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"Whether by intention or by happenstance, many, if not most, governments in recent decades have been relying more and more on the forces of the marketplace and reducing their intervention in market outcomes......keep reading

One awoke, on the first business morning after Labor Day weekend, to the happy news. The deepest oil and gas well ever drilled in the Gulf of Mexico -- in 7,000 feet of water, and then through 20,000 feet of rock below -- had confirmed the existence of a 300-square-mile field, in a geologic formation called the lower tertiary, which could add 50% to America's domestic reserves....keep reading

Pop Quiz...keep reading

Let me first ritually recite the caveats. (1) A multi-decade/transgenerational financial planner shouldn't have a market viewpoint in less than 20-year clips....keep reading

The more cable channels, internet "news" services and magazines there are, the more they tend, at any given moment, to all be covering the same "story."...keep reading

Chock Full O'Nuts, Skelton, Burns...keep reading

Margaret Thatcher,Shelby Cullom Davis, Ben Bernanke...keep reading

Resources...keep reading

The journalistic screaming, wailing, gnashing of teeth and rending of garments which proceeds at least semi-annually from the government's deeply flawed measurement of personal savings was in full cry this past month, although it might have been drowned out by Katrina....keep reading

Unheralded -- indeed, barely reported at all -- by the mainstream media, the National Center for Health Statistics announced in early February that the number of cancer deaths in the United States had fallen for the first time since we started keeping reliable statistics in 1930. (The media's total absence of interest in this development is only natural: it is, of course, good news, and therefore all but off limits.)...keep reading

1. Great books are rare; timely books even more so. Thus, when a book comes ...
2. I don't know how I missed Dan Reingold's Confessions of a Wall Street Analyst ...
3. Since it is by definition semi-annual, the Fed's report to the Congress, delivered ...
4. I've made the point before in this newsletter that Iran may be a failing state, ...
5. A trifecta of interesting pieces in the August 6 Fortune: the cover story on ...
6. I can't seem to stop myself from adding a word or two about an odd little book ..
7. Much has been made of the fact that this baseball season marks the sixtieth ...

1. Had Cornelius Vanderbilt been able to sell all his holdings ...
2. Longtime reader Mike Kennedy alerted me to the newly ...
3. I suppose I've been aware of Seek Publishing's wonderful ...
4. Be sure to study Ben Casselman's front-page story in the ...

Squibs...keep reading

Folks, the full-year numbers are in. Trim Tabs Research says that for the calendar year 2009--during which, for all but the first 68 days, the equity market was staging its most spectacular advance in three quarters of a century...keep reading

From its post-apocalyptic recovery high on April 23 to its panic low on July 2, the S&P 500 declined, on a closing basis, 16%....keep reading

The accompanying Client's Corner essay--premised on the market's approaching recovery to September 2008 Lehman bankruptcy levels--is clearly intended to help you start a "What have we learned" conversation with clients (and even prospects) about the whole bear market experience in general, and the experience of this deeply weird year in particular....keep reading

1. The well-regarded journal Foreign Affairs has always been a repository of ...
2. Speaking (as I was a moment ago, and indeed seem always to be doing) of the ...
3. I read Henry Kaufman's The Road to Financial Reformation so you don't have ...
4. When--as you should--you finish reading Erin Arvedlund's Too Good to Be ...
5. An extremely refreshing article on the resurgent JetBlue Airways, and its CEO ...
6. The Economist magazine's quarterly review of technology is one of the features ...
7. A sobering look at the way higher taxes, increased regulation, volatility and the ...
8. On the other hand, don't miss James Grant's delightful (and wholly ...
9. The most economical yet most devastating review of Obamacare I've seen is ...
10. Bernanke's speech at the annual Jackson Hole pow-wow on August 21--...
11. You will have wondered--as even I confess to wondering--whether the newly ...

Resources...keep reading

Matisse, Parcells, Rilke...keep reading

With the stock market continuing to behave as neurotically as I've ever seen it in 40 years (down two percent one day, up as much the next), with the Federal Reserve walking a knife edge between stemming economic slowdown while controlling inflation, with daily incidents of further writedowns from the subprime mess and the capital infusions they necessitate...advisors and their clients may find it restorative of something more than a mayfly's perspective to consider the recent real yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury bond - the closest thing to a riskless investment ever crafted by the hand of man....keep reading