As the Economist videographic shown below illustrates, the worldwide market for luxury goods has grown significantly over the past fifteen years. The very rich have always consumed luxury goods and continued to do so even in the depths of the ...

A very brief video clip of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke announcing that the recession is over has been seen on nearly every nightly newscast this evening. What is more relevant are the comments Mr. Bernanke made prior to stating ...

President Obama's chief economic adviser has indicated that he expects unemployment to stay at elevated levels for "a few years". In a candid interview with Nightly Business Report, National Economic Council Director Larry Summers did not express much hope for ...

Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett and Vanguard Group founder John Bogle have joined with 26 other prominent individuals to call for action to reduce "short-termism" in business and investment management. In an Aspen Institute statement released today and summarized in ...

Much of the response to the global economic crisis of the past two years has been based on the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes. No other economist of the past century has had such a profound influence on modern ...

BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu is actively seeking commitments from the Chinese government to subsidize purchases of all-electric automobiles such as the e6 sedan as well as plug-in hybrids such as the F3DM model. While BYD has made some progress selling ...

The Securities and Exchange Commission has now admitted what has been obvious to anyone who has been paying attention over the past several months: Inspectors utterly failed to detect Bernard Madoff's massive Ponzi scheme despite numerous warnings over a sixteen ...

Shai Agassi, the founder of Better Place, has come up with a strategy for building infrastructure that he believes will solve the problem of range. Mr. Agassi's strategy is one that has been discussed here in the past. Better Place ...

Read this post for more information on the Cash for Clunkers program and the specific impact of the program on local mechanics ...

The weekly and monthly data published by the Association of American Railroads (AAR) can be useful for evaluating the state of the overall macroeconomy. Warren Buffett has stated that he follows such indicators on a regular basis and AAR reports ...

With the initial $1 billion of funding for the Federal Government's "Cash for Clunkers" program nearly exhausted, the Senate must pass a bill to provide more money for the program prior to the start of the August recess at the ...

The Great Depression of the 1930s changed consumer behavior for decades among those who experienced the downturn firsthand. Although the vast majority of consumers today have no direct recollection of the Great Depression, most everyone remembers relatives who were frugal ...

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) forecasts a "near normal" hurricane season, and so far there have not been any named storms in the Atlantic. NOAA forecasts are closely watched by insurers, investors, and property owners for obvious reasons ...

Safeway Chairman and CEO Steven Burd wrote an op-ed article for the Wall Street Journal in June that has not received as much attention as it deserves. Safeway is a self insured employer and designed a plan that has kept ...

The Economist published an article last week regarding the planned Nabucco pipeline which is intended to supply Europe with natural gas originating in Turkey and possibly the Kurdish autonomous region of Iraq. Read this article for an interesting "videographic" illustrating ...

Last week, I wrote a review of Mark Helprin's new book entitled Digital Barbarism. In today's Wall Street Journal, columnist L. Gordon Crovitz reports on a conversation with Mr. Helprin about the reaction to the book. Read this article for ...

I first became familiar with Thomas Sowell's work when I read The Vision of the Anointed over a decade ago. Dr. Sowell has written a new book focusing on the recent (and still ongoing) housing debacle in the United States ...

In an interview today, Warren Buffett stated that a second Federal stimulus bill might be necessary and referred to the first $787 billion bill as the economic equivalent of "taking half a tablet of Viagra and having also a bunch ...

As oil prices escalated to nearly $150 one year ago, T. Boone Pickens appeared on CNBC to explain his proposals for energy independence. At the time, Mr. Pickens certainly did not predict the huge collapse in oil prices in the ...

There has been much debate recently regarding the need for a "systemic risk regulator" empowered with the ability to take corrective action to prevent the types of dangerous episodes that have become the norm over the past year. Read this ...