News & Insights

Cybersecurity. It is a term you have most likely heard with increasing frequency. It can seem a bit ominous and a bit nebulous. So what does it mean and why should we care about it? Cybersecurity revolves around the protection of digital information. As our lives have become increasingly digital, the volume of online data […]

The Hanson Index is back for its 37th year, our annual attempt to humanize inflation and track prices for goods and services in the Vermont economy — like for a Big Daddy and coffee at Handy’s Lunch (thanks, Earl) and a Vermont fishing license. With inflation heating up, this is a good time to see […]

These words are from Jerome Powell, Chair of the Federal Reserve, whose dual charge is maintaining financial stability (code for low inflation) while also ensuring full employment. It’s a difficult and often impossible balancing act. As you can see from the chart below, inflation has not been cooperating with the Fed recently. It has risen […]

Investors were happy to put 2022 in the rearview mirror, and for good reason. By year-end, the broad U.S. stock market was down 18% while bonds, the “steady Eddie” asset class, had fallen a record-breaking 14%. The pain was particularly pronounced for technology investors who had become accustomed to years of steadily rising share prices. […]

Worker shortages are a problem. Everywhere. You know it if you’ve been looking to hire – or trying to see a doctor, renovate a kitchen, or pick up your burger and fries. Everything is harder and takes longer when the help is not there. Whether it’s railroad workers or accountants, there just are not enough […]

The Federal Reserve is in the news a lot. With inflation running hot, everyone is trying to figure out how high the Fed will raise interest rates. At Hanson + Doremus, we are not trying to guess where rates end up, but we do think it is important to understand the Fed and its thinking […]

As if rising inflation, a falling stock market, and the possibility of a recession were not enough, now we are here to talk to you about unhappiness. (Spoiler alert, there is hope and a positive spin at the end). But first the unhappy part. The Gallup organization has been asking people in many countries over […]

Word of the year in 2022. The Economist recently reviewed candidates for 2022’s word of the year. The Ukraine war introduced us to newfangled terms like “MANPADS,” “HIMARS,” and “Loitering Munitions.” In grocery stores we have to deal with “Shrinkflation” (the same price but a shrunk product–think candy bars). Facebook (sorry, forgot the new name […]

Back in 1960, America made 100% of the world’s semiconductor chips. Names like Fairchild Semiconductor, Texas Instruments (TI), and eventually Intel dominated. Today we make just 12% of the world’s chips domestically. Before you panic, just remember one reason is that many U.S. companies set up plants abroad to take advantage of lower costs. A […]

Founders of behavioral economics, Daniel Kahneman and his long-time collaborator, Amos Tversky, developed a new understanding of how we make decisions. Despite being a psychologist, Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in Economics for the contributions and challenges that his work on “human judgement and decision-making under uncertainty” made to the field. Classical economics considers humans […]

The U.S. is running out of money! Well not exactly, but the Treasury has run out of borrowing power based on the current debt ceiling of $34.4 trillion. It is using “extraordinary measures” now to extend the time Congress has to approve an increase in the debt ceiling. If Congress doesn’t act by the middle […]

Back at the end of October, Barron’s posed the question, “Is China Investible?” The MSCI China Index had gone nowhere for over 25 years, GDP growth was stagnating under the weight of the zero-Covid policy, the property market was teetering, and the government was clamping down on private entrepreneurs. There was little doubt these policies […]