Don Luskin

Previously, I dared to suggest that maybe the mutual-fund industry isn’t quite the “cesspool” that New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer says it is, and I criticized Spitzer and the Securities and Exchange Commission for panicking investors...

Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, may be the all-powerful arbiter of what’s hot and what’s not in celebrity culture. But now, having declared Paul Krugman a “national treasure,” Carter is trying to reinvent himself as an angry liberal,...

Stock market punditry is a tough game, and victories are few and far between even for the best of us. So when a victory comes along, you do a victory lap. The third quarter’s gross-domestic product growth rate of 7.2% was a big victory. Representing the biggest...

For the last several weeks, the expression “retarded potential” has been rattling around in my head, without having any idea what it means. So I Googled it, and it turns out that it has something or other to do with the physics of electromagnetism. Lots of...

I hate the New York Stock Exchange. I admit it — I hate the place. I always have and I always will. So even though I have no objection to executives earning huge salaries and bonuses, I’ve been positively tickled to see the NYSE dragged through the mud...

Ever wonder why all the doom-and-gloom economic pronouncements you hear in the media, and from liberal politicians, don’t square up with the America you see around you — an America in which the economy has turned the corner and is growing again? The answer...

I live and work in California, and on Tuesday I witnessed two revolutions here. Both have very bullish long-term implications, and both present significant short-term risks. The first revolution I’m talking about, of course, is the recall of California’s...

A month ago, I wrote about the how the Fed led Wall Street bond traders into a billion-dollar trap, by promising to keep interest rates low virtually forever, and then just weeks later, hinting that it would break the promise. You’d think “once burned,...

I hate to say it, but it’s looking like my technician friend Fred Goodman was right when he issued a sell signal a couple of weeks ago. Yes, earnings are surging and the economy-wide recovery is accelerating, with the technology sector leading the way. But in...

You can’t open the financial pages without hearing about our “jobless recovery.” There’s no end to the hand-wringing about how gross domestic product, corporate profits and consumer spending are all moving up smartly — yet the economy...

I get lots of terrific letters from readers (both roses and thorns, I assure you). But one I got last week takes the prize. It’s a list of penetrating questions about all of the toughest issues challenging stock investors. The minute I saw it I knew what...

The mutual fund scandal that erupted last week is the latest front in vigilante New York Eliot Spitzer’s campaign to climb to the governorship over as many ruined careers as possible. Here are some thoughts on where it could lead. Are there abuses of trading...

Paul Krugman’s book, The Great Unraveling, hits bookstores today. Are you surprised that Krugman’s publisher, W.W. Norton, has repeatedly refused my requests for a review copy of the book? Despite this inexplicable omission, America’s most dangerous...

For all the outrage and indignation voiced by the media and our public servants, the market didn’t seem terribly concerned by last week’s scandalous revelation that a hedge-fund manager had illegally profited at the expense of mutual-fund shareholders....

Just last month I proclaimed the old clich

In writing so much about Paul Krugman I have, to some extent, become distracted from writing about the most common and most dangerous media manifestation of the conspiracy to keep you poor and stupid. Krugman’s only a very special case of it: his writings about...

We’re facing an important inflection point in the stock market. And as always happens at such critical times, investors are likely to get bamboozled by misinformation that they get from the mainstream media. I’m going to try to straighten some of that out....

Lord knows where these things come from or how they get started. Another one of those emails is making the rounds — the kind that everyone seems to get and forward on to everyone they know, so you end up getting a dozen copies of it. So maybe you’ve...

Let’s dig deeper into the bull-versus-bear debate that has dominated my last few columns. I’ve taken the bullish position — but I’m not rabid about it, and I’ve discussed the things that worry me, too. I’ve gotten tons of email from...

The financial press is grave-dancing on Microsoft’s decision to no longer award stock options to employees — and instead to award shares of stock itself. A Wall Street Journal column by Jessie Eisenger crows “Microsoft, once the bullying monopolist,...

Even my old friends have turned against me! As the angry emails continue to pour in from bearish readers who are furious at me for my last couple of bullish columns, my old friend Fred Goodman — the master technical analyst — has issued a major sell...

When President Bush first announced his plan last January to cut taxes on dividends, capital gains and personal income I sang his praises (first here, here and also here and here). Now Bush’s plan has been law for over two months. While the critics have had no...

I have an idea for Eliot Spitzer. As you know, the New York state attorney general has been crusading against stock research tainted by investment-banking relationships. He has fined Wall Street billions and ruined the careers of superstar analysts. So why...

Speech by Donald L. Luskin given at the Russell 20-20 Association Annual Meeting, May 7, 2003 I earn my living as an economist. I try to forecast how economic policies and ideas in the hands of government, business, media and academia move the world and move markets....