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If you’re out of work or your hours have been drastically reduced, then I don’t have to tell you about the recession. Likewise, if you’ve lost your home, you know we’re far from out of the woods. But if you’re among the lucky ones who have been fortunate enough to avoid the pain that millions of Americans are experiencing, this column may provide food for thought.

The official unemployment rate is 10%, but when you factor in the number of underemployed ...

When the Framers of the Constitution determined that elected representatives should be allowed to serve consecutive terms in office, they couldn’t have foreseen anything like the multi-year, multi-million dollar campaigns of the twenty-first century.

Given the current size of our country and the cost of airtime, any incumbent who hopes to be reelected has no choice other than to spend a large percentage of her time in office raising money for her next campaign.

Furthermore, since politicians have an ongoing need for ...

Crowd psychology is interesting, especially when it comes to investors, who generally move in the opposite direction from the one in which they’re being led. When an action is taken to try and change market behavior, it generally accelerates the movement in the opposite direction. Over the decades, if the stock market were overheating, the powers-that-be would raise the margin requirements, thereby increasing the amount of cash investors had to put up when borrowing money with which to buy stock, ...

I remember as a high school student, once in a while, actually more than once in a while, waiting until the night before an exam to begin studying. By that time, it was too late to read the book, so I used Cliff Notes. I got the gist of the story, but there was plenty of material in the book I missed entirely, never having read it.

Is this so different from our “quick to judgment” Congress voting on healthcare bills ...

Like the icebergs that sunk the Titanic, hidden dangers lurk in the murky depths of the American economy. They are as difficult for our economists to see as they were for the captain of the Titanic. Our economy is headed in the wrong direction, and icebergs are everywhere, ready to wreak havoc on us.

Let me explain. The major banks hold trillions of dollars worth of residential mortgages. These include mortgages already in foreclosure as well as increasing numbers of non-performing ...