Curious CapitalistEconomy
Last Friday’s jobs numbers came in strong, particularly in important areas like manufacturing, on which President Obama is staking much of the economic component of his re-election campaign. If voters start to feel more prosperous than they have over the last few years, it will certainly help him at the polls in November. But in order …
Curious CapitalistEconomy
Consumer confidence is up, and the new jobs numbers — the U.S. added 227,000 jobs in February, the third straight month of 200,000-plus gains — show that the U.S. economy continues to improve. Does that mean we are going to finally start seeing a shift out of the era of fearful, volatile markets that we’ve been in for over three …
Curious CapitalistJobs
Yesterday, I read an interesting report from Barclays Capital debunking a piece of conventional economic wisdom.
American labor force participation — that is, the percentage of working-age persons who are employed or are …
Curious CapitalistJobs
The revival of Detroit has been a big story over the past couple of weeks. All three major automakers have posted their best profits in years, and GM posted its highest ever-annual profits earlier this month. It’s a boon for …
Curious CapitalistEconomics & Policy
I have been thinking a lot about the economics of marriage, especially given that it’s such a huge issue in the Republican primaries. Rick Santorum has argued that to avoid poverty, all Americans need to do is finish high …
Curious CapitalistEconomy & Policy
Yesterday, President Obama announced a long-awaited proposal to cut corporate taxes in America, which U.S. businesses complain are much too high by international standards. The proposed reform is intended to prevent companies …
Curious CapitalistEconomy
Fears over conflict in the Middle East are pushing gasoline towards the $4 per gallon mark. What will that mean for the presidential elections?
Curious CapitalistEconomy & Policy
That’s the $64,000 question, particularly for the U.S. presidential elections – if things keep improving, it’s only good news for Obama. The economy has been on a roll this year, with unemployment down, consumer and …
Curious CapitalistEconomy & Policy
China’s going to import a lot more oil from Iran and the Arab world over the next two decades. America will import far less. Those two facts will profoundly change the geopolitics of the Middle East.
Curious CapitalistManagement & Leadership
Is the celebrity CEO back? You might think so given the buzz in business schools these days over the leadership lessons to be learned from the late Steve Jobs. Walter Isaacson’s best selling biography of the Apple founder gave us a uniquely anthropological view of Jobs, who was both bully and genius. That has a lot of folks in …
Curious CapitalistEconomy & Policy
I just returned from a week in Istanbul, where I was reporting a piece on what Turkey’s burgeoning contemporary art scene tells us about where the country is headed politically (you can look for that in our upcoming style and …
Curious CapitalistDavos
In 2008, after Lehman Brothers fell and the financial crisis and global recession began, the conventional wisdom was that we were entering an era in which government would take back power from business. In fact, just the opposite …
