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The Friday File: This year’s LA Dodgers are, to date, one of the best baseball teams ever assembled. Their current .714 winning percentage would put them in a tie for the fifth winningest club, and on pace to win 116…

While the 10th anniversary of the first signs of the Great Recession occurred on 8/9/17, what will cause the next recession? My list includes: geopolitical risk, Chinese overreliance on debt, a trade dispute that gets out of hand, a global…

While electric cars sell, they come with two problems. The first, a large public subsidy. When it ended, as it did in Hong Kong and the State of Georgia, sales plummeted by 100% and 80% respectively. The second problem, high…

When asked how they would spend repatriated earnings that are held abroad, the most popular answer was pay down debt, followed by repurchasing existing shares. Next was getting into mergers and acquisitions, fourth was increasing capital spending and fifth was…

Overhauling NAFTA may be very hard. First, unlike Obamacare, Congress likes NAFTA. Second, as Trump is unpopular in Canada and loathed in Mexico, granting significant concessions to the US may be politically impossible. Third, the concessions Canada and Mexico made…

The Friday File: The shortest scheduled passenger flight is between the Orkney Islands of Westray and Papa Westray. The distance of the flight is 1.7 miles, and with a good tailwind can be flown in under a minute. The cost…

Household debt rose for the 12th straight quarter in 17Q2, and is $12.8 trillion, a record. However, it’s just 67% of GDP, compared to 87% in 08Q3, when household debt last peaked. But, credit card and auto loan delinquencies are…

While retail sales jumped 0.6% in July, and May and June were upwardly revised, don’t conclude that consumer spending, 70% of GDP, is necessarily great. Retail sales including food service sales equal $2.4 trillion/year, 20% of consumer spending. Consumer spending…

Among western industrialized nations, Singapore’s homeownership rate is tops; 90.8%, Norway follows at 82.8%, then Iceland at 77.8%, Italy at 72.9%, Finland at 72.7%, Luxembourg at 72.5%, Belgium at 71.3%, Sweden at 70.6%, Ireland at 68.6%, Netherlands at 67.8%, Canada…