Nature may abhor a vacuum, but Wall Street really abhors uncertainty. As an investor, you can make money in wartime, and you can make money in peacetime. What is really tricky is to make money when one day you’re going to war and the next you’re not.
At the moment, we’re in a trade war – except when we’re not. The idea fluctuates not merely from day to day but from Trump Administration individual to individual on the same day. ...
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In the through-the-looking-glass world of Trumpian lunacy, it was perhaps inevitable that President Donald J. Trumpet should tilt his lance at one of the corporations that he was supposedly trying to help with his tax cuts and defend a business that has been laying off the very kinds of workers he swore to protect.
But then, little makes sense about Donnie Two Scoops’ attack on behemoth Amazon. ...
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Sometimes, it’s hard to know where to begin – with the rage and frustration at what’s happening in this country, I mean.
I just filed my taxes, which have increased almost $5,000, thanks to no itemized deductions any longer, a cap on property tax deductions and the elimination of the deduction of state taxes from federal taxes. How again is the tax cut this supposed to benefit the middle class? Oh, that’s right...
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The continuing Revolving Door Policy of the Trump Administration has thrown the systemic failure of Alexandrian leadership – leadership from the front – into sharp relief.
President Donald J. Trumpet has surrounded himself with Trumpettes – yes-men and, to a lesser extent, yes-women – and distanced himself from the No, No, Nanettes. Which is odd, considering his professed love of chaos. Wouldn’t you want some tension, some conflict? ...
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The word “intellectual” has become a dirty one in our culture, and scientists, artists and academics suspect. But there is no greatness in this world without great thinking.
Stephen Hawking – the transcendent English theoretical physicist, cosmologist and mathematician, who died Wednesday, March 14 at age 76 after battling motor neuron disease his entire adult life – had, of course, a great mind, one that bridged Einstein and quantum theory...
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As spring approaches, everyone is abuzz at the prospect of a thaw in relations between the “my button is bigger than your button” guys – President Donald J. Trumpet and L’il Kim Jong-un.
It was South Korea that actually announced the rapprochement on the White House lawn Thursday and, if you think that was unusual (having an intermediary make an announcement of a major foreign policy step involving the American people that has thus far included no actual address to the American people), well, you have to remember that nothing is usual with the act unilaterally (he wishes) Trump. ...
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Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. The Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte. Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. Russia’s Vladimir Putin. China’s Xi Jinping. And, of course, our own Donald J. Trump.
The world is in the grips of the strongman – tough, reactionary and taking no prisoners. Part of this is a response to the terrible, fascinating transition in which we find ourselves – a backlash to the global, multicultural, digital age to which so-called “feminine” energies (communications skills, sensitivity, a sense of service) are better suited. Part of this is the envy, rage and resentment, particularly in this country, of white, blue-collar males, who lacked the courage, intelligence, industry and imagination to confront their greedy employers and, failing that, reinvent themselves when manufacturing jobs began to dry up in the 1970s. ...
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