Financial history includes plenty of extreme years. That’s not surprising, since we’re emotional beings with short memories. Combine those two traits and you get cycles,
The people running states like New Jersey and cities like Chicago know they’re broke. Ridiculously generous public employee pensions – concocted by elected officials and
The past decade was a uniquely smooth stretch of financial highway. Pretty much every major asset class – stocks, bonds, real estate, fine art, you
This is the second post in a week on Chicago’s epic financial train wreck. That’s a lot of attention and it probably won’t happen again,
When you see that Italy’s debt is rising, the logical question is, who the hell is dumping good money after bad into such an obviously
The Wall Street Journal recently highlighted a better method of analysing the impact of public sector pensions on state and local budgets. The results are
When talk turns to what might derail today’s debt-driven “recovery,” the big names and easy stories get most of the attention: China with its soaring
The main difference between well-run and badly-run countries is certainty. In well-run countries, money is worth pretty much the same from one year to the
It’s been a strange couple of weeks. US stocks are not far from all-time records, both nominally and adjusted for inflation. Home prices are soaring
London is burning. Greece is in receivership. Nobody wants Italian bonds. France’s AAA rating is at risk. The headlines do seem to be a bit
This week the focus shifted from Europe, where (apart from the French World Cup team) things are quiet, to the US, where state budget deadlines
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