Category: Business Columnists

The SEC Chooses the Nuclear Option

Commentary The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has just filed complaints in a federal court against two of world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, Binance and Coinbase. Binance, the largest exchange globally with several billion dollars of daily transaction volume, is registered offshore and technically off limits to U.S. investors. Coinbase, on the other hand, is…


As US and China Spar, Western CEOs ‘Love the CCP’

Commentary At an annual security conference in Singapore on June 4, China’s defense minister accused the United States of being a hegemonic power. Given all the trouble Washington is experiencing over Taiwan and Ukraine, clearly, we are not. U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was also at the conference. He sat at the same dinner…


Commodity Weakness Destroys the Inflationists’ Narrative

Commentary Most politicians have used the “Ukraine invasion card” to justify the massive inflationary burst in 2021–23. It does not matter if inflation was already elevated prior to the war. Supply-chain disruptions, demand recovery, wage growth… Many excuses were used to justify inflation, except the only one that can make aggregate prices rise in unison,…


Investors Should Brace for Debt Ceiling Aftermath

Commentary At the risk of sounding like a market curmudgeon, we must warn that the debt-ceiling deal agreement is a double-edged sword. While the immediate financial risk of a U.S. government default has been averted, a few other consequences resulting from the debt ceiling increase will likely haunt investors and the U.S. economy in the…


How the Debt Deal Will Impact the Economy

The debt deal between President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) allows the federal government to continue functioning for the next year and a half. To make the agreement, both sides conceded what they believe are important issues. One thing the agreement provides is a clear picture each party envisions for the future…


May Jobs Resets Recession Expectations, but Hardens Inflation Expectations

New May jobs printed at 339,000 on June 2, according to the Establishment Survey, well above market expectations of 180,000 jobs. Net revisions were were also up 93,000 jobs from March and April. That makes the average three-month jobs creation over 283,000 jobs. The Households Survey, which is compiled from different data, showed just 175,000 jobs…


Fed Plans: Tomorrow and Beyond

Commentary Federal Reserve (Fed) Chairman Jerome Powell recently stepped back from the cut and thrust of immediate policy matters to offer insight into Fed priorities—a review of what events and guidelines will prompt future decisions. Some of what Powell said provided comfort. Other things were not so reassuring. And still, others raised fundamental questions about…


Japan Is Back, yet Still Far From Its Old Days

Commentary The sudden bull of the Japanese stock market in May called for a thorough review of Japan. Japan used to be excluded from Asia in the past decades, but concentrating on industrialization, its stock market expanded exponentially in the latter half of the 1980s. The recent Japanese stock index (whether Nikkei or Topix) is…


Double Standards on Aisle One

Commentary One of the funniest and most original Monty Python skits finds a man paying a receptionist to have an argument with one of her fellow office workers, who does this for a living. But he enters the wrong door. “This is abuse,” he is told by another employee whose job it is to insult…


Vote With Your Wallet!

Commentary In graduate school, I encountered the disturbing theory that your vote doesn’t actually count for much. We have a winner-take-all system of voting in this country. That means that one vote for x is always canceled out by a vote for y. So a husband and wife who disagree might as well stay home….