I know, this hasn’t been much of a blog lately. Well, it was last week, because Barbara was on the case. But now she’s on vacation and I haven’t been delivering the goods. My excuse No. 1 is that preparing to launch a book publicity campaign turns out to be incredibly time-consuming work. This probably isn’t a very convincing excuse, …
NYU economist (and 2003 Nobelist) Rob Engle has a piece in today’s FT about the area of his expertise, volatility:
An understanding that the fundamental cause of volatility is new information will help assess when it might return to normal. Basically, asset prices change when there is new information, used by analysts and investors, to
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The Conference Board’s consumer confidence index jumped far faster than anybody expected in May. Markets rejoiced, there was dancing in the streets, etc. etc.
But here’s a little reality check from Ian Shepherdson of High Frequency Economics:
if the new level is maintained the Conference Board index is consistent with real spending
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I’m getting kind of tired of Nouriel Roubini profiles (and one gets the sense that Nouriel is, too, although they’re clearly good for business), but Julia Ioffe’s piece in The New Republic nonetheless kept me reading to the end. I liked this quote from Bob Shiller:
“A financial crisis needs general thinking, and a team of specialists
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I have a new column in the issue with Michele Obama on the cover. It’s online here. It’s about my favorite hyperlibertarian economic doomsayer, Peter Schiff—a member of The Armageddon Gang I wrote about in March 2007. I also found a way to work in a quote from Scott Page, the Leonid Hurwicz Collegiate Professor of Complex Systems, …
Laura Rowley has put together a handy list of the personal-finance lessons to be learned from NYT writer Edmund Andrews’ harrowing saga of mortgage disaster—told in his new book, Busted: Life Inside the Great Mortgage Meltdown, and in an NYT mag article last Sunday. They’re all good lessons: Budget for the worst-case scenario, Know …
The Conference Board’s monthly Leading Economic Index came out today. It was up on the month for the first time since June 2008, and while forecasters had expected a rise it was bigger than the consensus estimate. So yay, right?
But markets were down after weekly jobless claims—one of those indicators that make up the Leading Index— …
I like the Federal Reserve. It’s got more smart people working for it than any other governmental agency (or quasi-governmental agency) that I know of. They tend to see their job as doing what’s best for the economy (or at least the banking system), not scoring political points or aiding lobbyist friends.
Yet when you look back at the …
The Obama administration is actively discussing the creation of a regulatory commission that would have broad authority to protect consumers who use financial products as varied as mortgages, credit cards and mutual funds, according to several sources familiar with the matter.
Hmmm, this sounds awfully …
Wondering what will drive the U.S. economy forward in the coming years? I just got an e-mail from a PR guy for the National Association of RV Parks and Campgrounds that suggests an answer:
If you’re looking for a different angle to highlight involving America’s private campgrounds, you may want to focus on their increasing investments in
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Here’s the video version of my column on trying to make management into more of a profession:
Update: No it’s not here. I can’t get it to embed. But you can watch it on the TIME.com video page.
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I’ve got an essay up on CNNMoney.com, which will eventually find its way into the paper pages of Fortune. It begins:
There was a time (the 1990s, to be precise) when the concept of shareholder value made a bit of sense: Corporations focused on keeping shareholders happy, and their stock prices rose through the roof.
Things haven’t
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