As a native of an historically significant Civil War city in the southern United States, as well as an economist, I have often had the feeling that by electing its first black President, the normal U.S. partisan politics were going to take on a completely new and… Read full post »

Republicans hate to hear facts about the price of gasoline, so I intend to keep forcing them into the public arena. Unfortunately, most Americans know a whole lot less than I know, and yet still think they know it all. It seems to be a growing trend in… Read full post »

Have corporations become sovereign countries within our country?

Few would disagree that the world’s biggest companies appear to have as much influence, if… Read full post »

Except for a few Republicans stuck in the quagmire of Reaganesque , fallacy-riddled, supply-side economics, we know now that trickle-down economics simply does not work and never has.

For proof, one merely has to look at the plethora of independent data that has flooded both economists’ obs… Read full post »

Paul Ryan puts together a budget like most Republican, frat-boy types; he lies, cheats, and steals.

Poster boy for “the Republican new-breed conservative”, Ryan is many things, but suspicious that the public-at-large will see through his economic cow pies is not one of them. One would… Read full post »

For the life of me, I cannot understand how the people of the United States continues to let a chosen few run roughshod over our political discussions, much less how much we pay for gasoline.

The “outrage of the week” for me has been the slow crawl of… Read full post »

The JOBS Act. Is there no end to the intent of Wall St. and the 1% to bring about the destruction of the U.S. economy? As dumbstruck as I remain by the inexplicable repetitiveness of the political enabling for speculators to continually gouge the average U.S. citizens, I… Read full post »

What or who is actually to blame for the seemingly random peaks and valleys of the gasoline game?

Gas prices have definitely tamped down President Obama's political polling in the last few weeks and every time this happens cries go out for someone to do something. The truth… Read full post »

Little Grover Norquist and his manipulative masters of all things conservative, the billionaire Koch Brothers, are feeling a tad threatened these days. What with Republican Presidential candidates alienating voters in droves via inane rantings on the evils of contraceptives to the love of lakes, one… Read full post »

Since the current Republican candidates hasten to promote “limited or no government,” I thought I would discuss the macroeconomic history of laissez faire – libertarianism of the last 150 years. This philosophy has many Ron Paul followers believing in it (and him) due to its simplic… Read full post »

Economics is as much about timing and conditions as strategy and policy. Trying to implement austerity measures during a recession is tantamount to trying to kick a field goal in a 60 mile per hour headwind. There's a time and place for virtually every economic policy known to man. The key… Read full post »

I can only imagine what a stampede of bison must have sounded like in the early 1800s. I assume it started as a barely audible rumble… maybe nothing more than a faint vibration. One thing is clear though. It was a sound that no one on the plains wanted to hear.… Read full post »

I normally try to confine my posts to matters involving the economy. But sometimes, a speech, or a statement made by a politician so disgusts me that I simply have to comment on it or risk spontaneous combustion.

Yesterday involved such an event.

As reported in several Michigan newspapers, among… Read full post »

Why is the U.S. really so concerned about Iran? Is it the supposed nuclear threat to the region or the threat to the U.S. Petrodollar?

As much as we Americans would like to believe that our reasons for war are just and righteous, we simply have to wake up to the real… Read full post »

I have addressed the European fiscal crisis in several previous posts as well as a plan to deal with the U.S. fiscal crisis (see below), but more than three years have passed since the onset of the 2008 financial crisis, and the economic downturn feels as endless as ever. Any hopes that it… Read full post »

The word looms over chat rooms, water coolers, and various other venues in America like the smell of a dead animal on the side of the highway. Anyone daring to mention the word had better be making fun of it, or comparing the person using it to a serial pedophile.  It… Read full post »

I have reluctantly watched all of the Republican Presidential “debates” to date. If I were participating in one of the more prevalent drinking games from my college days, my friends and I would all take a drink every time one of the participants said one of two pre-selected words. Fo… Read full post »

Ever since the early 1800’s, gold has enjoyed as many unpredictable changes in favorability as the measure of choice for which to tie the U.S. Dollar currency value, as the changing lead GOP candidate in the polls for the 2012 Iowa Caucuses.

Widespread dissatisfaction with high inflation in the… Read full post »

In general I do not put much emphasis on examining the past in detail. It seems unproductive to me to look back at all that went wrong unless there is some evidence that by doing so, I can improve what is to come or even what might be to come because guessing… Read full post »

There have been many lies promulgated regarding the meltdown in the real estate market, the subsequent  Wall Street crash, and the seemingly unending unemployment crisis gripping the  country some three years later.

But none of the lies reach  the level of intensity surrounding the G… Read full post »

Despite hand-wringing and forecasts of gloom and doom from politicians wanting to blame one another for the downgrading of America’s heretofore stellar credit rating, all is well in Whoville….for the time being. Yes, four full months after Standard & Poor’s stripped the U.S. of… Read full post »

As we are all aware, the United States is stuck in a slow growth recovery from the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009. And while there have been some encouraging signs in the job market lately, it’s no wonder that neither consumers nor investors are jumping up and down to spend… Read full post »

What happens when an economy attempts a cold shutdown of one of the biggest debt spirals that the world has ever seen?  Well, buckle up and buy lots of canned tuna, we are about to find out.

Europe’s ruling politicos have decided that they are going to “take their medicine” and… Read full post »

I am so tired of hearing the same old tired lies coming out of the conservative propaganda machine about the  redistribution of wealth in this country. President Obama’s original proposal to extend and deepen payroll tax cuts for 160 million workers AND their employers would have… Read full post »

On Nov. 28, U.S. district judge Jed Rakoff rejected a $285 million settlement between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Citigroup.

In so doing, he essentially walked out of the federal courthouse on Foley Square and became the single loudest protester of all the protesters in Zuccotti Park.… Read full post »