Category: Business Columnists

The Bear Market Ain’t Over Till It’s Over

Commentary On Feb. 21, the stock market got hit by a freight train. It surprised a lot of people because unlike the groundhog, they were starting to warm up and think the winter in stocks had ended. After all, the people who identify as technical analysts brought out their charts and showed why the market…


Japan’s Inflation Is Not Different From Other G6 Countries

While the market is anticipating and central banks are planning to slow down the pace of monetary tightening, there are signs of inflation rebounding in Australia and the U.S. (the core month-over-month inflation accelerated recently).  Japan is the only advanced economy doing nothing in the face of such a trend. Japan’s inflation change over the…


‘Japanification’ and the Negative Growth From Debt

Commentary With politicians squabbling over lifting the debt limit, few are paying attention to the ongoing “Japanification” of the U.S. economy. What do I mean by “Japanification”? With a zero to negative debt multiplier on economic growth, the ongoing spending spree by the federal government continues to push the United States toward the same slow-growth…


Sovereign Cryptocurrency: A Grim Future of Control

Commentary Sovereign digital currency will give the government complete control over the economy of people’s private lives. The British government announced that it would be phasing in a sovereign cryptocurrency. It also said that citizens would be limited to 20,000 digital pounds. The motivation to move toward a national cryptocurrency backed by the Bank of…


The EU Tries to Have It Both Ways With China

Commentary As Washington steps up pressure on China and shows every intention of decoupling the U.S. and Chinese economies, the European Union (EU) finds itself in a bind. Brussels clearly values China trade and does not want to lose it. At the same time, public support in Europe for China trade is narrowing, American pressure…


China Barges into the Chat Bot Arms Race

Commentary Chinese internet giants Baidu and Alibaba have joined the global artificial intelligence chat bot arms race. And yet, in a string of events eerily similar to 2020, Chinese state media quickly offered a stinging rebuke. Let’s set the stage first. The recent release of the latest version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chat bot has brought…


Automakers and COVID Keeping Car Prices Unaffordable

Commentary Average new car prices have hit record-highs. U.S. auto prices have been increasing for years since pre-COVID. But heading into this year, there was hope that with higher inventories on the horizon and computer chip supply-chain issues behind us, prices would ease. If only that were the case. For consumers already struggling with high…


In a New Pension Plan Actuarial Standard, a Subtle Warning of Possible ‘Fire!’

Commentary Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14, closed out a state and municipal pension plan accounting regime that allowed plan managers—who are overwhelmingly politicians—to obfuscate the funding levels of their pension plans by making actuarial assumptions about anticipated rates of returns that are  largely illusory. A revision to the Actuarial Standards of Practice (ASOP) No. 4 at least…


‘Follow the Money’ and Brace For Recession

Commentary “Rich-people problems aren’t going to tank the economy,” Wall Street Journal reporters recently assured us. Lest anyone forget, for decades there has been a Great Wall at the Journal, which Rupert Murdoch never demolished when he added the paper to his massive media empire in 2007. While there is no denying the talent and…


China’s Economy Stepping into a Downward Spiral with Two Major Risks: Analysis

News Analysis China’s economy is moving into a downward spiral in the medium-to-long term due to demographic headwinds and declining productivity after it slowed down substantially in 2022 with GDP growth reaching its second lowest since 1977. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), although expecting China’s economy to rebound in the short term, revised its medium-term…