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James Surowiecki: The crisis in customer service.

posted to The Financial Page on Mon 30th Aug 10

American workers are mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore. That’s the clear message of flight attendant Steven Slater’s emergence as a “working-class hero,” after he threw his job away with a tirade against passengers
James Surowiecki: Building a smarter tax code.

posted to The Financial Page on Mon 9th Aug 10

The fight on Capitol Hill over whether to extend the Bush tax cuts is about many things: deficit reduction, economic stimulus, supply-side ideology. But at its core is a simple question: who counts as rich? The Obama Administration’s answer is that you’re
James Surowiecki: Wall Street, the White House, and the weak economy.

posted to The Financial Page on Mon 26th Jul 10

The U.S. economy is limping along. The job market is in rotten shape, and business investment is hitting historic lows. And, if you’re looking for a culprit for this dismal state of affairs, many businesspeople would be happy to point you to the White

James Surowiecki: The perils of economic populism.

posted to The Financial Page on Mon 8th Feb 10

It’s been the political equivalent of an intervention: in recent weeks, Democrats have been bombarded with advice about how they should reinvent their economic agenda. The electorate, we hear, wants Barack Obama to be more of an economic populist but
James Surowiecki: Why don’t our regulators do a better job?

posted to The Financial Page on Mon 7th Jun 10

A few weeks after B.P.’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew up and crude started spewing into the Gulf, Ken Salazar, the Secretary of the Interior, ordered the breakup of the Minerals Management Service—the agency that was supposedly in charge of offshore
James Surowiecki: Can economic recovery save the Democrats in November?

posted to The Financial Page on Mon 12th Apr 10

Given high unemployment and flat wages, no one is going to be singing “Happy Days Are Here Again” any time soon (even if the tune was F.D.R.’s theme song). But we’ve now had three straight quarters of growth, and last month saw the creation . . .

Monday links: subtle signals

posted to Abnormal Returns on Mon 30th Aug 10

The high yield bond rally seems to be slowing. (EconomPic Data, research puzzle)The state of asset class momentum. (The Capital Spectator)An enhanced momentum strategy. (CXO Advisory Group)Stock correlations are plumbing new highs. (Daily Options Report)Colombia
ARTV on personal finance and trading success

posted to Abnormal Returns on Fri 27th Aug 10

Yesterday we aired a guest-free version of Abnormal Returns on StockTwits TV. We reflected on the disparate nature of our past two guests and how in fact they are more closely related than one might think. The bottom line being that to succeed in trading one
Will the proposed top-end tax rate increases go far enough?

posted to Consider the Evidence on Sat 14th Aug 10

James Surowiecki:At the same time that the rich have been pulling away from the middle class, the very rich have been pulling away from the pretty rich, and the very, very rich have been pulling away from the very rich.The current debate over taxes takes none