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2012
02/15/2012
As Xi Jinping Visits the U.S., Obama Gets That China’s Not the Bad Guy
Just when you think you’ve seen everything, you get the following: the next leader of China, a nation of 1.3 billion people vying to supplant the United States as the world’s largest economy, flies to America on a goodwill tour and goes to…a farm in Iowa. Yes, Vice President Xi Jinping will spend the evening in Muscatine, Iowa, in the Victorian farmhouse he briefly lived in more than a quarter century ago, when he was an official from the Chinese province of Hebei sent to learn Iowa’s agricultural innovations and bring them back to a China that was then struggling to increase crop yields.
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02/21/2012
Bells Are Ringing! Confidence Rises as the Dow—Finally—Hits 13,000 Again
The Dow Jones industrial average briefly flirted with 13,000 today, marking the first time since May 2008 that the august index has reached that level. The number is purely symbolic, of course, but the steady rise of stocks this year (with the major indices up anywhere from 5 to 10 percent) has taken many by surprise, none more than Wall Street professionals who have assumed a Greek default and the ensuing financial catastrophe to be a near certainty. Instead of a Europe-led meltdown, we are witnessing a melt-up.
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02/03/2012
Unemployment Rate Drops, But Reality of Jobs Crisis Is More Complicated
Friday’s jobs report proved what has been increasingly clear these past months: Unemployment remains stubbornly high, has stopped getting appreciably worse, appears to be getting better, and will be a chronic issue even as the overall economic picture has brightened considerably.
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