There are some truisms in America we hold dear. One is we see ourselves as a land of opportunity where if you work hard enough you can be a success. A second is that each generation will do better than the last. If you were born in 1940 there was about a 90% chance that […]
Eric Hanson
Yep, China is Different…
Here in the U.S. about 90% of American’s have a FICO credit score but in China only about 30% of citizens do. It was initially thought that online spending would be slow to take off in China due to the lack of credit cards and a poor logistics system. Well “China is China” and companies […]
The Shale Revolution…Still Very Much Alive…
When crude prices collapsed from $100 a barrel in mid-2014 to below $30 in February last year, conventional wisdom was the Shale Revolution of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling was dead. ‘For Sale’ signs in places like Williston, North Dakota, ground zero of the Bakken oil fields, sprouted like weeds. Well, a year later the […]
Here’s Where All The Anger Comes From…
Well, not exactly all of America’s anger but certainly some of it. The chart below shows that for those born in 1940 there was a 90% chance on average that you would end up with a higher standard of living than your parents. But for those born in 1980, the chance is down to only […]
One Atlanta Falcon Super Bowl Winning T-Shirt Please, Extra Large…
I was in Costco just a day after the Super Bowl and there was a whole table of New England Patriot Super Bowl winning T-shirts. These had obviously been produced some weeks in advance. There must have been an equal number of Atlanta Falcon T-shirts somewhere. So where do all the Falcon T-shirts end up? […]
Make America Great Again…
I assume this means jobs. So exactly where are the jobs of the future going to be in America? The Economist took a stab at this in their “The World in 2017” edition late last year. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics produces a survey every two years looking at current jobs and where the […]
The Best Investment Decisions are Always Very Uncomfortable…
Why? Because when prices are really cheap, the stories are absolutely awful. The flip side of the coin, however, is that when prices are cheap, expectations are low and with even the slightest improvement in sentiment, stocks can jump sharply. Remember back in January a year ago? The S&P 500 declined 4.9% in the first […]
The Test Kitchen is Under New Management…
We first started publishing a Holiday Chocolate recipe in 1998. This is our 19th version. We have been a little unscientific with our selections in the past. We often have come down to crunch time with the desperate plea, “Anyone got a recipe for this year’s letter?” Well no more. Seriousness is Job One in […]
Wow, What An Amazing World We Live In!…
A recent story from China in The New York Times International edition (November 15, 2016) caught my eye. Many “common cuckoos” spend the spring and early summer of each year in wetlands near Beijing, China. They feast on caterpillars and grubs in the wet soil. By summer, however, temperatures get pretty hot and the cuckoos […]
Dewey Versus Truman… Rest in Peace…
Your time on the stage as the greatest political upset is, well, history. Donald Trump’s defeat of Hillary Clinton is the new shocker for the ages. I would guess that even many Trump supporters were surprised. Now on to what this will mean for everyone. The Financial Times from London says this “marks a thunderous […]
In Search of the True Self…
Recently I stumbled on the fact that the third most popular course at Harvard University is Classical Chinese Ethical and Political History. Who would have guessed? The course explores the teachings of Chinese Philosophers from 2,000 years ago. Michael Puett, who teaches the course, has now written a book with a co-author, The Path, explaining […]
A Modest Proposal…
There are a lot of moving parts to the U.S. economy today. Let me focus on just two. The first is the general feeling of anger across the country. As Robert Samuelson the columnist in The Washington Post said recently, “the sense of boundless optimism and national superiority that characterized the boom years” of the […]
