Income inequality is much in the news. Democratic politicians are decrying it and economists have discovered it. Both groups have been given ammunition by the recent work of economists Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley and Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics. Piketty’s book, Capital in the 21st Century, recently translated into English, sits near the top of the best-seller list. Saez and Piketty claim to prove, through an examination of IRS records, that income ...

Five years into an economic expansion, the Federal Reserve continues to maintain interest rates at historically low levels. The ten-year Treasury Note, our current bellwether, has remained stuck at a yield of 2.6% for almost a year and prior to that was marooned at a yield of 1.6%. The jump from 1.6% to 2.6% occurred suddenly and dramatically last summer after Bernanke hinted that the Fed might be ready to begin tapering its bond buying program. The move down to 1.6% was itself a product of dras...

The current crisis in the Ukraine is worrisome and more than a little annoying.  Didn’t we settle those Eastern European borders in the early 1990’s when the Soviet Union collapsed.  We won the Cold War, right?  There might not have been a peace treaty, per se, but there was a pretty clear understanding and a number of agreements.  The Soviet satellites – Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, the Baltic states, et al – were set free and many of the Soviet republics, including Ukra...

“Dare to be great,” a phrase that denotes both vision and hubris, gained currency in the eighties and nineties but seemed to fade in the early 21st century.  Well, not really, as it turns out.  Comcast’s recent agreement to acquire Time Warner — a deal that took most industry observers by surprise — suggests that size is still a goal. Yet, this assertion, however quietly whispered in corridors and cubicles of Comcast’s gleaming Philadelphia headquarters, still inspires fear among con...