Why, oh why, did the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression have to hit during a presidential election year?
The ‘Fear Index’, also known as the VIX (or, officially, the Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index) is a financial tool that measures market swings or volatility. The higher the VIX goes, the scarier the market [...]

At a most appropriate time, Sukrit asks:

What is the difference between the Austrian business cycle theory and monetarism, and which one do you think is a more accurate description of how the economy works?

The first part is fairly easily explained, since much material is written on both. The second part is much more difficult [...]

Several questions during the last few days pointed out the obvious: lost in the media coverage of the American financial crisis and the tail end of the presidential election seems to be the fact that there really is news beyond Wall Street and Main Street.
I could not agree more.
For example, how much attention has been [...]

To the surprise of most observers, Ron Paul - who claimed he would stay neutral between the presidential candidates of the Constitution and Libertarian parties - endorsed the Constitution Party’s Chuck Baldwin in a blog post made on September 22. Baldwin acknowledged and accepted the endorsement the following day.
Paul, whose candidacy brought together people from [...]

Let me just say right off the bat that I’m not here to add fuel to the raging tabloid fires burning everywhere these days over John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate. Better bloggers than I have already said better things than I can even imagine, both pro and con and everything [...]

Economically speaking, the Democratic and Republican conventions were exercises in massive self-delusion. Barack Obama and his party acolytes bragged about how they would spend money we don’t have (we’re $10 trillion in the hole, by the way), and McCain and the Republicans promised to balance the budget, strengthen the dollar, and close the $70 trillion [...]

By the time November rolls around, Americans will have heard more economic numbers crunched in more creative ways than anyone ever would have imagined possible. That’s the mathematical formula for recreating any candidate in the image of a populist hero: numbers and more numbers. Bury ‘em in numbers, and if they start asking questions, well, [...]

In an election year, we hear a lot about the rich and the middle class and usually thrown into the discussion is the word “tax” and lots of rather heated rhetoric concerning how heavily the government should lean on people. One of the reasons this has become an issue this election is that Democratic candidate [...]

Ever since Bill Clinton remarked, “It’s the economy, stupid!” the phrase has become a prominent part of the American political lexicon. This time around, we hear it all the time mouthed by pundits, and yet, watching the avalanche of political ads from where I live (in Michigan, a battleground state), it seems to me to [...]