…is a high-stakes gamble: If President Trump succeeds in getting other countries to cut their tariff rates, that would be great. But if his actions lead other countries’ governments to raise their tariff rates, then, within a few years, we … Continue reading →
Obama really, really, really wanted that deal, and he was more than willing to lie to Congress to further it: The Obama administration secretly sought to give Iran access ”” albeit briefly ”” to the U.S. financial system by sidestepping … Continue reading →
I don’t really have a knowledgeable point of view on what Trump’s tariffs are likely to actually do. Not my strong suit. But I pass along this evaluation that seems equally devoid of Trump-shilling and anti-Trump hysteria: “The impact of … Continue reading →
They seem to take yearly polls on the question, and the last few years the numbers wanting to leave San Francisco have gone up, up, up: A poll released Sunday by a local advocacy group showed that 46 percent of … Continue reading →
Educators and people who set education policy are constantly tweaking college admissions standards in order to reach the holy grail of enough diversity, or the right kind of diversity. Here’s an article appearing in The Atlantic which offers a new … Continue reading →
I think they are. The biggest one in my neck of the woods opened around 1980. I remember how exciting it was to have a spiffy new mall within just a few minutes of my house. Now that mall is … Continue reading →
The bill passed with bipartisan support, 258-159. The beneficiaries will be smaller banks that claim to have been unduly hampered by the bill: The bill stops far short of unwinding the toughened regulatory regime put in place to prevent the … Continue reading →
The war on Michael Cohen continues with the disclosure of some of his financial records: Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniels’s attorney, published a memo last week that he said detailed Michael Cohen’s financial transactions… But questions arose about how Avenatti had … Continue reading →
Commenter and forecaster extraordinaire “Cornhead” (aka attorney David Begley) writes about a question-and-answer session with Warren Buffett that he attended: In response to another question Buffett said that while he spent his own money backing Hillary Clinton, it would have … Continue reading →
The true costs are mostly hidden: Let’s start with how much Canadians actually pay. The OECD arrives at its figures by the hopelessly simplistic method of dividing a nation’s total health care expenditure by its population. Thus, Canadians pay about … Continue reading →
It doesn’t surprise me. I never wanted to live in New York, although I grew up there and most of the people I knew wanted to stay there the rest of their lives—and have done so. Not me. I always … Continue reading →
Every year around this time I’m busy with my taxes. I like to joke that I may just be the person in the US with the highest ratio of tax complexity to income, because although I don’t make much money … Continue reading →