For the first time in more than a decade, oil price increases are front-page news. Crude oil has tripled and consumer gasoline has increased by 50 percent in about a year. Will this largely unexpected oil price shock cause rampant…
Slowing population growth will have strong effect on economics
Consider three news items from early March 2000. German Chancellor Schroeder urges changes in his country’s restrictive immigration laws to allow in more high-tech professionals. The U.S. Congress acts to remove the earnings penalty for Social Security recipients. The Minnesota…
Some Net alliances pose market peril
Jimmy Durante used to note how “everybody wants to get into the act.” It seems that the act right now is big corporations establishing Internet-based businesses. Last week General Motors, Ford and Daimler-Chrysler announced that they were establishing a new…
How human nature and politics can muddy national public works
Just imagine if Jerome Kern had written a musical called Dredgeboat instead of Showboat: Fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly The Corps just gotta build dams till they die. Can’t stop damming those rivers up! My apologies to Kern,…