• April 26, 2016

Welcome to the Pale Gray Dot

“The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.” 
– Robert Frost

“It's paradoxical that the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but the idea of getting old doesn't appeal to anyone.” 
– Andy Rooney

“Deng Xiaoping made a calculation. He bet on demographics. What he knew was that China had this enormous population of young, underemployed people, people who he could move from the farms to the coast and put them to work in factories, and that would be the lifeblood of China's...

• April 16, 2016

What Condition My Condition Is In

I woke up this morning with the sundown shining in
I found my mind in a brown paper bag but then
I tripped on a cloud and fell-a eight miles high
I tore my mind on a jagged sky 
I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in

Yeah, yeah, oh-yeah, what condition my condition was in

– Made famous by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, 1968

• April 10, 2016

Open Letter to the President, Part Five

When the next president of the United States walks into the Oval Office on Saturday, January 22, after the heady experience of Inauguration Day followed by numerous balls, he or she will be confronted with significant economic challenges. This is the fifth and I hope final installment in a series of letters I’ve written to the next president on those challenges. The first three letters in the series dealt mostly with the realities of the economic landscape beyond the the United States. The...

• April 2, 2016

Open Letter to the Next President, Part 4

For the past three weeks I’ve been discussing the economic realities the new president will face when he or she takes office next January, using the device of an “open letter to the next president.” Mostly, we’ve been dealing with the economic realities that other countries face and with how difficult the global economic climate is going to be during the next president’s first four years. I briefly outlined last week the stark reality of what will happen to the deficit and national debt in the...