As I approach age 50 and recollect 30 years of post-childhood lessons learned, I recognize a pattern I’ve lived through a few times. I’ve learned that times of economic expansion have tended to teach me fallacies. It was easy to think I was a good bet-taker when every bet paid off. Until it didn’t. Since…
While our attention, motivated by media headlines, is focused on rising inflation, I humbly believe there is an equally high risk of a deflationary shock to the economy in the coming months and quarters. I worry that it is such a shock that could trigger the next recessionary cycle. Let me explain my thinking. Yes,…
While I’m not an economist by training, I’ve grown fond of contemplating and simplifying complex economic concepts so as they make sense to me. As I consider how to understand the scale of our economy (or of any economy, for that matter), I’ve realized that the answer is the product of three simple variables: working-age…
I’m nearly 50 years old. Some people live 100 years or more. With that in mind, I contend that so-called “history” is a lot more recent than we may have realized as students, especially for a very young country such as the United States. • Only 244 years ago, until Congress voted to declare independence…
I know it’s hard for many of my friends to appreciate the severity of the tension and helplessness that many African Americans feel towards law enforcement. To Americans of European descent, especially those in the upper socio-economic classes, the fear and antagonism directed towards a police force that is, by and large, hard-working and committed…
I’m once again in a bit of a contemplative mood thanks to a thoughtful coffee discussion with a good friend this morning. I’m more convinced than ever that, while it’s been the most tragic event of our lifetimes, we’ll exit this epidemic in a dramatically better place than we entered it. First and foremost, we…
I’ve long preferred real estate over financial assets. The 2008 crisis taught me a lot of lessons about real estate investing. Most of them were expensive. But, hey, education is worth paying for. However, unlike that last financial crisis over a decade ago, the current COVID crisis doesn’t have at its core a connection to…
In order to begin formulating plans for a hopeful return to normalcy, I realized it was important for me to understand how all of the measures we’ve all become accustomed to discussing related to one another: physical distancing, PPE, antibody testing, herd immunity, and so on. This short video is my attempt at explaining all of these concepts to myself as a layperson. Think of it as Epidemiology for Dummies :-).
Over the coming month, one topic will overshadow Coronavirus/COVID-19: reopening the economy. Because I consider this much more than a “reopening” – beyond the bounds of any state or country, and much broader in scope than the economy – I prefer to use the phrase “rebooting the world.”
This is meant as an economic, non-political post reflecting on my thoughts as to the interplay between the public and private sectors. As early as four decades ago, my father, a political scientist and economist (with a PhD in each discipline), used to describe to me how society would eventually find a healthy balance between…
