Economic growth and prosperity, two concepts that fit perfectly together, like peanut butter and jelly, or summer and the sun. As with all things, there are voices that challenge this notion, and those voices are becoming increasingly loud. In a recent article in The New Yorker, author John Cassidy examined the relationship among economic growth, […]
News
My 2020 New Year’s Resolution is Broken Already!…
Every January I promise myself I will resist forecasting. It’s the smart people who know how little they know about the future, so I will try to be a smart person. I was in Taiwan on a business trip in the 1990s and saw a government report which projected the next five-year growth rate out […]
“Workin’ For The Man” Ain’t What it Used to Be…
An Oxford University study back in 2013 concluded that 47% of American jobs are at high risk of automation within two decades. A McKinsey Global Institute analysis came to the same conclusion according to an article in The Week back in September 2019. Stories about the future are often scarier than what actually comes about. […]
So Why Are We Not Happier?…
The United Nations 2019 World Happiness Report is out and the happiest country in the world is Finland. The U.S. is all the way down in 19th place, its worst ranking ever. How can we be so affluent and at the same time so glum? I don’t have the answer but a good place to […]
Climbing a Wall of Worry…
From an economic perspective, the last decade was remarkable. Unemployment declined steadily, inflation, which can heat up during the late stages of an economic recovery, remained muted and interest rates low. Investors also had a good 10 years. Between the end of 2009 and 2019, stocks in the S&P 500 returned just over 250% and […]
Why Your Cell Phone Plan Is So Expensive…
In the introduction to his new book, The Great Reversal, economist Thomas Philippon tells a wonderful story about landing in Boston in 1999 as a native of France, eager to start his Ph.D. program in economics at MIT. After finding a place to live and taking care of the basics, he goes to buy a […]
“A Good Forecaster is Not Smarter Than Everyone Else, He Merely Has his Ignorance Better Organized.” – Anonymous
January is almost upon us and in the investment business, that means a wave of forecasts are headed our way. After a year of so much uncertainty on everything from trade to the elections, many will find these prognostications soothing. But unfortunately, both the nature of forecasting and our own behavioral biases suggest that we […]
O.K., It’s Time To Talk Bubbles…
We’re Number 1! The current Economic Recovery has set a record, the longest advance in U.S. history. That’s nice, but the skeptics will immediately ask, when’s the next crash coming? Right now things in the U.S. look good so no immediate panic – but we know that life is cyclical and a recession will happen […]
The Reign of the Superstar…
We are all aware of the growing income inequality in our nation and around the world. A small group of people are taking an increasingly large share of the pie. This topic is center stage on some of the 2020 presidential campaign platforms and frequently referenced in news articles – however less has been mentioned […]
The Stories We Tell…
In 1985 Brad E. Bell and Elizabeth F. Loftus did a controlled experiment to find out how subjects playing the role of jury members responded to different presentations of the same evidence. The result was that vivid narratives full of colorful detail were far more effective than bland presentations of fact. In one example, they […]
Does Debt Matter Anymore?..
There are two methods by which a country may achieve an annual spending budget. First funds can be raised through taxation of citizens and businesses. The second is to borrow. Historically a prudent monetary policy would not utilize the second option unless there is an emergency, like war or economic recessions. Yet we find ourselves […]
Keeping up with Hanson & Doremus…
It’s hard to believe we have been going now for almost twenty-five years. We started here in the Maltex building in Burlington in 1995 with just two people. We have grown to ten today. Some things however have not changed. We are as committed now as we were then to professional money management and providing […]
