I’ve just finished Taylor Branch’s book The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with The President. Branch, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the King Years Trilogy, finished the book in 2009. It contains 667 pages of intimate details taken from seventy-nine secret,...
Economics
Can Anyone See What China is Really Doing? Only If You Look.
This post is not about any specific Chinese or American companies or entities, all of which I assume are filled with people of good will who genuinely wish the best for each other. Rather, it is about two completely different and possibly irreconcilable models for...
Tucker Carlson Ignites Debate on How to Strengthen Families
To start the New Year, Tucker Carlson led off his show on January 2nd with a fifteen minute monologue that sent other pundits of all political stripes scurrying to attack or to support him. If you missed the original show, you can see it here. It is well worth...
A Lehman’s Guide to the Future
This post is part of my series on Black Swans and the crucial need to keep real Margin built into our lives. Upcoming is the Tenth Anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy on September 15, 2008, the largest such filing in U.S. history and the trigger for the...
There’s a New Tariff in Town
Veteran readers in this space will know that one of my favorite books is Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson. See my post from 2013 entitled What We Don’t See is Killing Us for a reminder. And I will again quote several sentences from Chapter 15 which capture...
How Do You Say Black Swan in Mandarin?
Michael Schuman’s reminder in a recent BusinessWeek article is one of the clearest high level observations I’ve read on the perverse and unpredictable nature of too much debt in the short run, never mind the long term requirement to repay it; he focuses on the...
Better Ideas for the Economy
Most Western countries are experiencing a revolt against the intellectual and political elites who have governed nations, the media, academia and central banks for as long as most adults can remember. While the country-specific details vary slightly, the common wisdom...
This Unfortunate Election: What To Do?
We are only about two weeks from this unfortunate election, and millions have already voted. I want to give you my current thoughts, with the caveat of retaining the right to modify my views right up to the day when I pull a lever. Let me also confirm that we are all...
Election Concerns 2016
This year's extraordinary election is less than two months away. Like most Americans, I am not pleased with the choices we have before us. With all of the negative generalities coming from both sides, I decided to try to put on paper specifically what concerns me. I...
I Hear Flapping
By definition, we are not supposed to be able to predict Black Swan events before they occur, but I hear a lot of flapping, and it’s getting louder. If you’re interested in the future of our economy, please read Mervyn King’s new book The End of Alchemy. Lord King was...
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