My new column is online here and in the issue of Time with Barack Obama’s mama on the cover. It begins:

On the last day of April, the folks at the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis will announce how much they think the U.S. economy grew–or didn’t–in the first quarter of this year. This “advance” estimate of gross

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Okay, I know I’ve said this before and it has turned out to be profoundly untrue. But the book has to be done Monday, or there’ll be hell to pay. I’m on track to get it in on time, but I do have some polishing and perfecting (or, if you prefer, slashing and rewriting) still to do, so for the rest of the week posting will be even sparser …

The new World Economic Forum Global Information Technology Report is out, and it ranks Denmark and Sweden as the first and second most-networked economies on earth. No. 3 is Switzerland, which would make you think that the key to networkedness is being a small, rich European country. But then, rocketing up the rankings from seventh place …

You know how all those Suze Orman/Dave Ramsey/David Bach types, when they talk about getting out of debt and saving some money, tend to start by saying you should give up that $4 cup of Starbucks in the morning? Well, Americans appear to be taking their advice, on a mass scale.

“You’ve …

From today’s WSJ:

For years the U.S. has been one of the most expensive places in the world to make cars. But the new contracts with the United Auto Workers union signed last fall significantly improve the global competitive position of Big Three plants. The weaker dollar, which makes production in the U.S. less expensive, is also

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I’ve actually been meaning for a few weeks to write a post about the vagaries of what in the MSM gets noticed in the blogosphere and what does not. Pretty much every half-baked column on the Washington Post op-ed page gets subjected to a full-on linkfest, I was going to write, while the almost invariably compelling work of columnist …

In the news today …

… the WSJ joins the hey-look-at-how-Sweden-dealt-with-its-big-financial-crisis parade (which may well have begun right here on this blog):

As it happens, the U.S. already seems to be applying some of the key lessons from the Swedish crisis. The government-backed sale of investment bank Bear Stearns Cos. “was

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Who said this in September 2005?

The apparent froth in housing markets may have spilled over into mortgage markets. The dramatic increase in the prevalence of interest-only loans, as well as the introduction of other, more-exotic forms of adjustable-rate mortgages, are developments that bear close scrutiny. To be sure, these financing

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From Financial Astrology by David Williams, 1984:

Many times during my long business career I have been asked: “How did a hard-boiled purchasing agent like you ever get interested in such an occult subject as astrology?”

Harvard economist and blogging newbie Jeffrey Frankel makes an excellent point about Republican political rhetoric of the past quarter century. Most Republican presidential candidates say on the campaign trail that

(a) they favor smaller government

and

(b) cutting tax rates increases revenue.

Put these two together and the only …

My new column is in the issue of Time with a star-spangled pope on the cover and online here. It begins:

Financial regulation is usually born of financial disaster. The Panic of 1907–during which several big New York City banks actually did fail–led to the creation of the Federal Reserve. The Great Depression, unleashed by a market

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