U.S. President Donald Trump has a reputation as a tough negotiator, and his latest move to raise the ante on tariffs with China makes that abundantly clear. As the talks between the U.S. and China to end the current trade war that the countries are involved in have progressed, President Trump had shown uncharacteristic patience, […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was put in place in 2008 in the aftermath of the mortgage crisis. New director Kathy Kraninger is focused more on education than enforcement. The financial crisis of 2007 exposed many cracks in the system, and once we started to right the ship a little, the Obama administration created a […]
The European Union has enough to worry about these days, with the economy and the Brexit escapade. They now have to deal with a very real threat of $11 billion in tariffs. The United States and the European Union have been battling over the fairness of European subsidies to leading aircraft maker Airbus for 14 […]
A third of Americans of working age are not actively seeking employment, and it may seem that if we increase participation, we will grow the economy. It’s not that simple though. The participation rate in the workforce is one of the metrics that is looked at when we comb through the results of nonfarm payroll […]
New York City has a lot of paper out there, so the thought of it going bankrupt is particularly troubling. We need to look at how big this threat may actually be. To hear the New York Post tell it, “New York City is edging toward financial disaster.” This was exactly the headline of a […]
Elizabeth Warren wants to try to break three big internet companies, ones she feels have grown too big. They are bigger than she likes, and she wants to try to stop them. What do Amazon, Google, and Facebook have in common? They are all among the world’s biggest companies of course, and they are all […]
Amazon is seen as a big enough threat to brick and mortar retailers with their huge online presence, but should they make a major move to physical stores, the threat will get bigger. Large physical retailers are already feeling the pressure from online retailing giant Amazon, scrambling to adjust their business model to better compete […]
Gene therapy might sound a lot like science fiction, and at one point it was, but the fiction part is beginning to translate into real promise, and on the brink of becoming reality. The science of gene therapy has been around for years, and has always held the promise for some real breakthroughs in the […]
With the Fed still forecasting at least one rate hike in 2019, if not two, and no one really talking much about a rate cut, this does not suggest that things may get unmanageable. One of the questions that people are asking, in the midst of the economic slowdown that we’re seeing, is whether the […]
$22 Trillion of debt is a huge amount, almost beyond comprehension, but when you add in $70 trillion more, the number gets a lot bigger. It’s also about to grow much bigger. There is already lots of concern about the exploding U.S. national debt, but as it turns out, this is more like the part […]