozone, and successfully forging their [...]

As the world develops a pleasant Libyan narrative that it hopes is true, fissures occasionally appear in the story.  Reality has a way of curbing our enthusiasm like that.  An interesting bit of reality caught my eye today: According to Baja, Qaddafi loyalists in Sirte have two options: “To speed up the negotiations process and [...]

Back, in April, Treasury Secretary Geithner proclaimed that the debt of the United States would never be downgraded and that there was “no risk” of such an event.  As just about everyone knows by now, S&P downgraded the US on Friday.  Now that it’s occurred, Geithner is claiming that it doesn’t matter anyway. But it’s [...]

In a world full of constant and seemingly endless information, we may take comfort in reminding ourselves that we don’t have to follow it all.  Not just because most of it isn’t important, but also because a lot of it isn’t true anyway. Most recently, the media has droned on about how the US will [...]

Stephen Stanley had an interesting thought.  What makes this surprising is that he is an economist, so, no matter interesting it might seem, we can be pretty sure that it doesn’t make as much sense. He wonders, that since Keynesian theories have so completely failed in the last few years, that maybe some good will [...]

On the whole, May was a pretty brutal month.  The stock market is aimless, but the real action has been elsewhere: protests, extreme weather, currency worries, sovereign debt.  There was a lighter side to the news this month, but you really had to dig deep: Exploding Chinese Watermelons Sure, you’ve heard about lead paint on [...]