Rediscovering Stocks At The Wrong Time

March 11, 2013

A lot of people are venturing into the stock market as it nears record highs. It’s bad timing, but don’t let that stop you.

The Company Men, Doing Their Best

August 12, 2011

“The Company Men” takes a good look at corporate life in modern America, and it isn’t presented in black and white.

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How TARP Staved Off Disaster

October 14, 2010

Did the Troubled Assets Relief Program save the world? I think I can make a good case that this much-reviled government “bailout” did just that. Two years ago the banking system, and the world economy, stood on the brink of disaster. Nobody trusted that they knew the value of anything, rendering everyone effectively broke. It was a bad situation for all involved, but an impossible situation for banks, which responded …

If Things Are Getting Better, Why Are We So Miserable?

September 22, 2010

You have heard by now that the recession is officially over. Do you feel like celebrating? Probably not. This week’s announcement from the National Bureau of Economic Research confirmed what we already knew, which is that the Great Recession has been over for quite a while — officially, now, since June 2009. The downturn that began in November 2007 therefore lasted 18 months, making it the longest U.S. economic contraction …

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How Low Interest Rates Sap Economic Growth

June 14, 2010

Conventional wisdom tells us we need record-low interest rates to help the global economy recover from the Great Recession and bring about a more prosperous future. Let me respectfully point out that, in this country, we have had low interest rates — ranging from pretty low to astonishingly, jaw-droppingly low — for the past 15 years, and we have arrived at a future that is not what we were aiming …

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A Financial Thunderstorm, Not A Hurricane

May 5, 2010

The Greek financial crisis sent markets around the world reeling yesterday, as the soothing effects of the Eurozone’s $143 billion bailout package wore off after just one business day. If Greece falls, and then perhaps Portugal, will we be looking at the sort of global paralysis that set in when the Bear Stearns domino hit the Lehman Brothers domino, which hit Merrill Lynch, which hit American International Group, ad infinitum? …

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Deferring Divorce In Hard Times

March 29, 2010

Hard times are doubtless putting a strain on a lot of marriages, but many couples may have to put up with one another longer than they would like. The Washington Post recently reported that divorce rates declined in 2008, as the financial crisis spiraled into the worst recession in generations. David Goldberg, a divorce lawyer and mediator in Gaitherburg, Md., said that in his 44 years of working in family …

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Dissatisfied Workers? Not Here

January 13, 2010

According to a new study that has been getting a lot of attention, only 45 percent of Americans are satisfied with their jobs. The job satisfaction survey commissioned by the Conference Board research group was first conducted in 1987 and has been conducted every year since 2005. Never before have so few people said they were happy with their jobs. Back in 1987 nearly 70 percent of those surveyed ranked …

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The Longest Year

December 31, 2009

The year that ends tonight has been the longest of my life. For me — and for a lot of other people — it began on Sept. 15, 2008. That was the day Lehman Brothers collapsed, Merrill Lynch and American International Group teetered, and the world looked into an economic abyss. Everything we thought we knew about our financial lives was called into question, from how to determine the value …

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