Those of us of a certain age will remember “CliffsNotes,” the condensed study notes that saved a lot of procrastinating students from academic purgatory. I still have never read War and Peace, but the CliffsNotes were great! Back in 2012, Jason Zweig, the excellent columnist in The Wall Street Journal, came up with the idea […]
News & Insights
Watch the scotch tape expense and don’t confuse luck for brains
“When mortals go through a prosperous period, it seems to be human nature for expenses to balloon. We are going to be the exception,” wrote Alan Greenberg, chair of Wall Street firm Bear Stearns, in one of his famous memos exhorting partners to watch expenses like a hawk and pinch every penny. It’s perfectly sensible […]
Electric utilities forge a new path forward
The Biden administration has laid out some aggressive goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Among other things, these objectives aim to have “clean” energy (wind, solar, hydro, etc.) produce 80% of the nation’s total energy generation by 2030, up from approximately 40% today. This target follows on the recently rejoined Paris Agreement’s stated aim for […]
“Things are hopeless but not serious.” (Viennese Satirist, Karl Kraus)
The Social Security Trustees recently released their Annual Report August 31, which warned that the Social Security Reserve Fund would run out of money by 2033, one year earlier than previously projected. Social Security is paid from two sources: First from FICA payroll taxes, the 7.65% of gross pay paid by both employees and employers. […]
A labor market conundrum
You don’t need to look too far to see the negative impact that labor shortages are having on the economy. Long lines at grocery stores, restaurants with reduced hours, and childcare facilities capping enrollment are just some of the examples. As a long-time market observer, I find these persistent shortages somewhat perplexing. Under standard economic […]
Would you rent your furniture? Your tires?
We’ve fully embraced the rental and subscription economies, many would say. We don’t buy software in shrink-wrapped packages. We subscribe. We may buy a movie or music occasionally, but we more likely access our media through streaming services. We can get fashion from Rent the Runway. We can rent furniture too – and not the […]
Sensible wisdom never grows old
As Warren Buffett once said, “Investing is simple…but not easy.” There are only a few principles involved in being successful with money. Jonathan Clements, the Personal Finance columnist at The Wall Street Journal from 1994 to 2008, said there are only 25 different stories in Personal Finance. The trick, after you have written all 25, […]
Back to the office…Remedial education required
We here at Hanson+Doremus try to be “impactful” and “value-add.” We are all about “big data” (we read multiple newspapers!) we have “great capacity” (10+ employees!) and operate “holistically” and “sustainably” (just like the SATs, I am going to assume it is OK to guess on the meaning of some of these.) Buzzwords. Buzzwords. The […]
A quarter century on…any words of wisdom?
We have been writing this newsletter for 25 years now. We are not market forecasters. We don’t try to tell you when to buy or when to sell. We are long-term investors, almost always fully invested. We help clients decide on an appropriate level of risk, stocks versus bonds versus cash, and then we stick […]
Forget about success. Try “lying flat.”
There’s a new movement taking hold among China’s 20- and 30-somethings, and it’s absolutely antithetical to the way they grew up. Indoctrinated since birth to believe that hard work and intense drive were the only paths forward, they have been competing fiercely all their lives for top university spots, good jobs, and later, the best […]
Will there be a world without work?
In 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes wrote a short essay called “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren,” where he envisioned technological advances enabling us to do all the work of agriculture, mining, and manufacturing with only a quarter of the human effort. Future generations, he said, would work only 15 hours a week. In fact, […]
The case for rising productivity in the U.S.
For most of the past 15 years, the U.S. has suffered from a productivity problem. Except for a spike after the 2009 Financial Crisis, productivity gains have been stuck at 1% per year over the past decade, or half the long-term average. Why does this matter? Economies that produce more with the same number of […]
