Better to Be a “Joly” Than an “Immelt” “Choose your parents wisely.” –wisecrack “Nothing grows in the shadow of an oak.” –old saying Current General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt may be a terrific businessman in his own right. But, his now decade-plus tenure as GE chief will always be compared — negatively — to that...Read More
Looking for the New Volcker’s Regular readers of this blog know that I could hardly be a harsher critic of modern-day Wall Street: its practices; its obscene pay for little or no economic contribution (“Wall Street is Worthless“); and its corrupting influence on our government and society generally. And I’ve got plenty of company. As...Read More
Still Casting Stones . . . But Now With (Lots of) Caveats An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today. “Laurence J. Peter [Editor’s note: to see my rebuttal to Freakonomics, the predecessor to SuperFreakonomics, click here] So, I finally finished off the (surprisingly short)...Read More
Too Big to Fail? Try, Too Complex to Reform Banks are like the heart that pumps blood ” credit ” to our country’s corporate muscles. If that heart is malfunctioning, any recovery will be anemic. But heart surgery is a very complex thing. You wouldn’t want yours done by a plumber or a politician. –Thomas...Read More
A *Macroeconomic Overview Back in April, I ran a post called “Real Estate & Inflation” that isolated wage growth as the key to whether any inflationary outbreak would help or hurt real estate (incidentally, that post is now ranked 18th in the world, according to Google). Specifically, if inflation spilled over into workers’ wages, it...Read More
Why People Hate Wall Street —And Wall Street Analysts, too When stocks are going up, the airwaves are full of Wall Street analysts and other pundits chock-full of stock picks sure to make you money. So what can you expect to hear after stocks plummet 50% or more? All the reasons why stocks “are still...Read More
