“Strongest global economy I’ve seen in my business lifetime.” Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson and SEC Chairman Christopher Cox make soothing noises just before the financial crisis.
Read more...Entries entered in '2008'
Indexing
Index investing makes excellent sense in most situations, and is necessary in some. And three cheers for John Bogle, who has spent decades popularizing the idea.
Read more...The Subprime Mess, Continued
This has been a fairly typical speculative waterspout: houses, in this instance, go higher and higher, propelled by wormy mortgages that are flogged off to institutional suckers. Rising prices draw in more and more speculators until everything is overpriced, whereupon the waterspout collapses.
Read more...How to Invest in China
When you go to Hong Kong, Ronnie Chan is a man you are told to try to meet. A U.S. citizen, he has high contacts in Beijing, and it usually turns out that he has just had lunch with Henry Kissinger. On a trip in China, I was able to collect his views on conditions in that country.
Read more...Financial Kidnapping
Old age brings its own repertoire of familiar afflictions which a physician can usually spot with ease. Also, though, a serious economic hazard that the financial practitioner may not spot because he hasn’t encountered it before: a calculated raid on the estate of a rich, lonely, oldster.
Read more...Reflections on Heath Care
There is a greater demand for medical services in America than can possibly be paid for. The tab is already 16% of GDP. Half of the 16% – more than a day every two weeks – goes to pay for each person’s terminal illness, the last few months of life.
Read more...She Fled Across The Fields
Some austere nuggets from Le Matin’s eminent faits divers editor Félix Fénéon, also a critic, publisher, art dealer, and an anarchist with a fondness for bombing.
Read more...What Europe’s Islamic Radicals Really Want
Olivier Roy, a lifelong French specialist on Islamic affairs, says today’s radicals are disoriented dropouts, not apostles of long-term objectives that will really be advanced by violence.
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