On January 11, 2007, Hugo Chavez Frias was sworn in for a third term as Venezuela’s president, promising to expropriate strategic sectors of the economy, specifically public utilities and oil properties and to generally run rough-shod over property rights and the rule of law. […]

The Democratic Party and its supporters have indicated a willingness to enact legislation that will reduce demand for bonds, while increasing supply: a recipe for lower bond prices and higher yields. There are few signs that the weakened Republican Party, now in the minority, will put up effective resistance. Here are some signs, portents, and expectations: Increased […]

As the graph below shows, there has been a boom in the sale of new, single-family homes in the US since the late 1990s. In recent weeks, common wisdom bandied about on financial talk shows is that this housing boom was somehow caused by Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan’s reduction in short-term interest rates during the years […]