Institutional sophistication. Individual attention.
S&P 500 Stock Market Returns During Presidential Election Years Year Candidates Return Republican Wins Demorat Wins No Incumbent on Ballot Incumbent on Ballot 1928 Hoover vs. Smith 43.60% 43.60% 43.60% 1932 Roosevelt vs. Hoover -8.20% -8.20% -8.20% 1936 Roosevelt vs. Landon 33.90%
Rhetoric that spawns class warfare may feel cathartic, but it doesn’t help anyone. I’m concerned that it makes the less fortunate more resentful, and also causes those most capable of creating jobs to pull back. So I was surprised at the tone
We know that some jobs are never coming back to the United States. For example, simple items of clothing are made more cheaply in Guatemala and Vietnam than in the US. Most customers don’t walk into Walmart asking for “Made in the
Even if you have a great boat, it can get swamped in a storm. If you have a properly financed house, through no fault of your own, it too can get swamped in a financial storm. That is why you have a
In college we learned that the 1929 crash did not lead to the Great Depression. It was the policy mistakes in the aftermath of the crash that led to economic disaster. Surely, such mistakes would never be repeated. Such analysis does not
For the sake of $700 billion that might never have been spent and might well have turned a profit for the federal government, the Congress destroyed over $1 trillion of private wealth as the stock market plunged yesterday. More importantly, they voted
There is plenty of blame to go around for the financial panic that is occurring on Wall Street. It is worth understanding because financial panics can have severe economic consequences for all Americans. There are a number of generalized causes for what
It is commendable that senior government officials candidly acknowledged the major role of flawed government policies in spawning today’s housing crisis. Treasury Secretary Paulson didn’t try to shift all of the blame elsewhere. Instead, he said with respect to the government rescue
My father ran for governor in 1973 on a platform of honesty in government, and New Jersey state government was pretty much scandal-free during his eight years in office. What accounts for the differences between now and then? I can point to
The sign at Princeton Junction, one of New Jersey’s biggest train stations, says it all: “Attention, this is a minimal service Amtrak location.” Even though we are the most densely populated state in the nation, Amtrak does its best to ignore us