When future chroniclers describe the late 20th century and early 21st century global inflation now about to renew, the rise of Asia will be an even bigger causation than the massive money expansion set in motion over a quarter of a century by the U.S. Federal Reserve. And this...

Despite its recent uptick, the stock market has plummeted since Barack Obama's January inauguration. The Republicans seek to blame the man and his policies, with which most Americans take issue. Still, it's more common for the hope invariably surrounding new presidents to spark a rally.

That was certainly true...

The time has come to review how back in 2005-2006 George W. Bush -- now increasingly perceived as another Herbert Hoover -- picked two top appointees who helped steer him towards his fateful 2008 rendezvous with a second Great Crash.

One of them, a top level financier, insured...

Somebody should compile an authoritative list of the foolish statements, Wall Street parochialisms and bungled bailouts racked up by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and his faithful Federal Reserve Board sidekick, Ben Bernanke, since the Great Credit Crash began in August 2007. Small wonder the global markets can't sustain any belief...

If his new plan remains afloat, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, from the Wall Street wing of the GOP, may well have doomed the November chances of John McCain, the presidential nominee of this month's Main Street-oriented Republican national convention. By promoting the mother of all financial bail-outs, Paulson has all...

Are Georgia, South Ossetia and the rest of the Caucasus part of the nearby Middle East? Do Afghanistan and Pakistan belong to that same potential geographic Waterloo? Does Turkey, with its new ties to Russia and radical Iran?

Not that the cartographic quibbles and definitions really matter. More central is...

Describing the decade that began in 2000 as the "naughties" or "oughties" offers a useful shorthand -- and particularly for people interested in discussing the U.S. economy's perilous dual pathway of rising commodity inflation coupled with financial assets deflation.

Ought and naught, of course, are two old-fashioned ways...

Deplore as he must the current minor Internet buzz about abolishing the Federal Reserve Board or impeaching its leaders, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke must have a grudging historical sense that 75 years ago, such chastisement might have been appropriate.

Back in 2002, Bernanke, then a Fed Board...

Billionaire California bond manager Bill Gross calls it "a haute con job." Bloomberg News columnist John Wasik describes it as "a testament to the art of economic spin." More and more shoppers and consumer simply disbelieve it.

The subject of this scorn is the federal government's vaunted Consumer Price Index...

Socialism, we are told, is the naiveté of youth, and a fallacious economics the United States has luckily spurned. The late Seymour Lipset, an well-known academician, penned a book in 2001 entitled It Didn't Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States.

Alas, nobody ever told the leaders...

Economic, financial and regulatory issues should dominate politics and government in the United States for the next two or three years, which is important enough. National discourse may also have a new and deserving bogeyman. Franklin D. Roosevelt had Big Business, Ronald Reagan had Big Labor, and my guess is...

George W. Bush's job approval just hit 29% in one national poll, and the incredible shrinking presidency keeps making new lows. In some Northern states, the man's job numbers are down in the teens.

Two months ago, it was suggested in this space that the prospect of having...

Two years ago in American Dynasty, I suggested that George W. Bush, if re-elected, might well face impeachment in his second term as the debacle in Iraq deepened. This has come to pass, and not surprisingly because American presidents since World War Two -- Truman over Korea and Johnson and...