Back in the Dotcom bubble days, Alan Greenspan worried about “irrational exuberance,” but chose to let markets adjust on their own, without hiking interest rates to pop the stock market bubble. Today’s bubble economy stretches well beyond stocks, wrote Greg Ip for the Wall Street Journal. There’s artificial intelligence (AI), of course, and,
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York this week released its Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit for the third quarter of this year.
The federal government shutdown in recent weeks has highlighted the full cost of many government programs, including the food stamp program. Many people—especially the kind who don’t spend their time tracking federal spending—have been shocked by the fact that one in eight Americans—12 percent of the population—receives food stamps. That’s about 42 million people. Moreover, most food stamp recipients receive other forms of government “welfare” as well.
Mainstream financial academia regularly seeks to impress upon investors the supposed pointlessness of any entrepreneurial effort on their part, under the guise of cost efficiency and risk reduction.
Today, the Supreme Court is hearing arguments in the landmark case of Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, which will determine whether President Trump can use an emergency declaration to unilaterally impose tariffs on foreign goods that Americans buy, as he did earlier this year.
The New York Times has just published an excellent editorial on the dangerous direction in which America is headed under President Trump. It is entitled “Are We Losing Our Democracy?” The editorial lists 12 factors pointing toward America’s slide into authoritarianism. I highly recommend reading it.
According to data collected by the research firm Statista, 29 percent of Americans cannot afford to take a vacation this year. A vacation is not the only thing Americans are struggling to afford. The failure of wages to keep up with price inflation is why household debt hit a record level of 18.4 trillion dollars this year, with the average household owing more than 100,000 dollars.
