Two recent big-time media articles again suggest how we have been misled by the consensus of economic opinion. I referred to one last week.

Many economists, including Ben Bernanke and the powers at the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, argued that speculation did not drive up the oil price. This...

With crude oil prices now twenty percent below their levels of just a month ago, and other commodities down as much or more, it's time for the countless economists who told us the rapid prices increases had little to do with speculation to stand up and explain themselves.

Now,...

I have delayed writing this brief piece for some time. But there is something sad if not tragic in watching so many economists rail on today about the dangers of inflation in the current environment. The double digit inflation of the 1970s was a watershed event that changed the predominant...

Barack Obama has come home from the Mideast and Europe to talk about the economy. Among his first public announcements is that he will meet with former Treasury Secretaries Bob Rubin and Lawrence Summers, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, and billionaires Warren Buffet and Eric Schmidt, head of Google....

It was the show of shows last week for those of us who watch the financial markets and worry about the state of the economy. Which I guess means a lot of us. The collapse in share prices of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was startling. The general fall in...

Why bother rebutting Karl Rove, you might ask? He is basically a partisan name caller, not an analyst. But every once in a while you've got to give them their own medicine.

In the Wall Street Journal he wrote a piece calling John McCain and Barack Obama economic illiterates....

The papers all have the same story. The Federal Reserve won't increase rates in the next go-around. Bernanke and his colleagues should be applauded, even though producer prices rose fast as reported this morning. Note that when you delete energy and food costs, the core rate rose modestly again.

People ask me all the time what can be done about this economy. Usually, they mean it rhetorically. That is, we fouled up so much, there isn't anything we can do, is there? Squeeze your hands in frustration. Wait it out.

But my answer is not rhetorical. In fact,...

Inflation or no inflation? That's the big question now.

Fed chairman Ben Bernanke suggested yesterday that there will be no more easy cuts in interest rates. Is he succumbing to the growing pressure from Wall Street and hard line mainstreamers that inflation is now America's concern, not recession?

It is hard not to admire Paul Volcker. He is that odd thing in contemporary America, a truly dedicated public servant to whom, it seems, making money in the private sector was always secondary. He is a straight shooter. He tells it like he sees it.

As Federal Reserve...

I keep beating this horse, but the current economic situation continues to need serious government attention. Increasingly, we are told the worst is over. If that's true, thank fiscal policy and the alert and intelligent Ben Bernanke for acting quickly.

But the worst may not be over. House prices...

This is a campaign issue. The economy is not out of the woods yet, even though stock prices are doing better, companies are making profits, and unemployment hasn't soared. Thank the lower dollar and government fiscal and especially Federal Reserve policies.

But, in fact, credit is still tight in...

This week's economic news is better than it's been in a long time. Jobs losses are not so bad. The stock market's rising. Some say credit is flowing a bit again.

Are we out of hot water? No. But to the extent we are, thank government. And it's important...

Bush conceded the economy was in bad shape on Tuesday. The man who doesn't look at the public opinion surveys may have noticed how little regard Americans have for his economic management according to the latest polls.

More to the point, people know how bad the economy is even...

Despite the confident questions of anchorman Charles Gibson on ABC, capital gains tax cuts are not magic. Over time, cuts in taxes on profits made by investing do not raise total tax revenues. Gibson insisted in his questioning of Barack Obama that they did, and conversely that cuts in capital...

Let the facts speak for themselves. Barack Obama told it mostly correctly last week when he said that workers in many towns in America were angry and bitter. For coming closer to telling the unfiltered truth than most politicians, he was lambasted by his political opponents. That he put religious...

Former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan took to the pages of The Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal to defend his legacy this week. He didn't salvage it.

Not that Greenspan deserves all the blame for the current credit crisis. But he clearly deserves some of it.

No, says...

You must have noticed that a minor debate over semantics in the media since last Friday's devastating employment report. Lost were 80,000 jobs in March. The unemployment rate rose. Is it technically a recession? Does language matter?

What to remember about the silly debate over the nomenclature is that...

The Bush administration has thrown in the towel on the long battle begun in the 1970s to minimize government oversight of the economy. In light of the credit crisis, it now wants to regulate Wall Street. Treasury Secretary Paulson has put to together broad set of reforms, not truly effectual,...

Suddenly, everyone's talking about it. Regulation. Front page stories this weekend in the major newspapers -- The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and The New York Times -- wrote intelligently of a dawning age of re-regulation in American finance.

It's about time, of course. I mean, about time...