The neighboring towns of Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Mexico figure prominently in the work of Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, who, together with a colleague, won this year’s Nobel Prize in economics. In their book Why Nations Fail, Acemoglu and Robinson explain that these two border towns are [...]
The long and the short of it
In the Netherlands, in 1602, the Dutch East India Company conducted the world’s first initial public offering. Then, in 1610, the Netherlands saw the issuance of the first ever stock dividend. And in 1611, when the Amsterdam Exchange opened, the Netherlands became home to the world's first stock [...]
Inflation answers
Open an economics textbook, and you’ll find this fundamental principle: When the money supply expands—that is, when the government prints more money—higher inflation is often the result. This topic has, for good reason, been on investors’ minds lately. Since the pandemic began, the Federal Reserve [...]
Staying positive
Earlier this week, the president again criticized the Federal Reserve. Calling chairman Powell and his colleagues “boneheads,” the president expressed frustration that they haven't done more to lower interest rates. Specifically, the president said, we should, “get our interest rates down to ZERO, [...]
What’s going to happen
This week I received some odd communications from mutual fund giant Vanguard Group. First, they sent a white paper titled, “Here today, gone tomorrow: The impact of economic surprises on asset returns.” As the title suggests, this paper examined the relationship between the economy and the stock [...]
