Online Article Archive

Much is made, in the U.S. right-wing media, of the alleged socialist tendencies of the current administration. According to this view Barack Obama is an avowed Marxist hell-bent on turning the Republic into a European-style socialist state.
The current occupant of the White House certainly has some leftist leanings, as do many members of the Democratic […]

The stimuls bill passed seven months ago contained an $8,000 tax credit limited to first time home buyers. At the time many believed it would have the impact of taking a knife to a gun fight. They were wrong. The tax credit combined with historically low interest rates turned out to be the driving force […]

My recent survey produced a variety of ideas, but most of them had these common elements: replace the Internal Revenue Code with a simpler model, encourage businesses to increase employment, and insist upon tort reform everywhere.
It also brought two disturbing realities into focus: We are painfully apathetic (less than 1% of the people I […]

The stock market reversal in the last four days should give us pause. The recent economic data appears far more positive than whatever has powered the market rally to date. If we really are at the beginning of a V-shaped rebound, as many analysts are saying, there is no reason for the markets to fall, […]

The faith in the sanctity of the market is the bedrock of the Libertarian creed. It is not so much a philosophy as a religion- only in place of a benevolent God, we have the omniscient market. The market is seen as a perfect, self regulating mechanism. The implication is that, it is far better […]

In March of this year, the Obama Administration authorized a new federal program to help stabilize the housing industry. The feds poured a mere $75 billion into the Making Home Affordable (MHA) mortgage program intended to avert further foreclosures, assist responsible home owners in retaining their homes and stabilize the nation’s communities.
Home Affordable Refinancing […]

“The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems — the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behaviour and religion.”
– John Maynard Keynes, 1945(1) […]

In writing the American constitution, our Founding Fathers could not say openly they were founding a “polity” or oligarchy/democracy hybrid. Why?
On the one hand, an open acknowledgement of an oligarchic component would have alienated a large portion of the American people who had just won a war for independence.
On the other hand, the Founding […]

State and local governments across the nation are gearing up to spend federal stimulus funds. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) birthed the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) that provides federal stimulus dollars to assist neighborhoods hardest hit by the home foreclosure crisis. The NSP falls under the umbrella of the […]

Mortgage rates fell this week to the lowest point since May 28, 2009. Whether May 28, 2009 is the summer is open to some debate. The summer solstice usually is considered the technical beginning of summer which occurred on June 21st this year. Some consider Memorial Day the beginning of summer which […]