Whose Fault Is Inflation?

Whose Fault Is Inflation?

With mid-term elections just around the corner, the Washington blame game is heating up. Republicans are asserting that the upsurge in inflation we’ve been living with since the beginning of this year is all due to the Democrats’ American Rescue Plan that pumped billions of unnecessary dollars into the economy. Democrats counter that the inflation…
Read more

How Bad Was The First Half Of 2022?

Pretty bad. I’m not referring to the war in Ukraine, or the surge in COVID infections, or supply chain disruptions, or the growing number of gun deaths in the U.S. I’m talking of course about the capital markets. The negative 21% performance of the S&P 500 during the six-month period ending on June 30th ranks…
Read more

Is A Recession Looming?

It must be really tough to be an economist right now. Ordinarily the data that feeds into their economic models is consistent enough to enable them to forecast economic downturns with better than 50% accuracy (although they almost never get the timing or the severity right). Today, though, it’s a different story. Economists are flatly…
Read more

How Long Will High Inflation Last?

This is the third article I’ve written on this topic since inflation started spiking late last year. Currently we’re experiencing significant increases in the cost of gasoline, food, and other staples. And this is a world-wide phenomenon, not just in the U.S. With the media hyping the current level of inflation as the worst in…
Read more

Why The Yield Curve Does Not Predict A Market Downturn

The U.S. Treasury bond yield curve is in the news again after briefly turning negative earlier this month. The financial media is trumpeting this event as an indicator that a recession will likely follow with a concomitant stock market decline. I suggest that this indicator is not useful in predicting either one. The yield curve…
Read more

The Impact of War On Our Money

After living through one inconceivable event with worldwide repercussions (the COVID-19 pandemic), we now find ourselves facing another that was certainly on no one’s radar prior to 2022. How will Russia’s invasion of Ukraine impact the spending power of our dollars as well as the value of our savings in the capital markets? I had…
Read more