A book recommendation for history buffs. Thomas McCraw of The Harvard Business School published this title last year just before his untimely death. In it he focuses on how Alexander Hamilton and Albert Gallatin advocated and implemented policies that greatly … Continue reading
Monthly Archives: September 2013
THE WEALTH EFFECT or MORE ON BUBBLES
When people are wealthier and, more importantly, feel wealthier consumption spending increases. This is dubbed the wealth effect. Economists question how important the wealth effect actually is but John Makin of the American Enterprise Institute has no doubt that the … Continue reading
SPIVA SCORECARD – Mid-Year 2013
S&P Dow Jones Indices has just published S&P Indices versus Active Funds (SPIVA®) Scorecard as of 30 June 2013. Highlights include “Most active managers in all the categories except small-cap growth underperformed their respective benchmarks for the trailing twelve months. … Continue reading
BUBBLES: TINY VERSUS TROUBLE
Tiny bubbles…In the wine…Make me happy…Make me feel fine… In the world of asset bubbles and their collapse the feel good lyrics of the Don Ho classic are replaced by the dark paraphrase of Macbeth’s toil and trouble. A recent … Continue reading
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES – INVESTMENT SAVANT
John Maynard Keynes was arguably the greatest, and certainly the most influential, economist of the 20th century. Less well known is his record as investment manager for King’s College, Cambridge University. Two finance professors at one or the other Cambridge … Continue reading
COST and CONSEQUENCES of the FINANCIAL CRISIS
The Dallas Federal Reserve Bank economics staff has published several estimates of the lost economic output from the financial crisis force multiplier in The Great Recession. The report, Assessing the Costs and Consequences of the 2007-09 Financial Crisis and Its … Continue reading
UNEMPLOYMENT RATE vs PARTICIPATION RATE
Gavyn Davies, an economics columnist for the Financial Times, has articulated the dilemma facing the Fed in determining when to taper and by how much in his recent article, Lies, damned lies and the US unemployment statistics. The next chair … Continue reading
