How Much Is Your House Really Worth?

It seems like such an easy question: how much is my house worth? The problem is that this is not an easy question – and that fact that that is a problem is the real problem.  Let me explain…
A long time ago, when Tricky Dick Nixon was President of the United States, our country was [...]

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Madoff Conviction Sends Shudders Through the Financial Industry

A hour ago Bernard Madoff pled guilty to what has been described as the largest Ponzi scheme in history.  Is seems that Mr. Madoff bilked quite a few people out of billions of dollars by telling them that he had a secret way of beating the market.  He always paid dividends that were much higher [...]

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America’s Ghost Banking System

Now that we have the job stimulus bill about to be signed, I expect our attention will soon turn to some sort of bank stimulus. Wait a minute, didn’t we already bailout the banks? Indeed we did. The problem is that, even though they received billions of dollars and even though the bankers all gave [...]

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Bubbles

As economists now start talking about the U.S. entering a Depression rather than a Recession, the discussion still centers on the effects of our overly exuberant Real Estate Bubble.  It was a bubble that sucked in the entire world as other countries either emulated the U.S. policy of giving mortgages to people who really couldn’t [...]

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