Optimists say that every cloud has a silver lining, and it isn’t hard to find one in the potash industry upheaval last week that sent the stock of Mosaic Co., the Plymouth-based fertilizer giant, down by a fourth. What is…
Fed chair soap opera does the nation no good
A senior Fed official I knew nearly 20 years ago once compared Alan Greenspan to a streetwalker in his tireless campaigning for the Reagan administration to appoint him to replace Paul Volcker as Federal Reserve chairman. Reportedly, today it might…
A trip to market is a trove of lessons
Economics is the study of how humans decide to use scarce resources, either as individuals or as groups. Once you know some of the basic concepts, you should be able to see how these play out in your daily life.…
Does Goldman’s aluminum scheme foil free markets?
A recent New York Times article suggesting that Goldman Sachs’ ownership of a significant fraction of aluminum warehousing capacity hurts consumers caused quite a stir in the financial press and in the economics blogosphere. It also led key members of…