We’ve all heard it, and many of us have grown up with it:
“The customer is always right!”
Today, with telecommunications corporations, banking and financial corporations, insurance companies, newspaper companies, and companies we don’t even understand gobbling each other up at a rate that makes Pac-Man look like a child’s game (oh, wait – Pac-Man is a [...]

“I don’t think the euro has weaknesses,” said Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the Eurogroup and Prime Minister of Luxembourg. “I think the main problem and difficulty we have is to convince people that this was the right decision to be taken.”
Juncker’s comment from an interview during the Brussels Economic Forum 2008 demonstrates the unique problem [...]

Polls show a large number of Americans are not satisfied with the choice they’re faced with this November: Obama or McCain?
One reason is that the two major-party candidates show an equal level of disdain for basic economic principles. Obama decries “the idolatry of the free market” and McCain chastises “speculators” and says he wishes interest [...]

There was once a time long ago when many economies ran on a barter system. There was no fiat money. There was no central banking system. There was no Federal Reserve to insure the validity of any currency. If you wanted a bag of rice you traded with what you grew or produced. As financial [...]

Revolutionary Wealth: How It Will Be Created and How It Will Change Our Lives. By Alvin and Heidi Toffler. Knopf, 2006. 512 pages. $15.95.
In 1970, Alvin Toffler published Future Shock, an analysis of the accelerating waves of change moving through society. Toffler built on a number of movements already underway both social (the changes he [...]

The U.S. Constitution does not give Congress the power to regulate smoking or use of tobacco. However, Congress can use the Commerce Clause to regulate smoking or enact a nationwide ban on smoking in public places including restaurants and bars. It has not opted to do so. Consequently, smoke-free laws are a result of state [...]

The bursting of the housing bubble has not only hurt middle-class and semi-affluent Americans (who thought they were more affluent than they were!), but also the rich and famous. Everyone has heard about Ed McMahon’s troubles – his wife sharing how she’s been so degraded that she now shops at (gasp!) Target of all places [...]