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A dose of year-round Thanksgiving could save the world

11/22/2024

Want a cure for the anger and finger-pointing that made you curl up behind a locked door binging Hallmark movies during the recent election season?
I’ve got the answer. It has to do with the dinner table at Thanksgiving.
Well, symbolically, at least. I’m not suggesting your sister-in-law’s green bean casserole holds the key to world peace, although the one mine brings each year could certainly get warring factions to sit down and smile at each other for a while.

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Why recess appointments are a bad thing

11/22/2024

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When the founders added the “recess appointments clause” to the Constitution, it generated little discussion. Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist Paper No. 67, said it was just a supplement “for the purpose of establishing an auxiliary method of appointment, in cases to which the general method was inadequate.”
Nothing more. It was adopted unanimously and without debate.

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Personal debt in the U.S. is still a huge concern

11/15/2024

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The world changes quickly, but attitudes can change at a snail’s pace.
And so, it may be instructive to consider the words of a Federal Reserve Board study, requested by President Eisenhower in 1957, that noted with a tone of alarm, “It has become respectable to be a debtor, and the desire to own a home ‘free and clear’ is no longer as strong as it was in the past.”
When was the last time you heard someone worry about becoming a debtor? Snails can come a long way in 67 years.

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New vote procedures lost big on Tuesday

11/8/2024

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Perhaps no magic trick in recent years could match how Donald Trump’s successful campaign made talk of voter fraud disappear overnight. All the shouts of “stop the steal!” and all the early election claims of irregularities vanished into crickets with abra-cadabra speed as soon as returns went the former president’s way.
That’s almost as astonishing as how a federal prison inmate made his way to the ballot for Congress in Alaska. More on that later.

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Why voters ignored good economic news

11/6/2024

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For a long time, it’s been a running joke. Ask me if the economy is heading for a recession and I would tell you it’s six months away.
Always six months. Whether the indicators were surging inflation, rising interest rates or whatever, things were fine now, but don’t be so certain about six months from now.
Six months later, the answer would be the same.
But now … well, I just don’t know any more. Things look sunny as far as the eye can see.
CNN, Bloomberg, The Financial Times, the Capital Brief and even Harvard Law Today and more, all have published stories in the last few days with variations on a headline that says the Federal Reserve may have managed the elusive soft landing — wiping out inflation without destroying the economy.
Except, you don’t seem to be buying it.

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A dose of year-round Thanksgiving could save the world

Why recess appointments are a bad thing

Personal debt in the U.S. is still a huge concern

New vote procedures lost big on Tuesday

Why voters ignored good economic news

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