I’ve got a column in this week’s magazine on one of my favorite topics: injecting consumer price information into the health-care industry. I quote a couple of different studies from the Center for Studying Health System Change, including this one: Consider LASIK. Over a decade, the cost of the conventional version of the sight-correction surgery has [...]
This morning the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) released its latest proclamation on the state of the U.S. economy: the recession isn’t over yet. That might sound gloomy, but keep in mind that NBER decision-making on recession end dates is perhaps the most lagging of all the lagging [...]
China posted a trade deficit – no, that’s not a typo, I did mean deficit – in March, of $7.2 billion. That’s the first monthly deficit since 2004. It couldn’t come at a more auspicious time, for China that is. Beijing is in the middle of a tug-of-war with Washington over the value of its [...]
Wall Street, it appears, likes tragedy. The worst U.S. coal accident since 1984, in which 25 workers were killed in a mine explosion, not to mention 150 miners that were trapped in China, turned out to be not such a bad week for the shares of companies that explore for black gold. In general most [...]
Everyone’s gotten themselves all hot and bothered at the prospect that China’s leadership may actually loosen up policy on their currency, the yuan, and allow it to appreciate against the U.S. dollar. Optimism was sparked by U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s unexpected pit stop in Beijing for a meeting with China’s vice premier. But I [...]
I had the honor last week to interview Japan’s new Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, in Tokyo. My full story on Hatoyama appears in the April 19th magazine, and you can also read the full text here. But I thought I’d add some more details from the interview on Curious Capitalist. I only had 40 minutes [...]
This is not a good sign. (Click on the chart to make it larger.)
The Amish have an enviable success record. Is it their lifestyle or the way they work?
The prospect of a merger between United Airlines and US Airways sent share prices of both airlines up this morning. Investors are reasoning that the combined carrier will be able to reduce capacity—3% nationally according to one analyst—and thus raise prices. There’s too much capacity in the U.S., so none of the carriers can charge [...]
Early on, it seemed that Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, was willing at least in part to take the heat for the financial crisis. He didn’t regulate banks more because he assumed bankers would act in their and their firm’s best long-term interest and not just do what would provide them the best [...]
