United States

Andrew Smithers is an economic commentator whose book 'Valuing Wall Street' I highly recommend. He is another market economist who shares my view that a 'Buy and Hold' Strategy is not necessarily the best. But he also has an economic…

This weekend I am at my wife's family reunion so I haven't have a lot of time for blogging. But, I caught an interesting article in Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter, which cites an IMF study which claims that property values in Sweden are…

Judgment or Experience?Many American citizens claim our President needs a strategy and a vision for the future. The most common complaints are about a lack of vision on the economy, health care and in our response to terrorism and the war…

Recently, I have become very concerned about the deteriorating geopolitical situation and its likely effects on the global economy. The Georgia-Russia situation produced a response from the U.S. to defend Poland with a missile shield,…

Voters in America are concrete, specific, and focused on the here and now by a margin of 3 to 1. To me, this has a real impact on the outcome of primary and Presidential races as candidates must speak in a way that resonates with those…

The U.S. has decided brinkmanship is the way to deal with the Russians. Having seen Georgia overrun by the Russian military, Poland jumped at the chance to have a stronger U.S. defense behind them and so they now have it. Less than two…

US Jobless claims came out again today as they do every Thursday at 8.30AM. The numbers were not good, and give a clear indication of why the Fed will not cut rates in the face of 5.6% inflation. Initial claims came in at 450,000, moving…

The U.S. inflation figures came out and they were worse than expected, pushing the annual inflation rate up to 5.6%. This is the highest inflation rate since 1991. Nevertheless, most economists greeted the rise, fueled by a 30% increase…

I wrote a blurb on the Georgia-Russia struggle on my blog. But I wanted to add a blurb here from Mikhail Gorbachev's Op-Ed in today's Washington Post. His viewpoint stands in great contrast to the punderati of Washington. Framed in a real…

If Georgia or Ukraine were a part of NATO, we would be willing to go to war for them as that is what NATO means. Think about it: Russia attacks the Ukraine or Georgia and the U.S. and its allies go to war to stop the Russian aggression.…