Was the deficit Supercommittee’s failure a fiscal disaster? On the face of it, no. Their failure to come up with $1.2 trillion in tax increases and spending cuts over two years will simply trigger an automatic sequester process that will begin in 2013. There’s no risk from this of a government shutdown or a debt default. All three ratings agencies affirmed the US’s credit rating. But on a deeper level it illustrates that our political system is broken. The fiscal path the nation is [...]

What do we have to be thankful for? We can be thankful that we have free markets and free capital, where we can invest where we want and when we want without many restrictions. If I want to buy shares in a Chilean airline or a Chinese oil company, I can do that. And they’re obligated to provide audited financials. We can be thankful that we have an open and deliberative political process. Sure, it can be chaotic. The failure of the Supercommittee and [...]

There’s one weasel-word that can immunize any prediction: “yet.” Talk to an inflation hawk about price stability and he’ll concur that prices haven’t risen much…yet. Complain to an unreformed Cold Warrior about how Russia seems to be much more market-oriented she’ll agree…for now. Challenge mega-bears or uber-bulls with the 10-year do-nothing nature of the stock market and they’ll smile and say, “Not yet.” “Yet” is the universal acid: it indemnifies anyone who uses it. I once read a market analyst who, after predicting a [...]

Could Little Rhody show the way? Up until now Rhode Island has been a bit player in the financial crisis. The State suffered tremendously during the recession: unemployment is currently 10.5%; almost double New Hampshire’s 5.4% and the worst level in New England. In addition to cyclical issues, Rhode Island’s economy has been beset by structural challenges for some time. When the headline bankruptcy of Central Falls hit the tape, many municipal investors decided to avoid the State entirely. Their yields rose, exacerbating fiscal [...]

Something is wrong. Something is wrong when GE employs an army of accountants to file a 57,000 page tax return in order to pay no taxes. Something is wrong when our 35% marginal corporate tax rate nets a 20% effective tax rate. Something is wrong when a country like Finland--with a 26% marginal rate--collects corporate taxes equal to 4% of its economy, while the US, with a 35% marginal rate, only collect taxes equal to 1.8% of its economy. And this isn’t just a [...]

So how do we fix accounting? Someone once said that free elections are meaningless as long as the politicians control who counts the votes. In the same way, accounting reform is meaningless as long as management controls the accountants. At present, audited financials are the responsibility of the firm. You can’t list a company without hiring an auditor to look at your books. But the independence of such audits is a fiction. If the auditors come up with an opinion that differs dramatically from [...]

So what is wrong with accounting? I know. As soon as I mention accounting, most people’s eyes glaze over. It’s like those dreadful, interminable Algebra 2 classes: the teacher talked to the board and went on and on and on while everyone else got to go outside and you were stuck with this boring class forever! Or that’s what it seemed like. And accounting seems like that. The problem is there are these really strange rules in Accounting-land. It’s like Math-world, only it pretends [...]

Is accounting part of the problem? At its heart, accounting is an attempt to translate the economic reality of an enterprise into a set of standardized reports. Accounting’s high-point was captured in a statement by Larry Summers in 1999 while Deputy Treasury Secretary. He stated that General Accepted Accounting Principles were perhaps the most important financial innovation on the American landscape. Talk about overreach! Accounting is in many ways a disaster. For example, accountants now mark much of a bank’s balance sheet to market. [...]

Are banks the problem or the solution? Up until now, employment growth has been abysmal. And most jobs are created by young firms. But young firms have a hard time expanding, so they need bank loans. And bank loans are hard to get these days. The banks have all been told that they need higher capital ratios, and there’s two ways to do that: issue stock, diluting existing shareholders, or shrink the balance sheet, which temporarily reduces earnings. Hmmm: which do you think shareholders [...]

Why do we celebrate Veterans Day? On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, major hostilities ceased in World War I. At the time, it was simply called “The Great War.” No one could imagine a greater: more than 70 million combatants were mobilized and about 30 million were killed or wounded. By contrast, the Franco-Prussian War that took place 45 years earlier (over much of the same territory) only saw one tenth the number of casualties. Seven [...]