University endowments have been earning returns that have well underperformed stocks, due mostly with their fascination with private equity. They happily fail though. University endowments manage a total of $840 billion in funds these days, and coming in with returns that have averaged 6.3% less than the S&P 500 over the last 10 years should […]
Whether or not there is an actual emergency in the United States right now, President Donald Trump has declared one, to provide him access to up to $50 million by his own pen. Looking back on how COVID-19 has played out around the world so far, it shouldn’t surprise us too much that this has […]
China’s massive effort to try to contain the coronavirus definitely is having an effect on their economy, but now that the incident is winding down, they are starting to heal already. Through all the panicking that is going on in the world about the potential spread of the coronavirus, we’re somehow not noticing that things […]
Former Treasury secretary Jacob Lew has a bone to pick with the Trump administration, believing that they are overusing, abusing and undermining U.S. economic power. In the world of politics, it’s all too easy to be a critic, as just being disgruntled is more than enough, whether or not your criticisms have any actual merit. […]
The idea of Bernie Sanders being the stock market’s best hope for Trump to win is starting to gain more traction. We need to be careful when we wish for this though. Both New Hampshire and Iowa are proud of their front and center positions in kicking off the Democratic nomination process for president, and […]
What does the left-wing branch of corporate and antitrust law look like? Wayne State law professor Sanjukta Paul gives us a glimpse, and it’s a pretty strange world indeed. You would think that capitalism and socialism would make strange bedfellows. Capitalism is based upon the combination of property rights and free exchange, where the law […]
Normally, it is preferable to let the market determine the price of something. With something that is believed to be essential, we need to really make sure the market is free. Free markets need to actually be free markets for them to do their thing and seek out efficiency. The key word here is free, […]
In spite of how great the employment numbers are, there’s always room for complaints. It’s important to realize that we don’t want certain numbers to be too good though. Investors tend to look at the jobs report from the perspective of wanting to see evidence of more economic expansion. Investors love more expansion, and will […]
Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg just wrote an op-ed piece to tell us that in spite of what President Trump says, the economy is broken and he wants to fix it. It is not uncommon for politicians or prospective ones to try to twist things around to suit their political ambitions. Former NYC mayor, mega-billionaire, […]
When two hotheads and gunslingers Donald Trump and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei get into a gunfight, anything can happen. It turns out that both are wiser than they get credit for. The stakes were high in the current confrontation between the United States and Iran. World leaders are generally careful in their remarks, even when they […]