Crunch Time for Cities, Counties and States
It gives me no joy to address problems without easy solutions, but the sooner we face what’s already visible ahead, the higher the probability…
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The Golden Age of Spectacle
We’re living in the golden age of Spectacle: whatever substance remains in politics is lost in the endless parade of outlandish political theater, finance…
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Will AI Crash the Economy?
As we all know, the problem with euphoria is the inevitable collision with reality and the resulting disillusionment. But wait–it gets worse. The new…
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Price Doesn’t Reflect Value, and We’re Paying a Steep Price for Confusing the Two
Price and Value–now there’s a twisted tale. We’ve been trained to compare price and buy the lower priced option as the better value, but…
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Right-Sizing Ingenuity
We’re in a peculiar state globally. Locked in the mindset that economic growth is necessary lest the system implodes, we’ve persuaded ourselves that growth…
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Can Social Security Be Saved for Future Generations?
Can Social Security be saved for future generations? Many have already concluded it’s hopeless, and if the current trajectory is left untouched, that is…
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Money, Credit, Growth and Depression: It’s Complicated
Many people anticipate the demise of fiat currencies, for good reasons. This is the motivation for calls to return to the gold standard–currency backed…
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Not What We Expected: Why Our Fixes Will Fail
We like fixes to pressing problems, and we like them to be simple: the simpler the better. When presented with complexity, we freeze up…
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Is This the Last Bubble?
The consensus holds that central banks–the Federal Reserve in the US–will gradually inflate away the world’s rising debt burden while propping up assets and…
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The Moral Decay of Debt
Let’s start with a household analogy. A married couple have four fine children, and since expenses are higher than income, they borrow money in…