Federal Reserve

Downgrades Don’t Matter

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… if you can print money and are in control of the credit markets. Look at Japan. That doesn’t mean the underlying problems don’t matter.

Your Dollar—up to no Good

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In case you didn’t stay up all night watching the spectacle, and tearing out your hair: Your very own… … your favorite one, the one you worked so hard to earn and even harder to save, yes, the ever shrinking one, well, it dropped to a new all-time low against the Japanese yen in Tokyo. And…

We Should Give them a Calculator

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The raw numbers are ugly. The federal budget deficit is nearly 40% of total spending; that is, for every $1,000 the government spends, it collects $600 in taxes and borrows $400. Doesn’t anyone do any math in Washington?

Your Dollar

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…is falling off a cliff again, hitting ¥78 and €0.69. You can sit idly by and watch it get demolished, or you can do something about it.

Our Chinese Bay Bridge

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The high-speed train fiasco in China makes us worry about our San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge whose gigantic one-tower landmark suspension segment was fabricated, you guessed it, in China. In return for some paltry savings, if any, California gave up enormous economic opportunities.

A Modest Proposal

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What galls me the most in this entire imbroglio of our debt ceiling is the hypocritical approach of our politicians: A Congress that authorizes every dollar that gets spent, gleefully accumulating a pile of debt so vast it’s hard to wrap your brains around it; and administrations who have been eager to borrow and spend as directed by Congress.

Night of the Living Debt

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The worldwide night of the living debt continues with Greece, Italy, and the US. And so I mention them, nasty as I am, in the same breath with Japan.