This just in from Reuters: The global flight from risk knocked precious metals again on Friday, with gold falling below $650 an ounce for the first time in three weeks as shaky global stock markets prompted investors to reduce positions in commodities. Investors often buy gold as a safe bet when financial markets look unstable, [...]

The major league Klein-on-Klein discussion on blogging that I inadvertently instigated continues apace. Anyway, it’s not my discussion anymore, but I’ve got two final things to say: 1) Both those Klein guys were born to blog. 2) I remember pretty clearly that, in Who Will Tell People (I can’t give an exact quote because my [...]

This is great! My (mostly) joking riff on the Mainstream Blogosphere caught the attention of certified Mainstream Blogger Ezra Klein. Then our own MSBer-in-the-making Joe Klein, sitting at home around midnight, “major league vodka” in hand, wrote a post about the other Klein’s post about my post. Ezra’s point was that he had some understanding [...]

My latest column is up online (it’s in the paper magazine that comes out tomorrow). Here’s how it begins: A share of stock-or a bond, a house, a stand of timber or any other asset-is worth the following: the future income one hopes to receive from it minus a haircut for the risk that things [...]

While working on my previous post about taxes, I came across an article I wrote just after the 2004 election about President Bush and fiscal policy. On the whole it stands up reasonably well, hinting as it does that the chances of Bush really doing something in his second term about the country’s long-run budget [...]