Silver or gold can serve as a hedge against inflation, but be wary if anyone tells you they are sure-fire investments. The problem is that anything, whether bread, a haircut or a house, has value only because it meets peoples’…
Category: Other
Get ready for another bumpy ride in 2012
A year ago, I said that “2011 may be an exciting year but probably not a comfortable one.” Budget problems in Europe, here in Minnesota and in Washington, D.C., bore that out, although things might have been much worse. I…
Taxes that vary with value a time honored tradition
Property taxes certainly excite the passions, at least judging by the spate of communications I have received – positive as well as negative – in reaction to columns that I and my counterpart Joe Soucheray wrote recently. Before we move…
Often, the market is already a step ahead of you
Fevered controversies about economic policies often constitute much ado about nothing. That’s because market outcomes often automatically offset things about which people waste much time wringing their hands. At least that is the way economists look at markets – as…
Lake Pepin problem goes deeper than sediment
Lake Pepin is filling with sediment, slowly but steadily. That hurts Minnesotans and Wisconsinites in particular. Yet, the only policy measures currently available to reduce this are unfair and economically wasteful. This need not be. Twenty years ago, the nation…
Property taxes prove to be a reasonable burden
My fellow columnist Joe Soucheray thinks that property tax increases in St. Paul are too high, that they reflect bloated government and that they may drive people out of the city, turning it into another Detroit. I disagree, for reasons…
A strong dollar does us no favor
The dollar’s current status as “the nicest horse in the glue factory” is a source of pride for some, but on the whole it is bad for the Minnesota economy. Moreover, it may get worse, depending on how acute the…
Leaders take credit for gains, but reality says otherwise
Leadership is important, but even the president of the United States has less of an effect on the economic fundamentals of a large, diverse nation like ours than you might think. And individual members of Congress, even leaders like the…
Loophole let MF Global seep into Midwest
Why would anyone, especially a Minnesota farmer, risk their farm or grain business on what would happen in the European bond market? The answer is that they would not, but the MF Global debacle, in which the company collapsed and…
Where does the Fed get money to lend? It creates it all
The Federal Reserve dominated the news in the past week, and its actions were consistently misunderstood. At the beginning of the week, the news was details, forced from the Fed by Bloomberg News, about some $7.7 trillion in short-term emergency…