“Money can’t buy happiness,” I stated once when I was a callow 18-year-old teaching an evening English course in the late 1960s Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Several of my students, mainly secretaries and business people, nodded in agreement. But one…
Fed’s decision-making isn’t solely Greenspan
What happened to the rate cut? Many observers, especially those on Wall Street, expected the Federal Open Market Committee to drop its target for the federal funds rate on Tuesday. After all, the chairman himself, Alan Greenspan, had hinted at…
A primer on taxes, just in time for the next legislative session
It is early winter, the time when, as the poet said, “young legislators’ fancies turn lightly to thoughts of revenue forecasts.” OK, no poet ever said that! But a comparison to lovestruck youth is an apt way to describe the…
Continued irrational exuberance delays the soft landing at hand
Equity market players, particularly the high rollers who concentrate in the Nasdaq, have become their own worst enemy. Their continued irrational exuberance may turn out to be the factor that keeps the U.S. economy from successfully making a mythical “soft…