Home » 2014 » June (Page 2)

Monthly Archives: June 2014

Wealth is How You Feel

Posted on by | 2 Comments

With Brazil hosting the World Cup and clearly looking for more from their economy and society, this is a good piece to re-run from last year.

Around the world, two stories have been consistent since 2008 – the developed world is struggling with a depression while the developing world largely charges ahead.  The two worlds have never been so far apart as the careen towards similarity.  But in this hemisphere, three stories have come to show where it all comes together – how “wealthy” is what a nation feels more than how it is.

Forget how Japan and Europe are wallowing in desperation for a while – on this side of the big ponds things are happening.  It may be slower than anyone wants, but change is happening.  The reactions to that change show that my favorite saying is still true – that while people are people, cultures are cultures.  Wealth, or at least the feeling of wealth, is a state of mind.

Continue reading →

Nationhood, the Hard Way

Posted on by | 6 Comments

The latest crisis in Iraq has become a grave situation. This spillover from Syria, in the form of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has already become a regional conflict even bigger than the refugee crisis that has spilled over into all of the neighbors of Syria.

What’s less obvious is that ultimately this could become something much more profound if everyone involved manages to do the right thing for once. The odds of that happening are slim, but important steps forward have been taken by the largest group of stateless people in the world, the Kurds. How they play their hand could determine how many wrongs dating back to the fall of the Ottoman Empire nearly a century ago are finally righted.

Continue reading →

Lines and Language

Posted on by | 4 Comments

Eric Cantor’s primary loss may have been the shock that finally changes everything. That’s an awful lot to ask, but the early signs are that the various forms of establishment in politics and media were caught completely off guard. The response so far has been careful and even intelligent as the constantly wagging tongues have stopped long enough to give more thoughtful voices an opening.

Whether or not there is a permanent change remains to be seen. But the easy explanations quickly sank from their own weight while something that usually lurks much deeper is floating to the surface. If we can change the conversation, we can change the politics.  Crossies?

Continue reading →

Working Rich

Posted on by | 11 Comments

There is no larger political issue in the US right now than the progress of income inequality. Polls show that most Americans think it is a serious problem, and more importantly that work does not create opportunities for advancement. Concern over this situation falls somewhat along party and generational lines, but when we talk about potential solutions that debate becomes much hotter. Should wealth actively be redistributed by government policy?

Into this debate comes Thomas Piketty, a French economist whose work has culminated so far with “Capital in the 21st Century”. His decades of research in the field is laid out to show that wealth is concentrating, and more to the point naturally will because return on investment outpaces wage growth. That argument has been called into question, but another central point has not – that this generation’s wealthy are not a “leisure class” but a “working rich”. They have a power beyond their own money in that they control corporations and funds – other people’s money. Taken properly, it’s political high explosive.

Continue reading →

Greed Beats Fear – For Now

Posted on by | 2 Comments

The the sun beats out beads of sweat and the kids laze at home without school to worry about. It’s summer, the season of loafing. Typically this is the time of year when there’s work to be done and jobs are plentiful but the stock market takes a gentle pause.

Not last year, and not this year. The stock market is hitting new highs as investors find US securities the safest and most promising investment on the planet. But just like last year, the pace of job growth is still not accelerating beyond the roughly 190k jobs created every month. It’s a decent pace, but not what we need to claw out way out of the six year hole and bring back the boom. Barataria called that one completely wrong.

It’s past time to get serious about income inequality – or really the lack of opportunity for those who don’t have money to invest.

Continue reading →