…Calmly observing the changing world

From the news, you might think that all governments around the world are giving out as much money as possible and everyone they offer it to is gleefully taking it. You’d be wrong. This week, even a bank decided to give back the money. Specifically, TCF Financial decided to undo the $361 million agreement that [...]

This is a recent quote from Presdient Obama. Let us play a quick game and guess the next line of the quote. This plan will require significant resources from the federal government… but while the cost of action will be great, I can assure you that the cost of inaction will be greater. For it [...]

“You have no idea how bad it was… Roosevelt had to do something.” This is the answer you are likely to get if you ask someone who lived through the Great Depression what they thought of FDR’s policies. The situation was unbearable. Things needed to change and the government responded by trying things (something… anything…) [...]

Remember when the world as we knew it was falling apart and the only thing that could possibly save us was a daring and bold plan to buy troubled assets held by financially battered corporations? Everyone seemed to agree that it was the only reasonable thing to do – no matter how much money it [...]

It seems like only yesterday that the stock market could shrug off any issue as irrelevant.  Decline of the dollar?  ”Good news for exports!” yelled the markets.  Nuclear proliferation?  ”Hah… you said Nuke-u-lar!” we all laughed.  Skyrocketing commodity prices?  ”Just another bubble” came the retort.  The Russian invasion of Georgia?  ”A momentary glitch in a [...]