July 2014 Update: Here’s a documented comparison of California taxes and economic climate with the rest of the states. The news is bad, and getting worse. But it doesn’t have to be this way! The state and local government policies that created an unaffordable California can be reversed: PERSONAL INCOME TAX: Prior to Prop 30 passing in...
It’s election season and finally there’s a bit of good news for California politicians seeking reelection. A recent Field poll shows that, for the first time in 7 years, there are more California voters that think they are financially better off than those who believe they are worse off. However, for the political elite, that...
Earlier in the week BlackRock’s Larry Fink commented on CNBC: “A Bubble is predicated on leverage.” Fink was implying that he didn’t see the type of leverage that had fueled the previous Bubble. As part of my Bubble analysis framework, I have posited that the more conspicuous a Bubble the less likely it is to...
Since the crash of 2008, huge attention has been paid by regulators to systemic risk, the risk that some event will cause the crash of the entire banking system, not just of an individual bank. Tens of thousands of pages of financial regulations have been written, and almost as many thousands of speeches have been...
California has one of the highest costs of living in the United States. California also is one of the most inhospitable places to run a business in the United States. And despite being blessed with abundant energy and an innovative tradition that ought to render the supply of all basic resources abundant and cheap, California...
The French economist Thomas Piketty has achieved worldwide fame by promoting a thesis that capitalism is the cause of growing economic inequality. Unfortunately, he is partially right. However, the important distinction missed by Piketty and all of his supporters is that state capitalism, not free market capitalism, has reigned supreme in recent decades in the world’s...
Those who see the current era as the New Normal also have one logical action: sell now at the top and wait for the smoke to clear in 2016. In “The Generational Short, Part One,” I addressed how generational changes in values could affect the stock market. That values change over time is common sense, and...
If Gen-Y cannot afford to buy Boomers’ houses at bubble-level prices, then what will keep housing prices at these elevated levels? Last month the Brookings Institution published a study by scholars Morley Winograd and Dr. Michael Hais on changing generational values: “How Millennials Could Upend Wall Street and Corporate America.” The gist of the report is that Gen-Y...
David Peebles works in a glass tower across from Houston’s Galleria mall, a cathedral of consumption, but his attention is focused on the city’s highly industrialized ship channel 30 miles away. “Houston is the Chicago of this era,” says Peebles, who runs the Texas office of Odebrecht, a $45 billion engineering firm based in Brazil....
A war against the financially privileged 1%. 47% of our fellow citizens on food stamps. 92 million of them out of work. A real unemployment rate nearing 20%. Have-nots protesting in city parks against Wall Street fat cats or in city streets for supersized wages to serve dollar burgers and tacos. The land of proverbial...
Editor’s Note: While Thomas Piketty’s new book “Capital in the 21st Century” appears destined to be the 700 page book that will occupy a prestigious spot, usually unread, on every ardent leftist’s bookshelf, this 1,960 word essay by investment expert and financial commentator Peter Schiff should be required reading – especially by leftists. Because it...
Whatever your views on the role of government, one thing is clear: There will be no way to pay for it if the economy doesn’t grow. And I’m not talking by a measly percentage point or two. If we can’t find our way back to 5 percent annual economic growth or above soon, America’s accumulated...
Across broad ideological lines, Americans now foresee a dismal, downwardly mobile future for the country’s middle and working classes. While previous generations generally did far better than their predecessors, those in the current one, outside the very rich, are locked in a struggle to carve out the economic opportunities and access to property that had...
In January, California governor Jerry Brown, responding to one of the worst droughts in the state’s history, declared a state of emergency. The state legislature, though, didn’t get around to passing an emergency drought-relief bill until the end of February. But California’s lower house, the state assembly, did find time to pass a bill in...