Recent Articles from Tucker Adams
The Eonomist: Things to do in 2011?
I’ve just finished reading my granddaughter’s senior honors thesis on improving bikeability (i.e., riding our bikes to work or on errands), a thoughtful, brilliant piece of work in my totally unbiased point of view. It got me to thinking about things we can all do in 2011 to treat our planet a bit more gently. […]
The Economist: The dirty little secret
There’s a dirty little secret out there: No one can provide a quick fix for the economy. Not the president. Not the new Republican Congress. Not the Federal Reserve. It took us a long time to get into this mess, and it is going to take a long time to get out of it.That said, […]
The Economist: What is money?
Since I wrote about stone money and the unimportance of gold last month, this month seems like a good time to examine what really is money. At the end of the year, faced with holiday gift giving and year-end taxes, it’s a topic on everyone’s mind. More than 30 years ago I wrote my Ph.D. […]
The Economist: Why gold?
I was in New York City a few weeks ago and had a chance to tour the New York Federal Reserve Bank. One of my graduate fields was in monetary theory, so I was excited to visit the place that is the heart of monetary policy execution. Decisions made by the Open Market Committee of […]
The Economist: the importance of being educated
“Education is not an option; it is a requirement,” a wise individual once commented. I couldn’t agree more. It’s not that everyone needs a Ph.D. in economics, although a few more political decision makers who have studied the subject in depth wouldn’t hurt. But the days of high-paying jobs for people who drop out of […]
The Economist: when should we start worrying about the deficit?
The public … realizes that there is a significant adjustment to come, but they tend to think it can be solved by increasing taxes they don’t pay and cutting spending that they don’t benefit from. – Robert Chote Sooner or later we are going to have to deal with the issue of the federal budget […]
The Economist: our unique central bank
A few years ago, before the Great Financial Crisis, I doubt the average American could have told you the name of our central bank. Although business reports occasionally included Chairman Ben Bernanke’s latest pronouncement or a squib on the decision to keep overnight interest rates at historic lows, the Federal Reserve Bank wasn’t of much […]
The Economist: simple solution to a complex question
I’ve just read Helen Thorpe’s new book, “Just Like Us,” the story of four Denver teenagers whom she followed through their senior year in high school and four years at the University of Denver. All of the girls are Latina, two here legally and two undocumented, the latter through no fault of their own. They […]
The Economist: What will the next decade bring?
The Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research, the group charged with dating recessions and recoveries, met in April and announced it did not yet have enough data to determine whether the recession is over. Despite the common belief that a recession occurs when output contracts for two quarters and the […]
The Economist: Do individuals and businesses behave rationally?
One of the basic premises of economic theory is that individuals behave rationally – they take all of the available information, analyze it and then act appropriately. Really? Listen to the head of the Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Delos Cosgrove: Three things – smoking, diet and lack of exercise – cause 40 percent of premature deaths […]
The Economist: What’s the Fed up to?
The Federal Reserve took several actions in the first quarter that reversed programs begun more than a year ago to get credit flowing to families and businesses. They raised the discount rate from 0.50 percent to 0.75 percent, closed two commercial paper funding facilities and the primary dealers and term securities lending facilities, allowed temporary […]
The Economist
The most closely watched but least useful statistic on the state of the economy is the unemployment rate. Early each month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics issues a report, and the headline usually focuses on the change in the unemployment rate. We all fall into one of three categories – employed, unemployed or not in […]