Don Luskin

The shake-up of the Bush economic team has been the occasion for a lot of criticism of the administration’s domestic leadership. Indeed, I’ve been one of the harshest critics. Yet I think the Bush administration has done one thing very, very right when it...

The New York Times reveals its deep anti-capitalism bias even when it purports to offer a little op-ed space to dissenting views. After a week of relentlessly demagoguing the Bush administrations tax plan as a subsidy to “the rich” — both in...

A year ago I told investors to sell technology stocks and reinvest in long-term Treasury bonds. That bet turned out very well on both sides: The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 index is down more than 30% in 2002 while the total return for 10-year Treasurys has been about 18%...

There’s a big tax debate coming, with President Bush scheduled to announce a package of new tax cuts today. And it looks like we’re not going to be able to talk about it without falling into the morass of politically correct speech. I’m not talking...

I remember as a child eagerly awaiting Time magazine’s choice of its Man of the Year each year. I believed that there were great men and great events in the world that I needed to know about, and that there was a great arbiter of them — Time — that...

Newspapers are supposed to report the news — facts — so that people can use those facts when they form their opinions. But where do newspapers get facts? How do reporters know that what they are reporting is true? How do readers know? These questions are...

Newspapers are supposed to report the news — facts — so that people can use those facts when they form their opinions. But where do newspapers get facts? How do reporters know that what they are reporting is true? How do readers know? These questions are...

If you’re a financial media pundit, you live every day with a fundamental challenge with respect to accountability and intellectual honesty. As your forecasts, opinions and views accumulate over the years, how do you reconcile what you are saying today (or...

What is “economic analysis” when it comes from a newspaper? It’s usually just like Daniel Altman’s “Economic Analysis” column in the New York Times this morning: a montage of sound-bites from “experts” (or, if not...

There’s been a lot of tough talk about how “tainted” Wall Street stock research is — and what should be done about analyst recommendations influenced by investment-banking fees and other conflicts of interest. It’s an important question...

When an investment celebrity like Pimco’s Bill Gross calls for Dow 5,000, we can’t help but see it as a sign of extreme investor pessimism suggesting that we must be getting near a bottom. It reminds me of the kind of thing we heard at the top in 2000...

Ever since Alan Greenspan surprised the markets by lowering interest rates 50 basis points a week ago Wednesday, the financial media have been frantic with worry about deflation. Well, you heard it here first — exactly a year and a day ago in this column, on...

Wall Street Journal reporter John Gasparino has been on a rampage this week to be the first with every new bit of gossip leaked from NY attorney general Eliot Spitzer’s office trying to connect Salomon Smith Barney telecom analyst Jack Grubman’s upgrade of...

Whatever you may think of Microsoft, the decision last Friday by federal judge Colleen Kollar-Kottely to approve the company’s settlement with the Department of Justice was a much needed rebuke to the scorched-earth prosecutorial mindset of today’s state...

The proposed restructuring of stock research at big Wall Street investment banks — if “proposed” is the proper word when NY attorney general Eliot Spitzer is doing the proposing holding a rubber hose in his hand — is an even worse-than-usual...

It’s interesting to compare Bill Gates’ and Microsoft’s victory last Friday in obtaining a favorable settlement of their antrust case with another battle in the war on capitalism from ten years ago — one that turned out very, very differently....

On May 16, 1998, Bill Gates walked away from negotiations with the US Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division and the attorneys general of 20 states to prevent the threatened filing of a sweeping antitrust suit against Microsoft. Gates had offered many...

The markets, big business and Wall Street have been held hostage by politicians and regulators for so long that the hostages are starting to identify with their kidnappers. How else can you explain the October 30th Wall Street Journal front pager, breathlessly...

Stocks are first and foremost growth instruments — a bet on the potential upside. But the best thing I can say for the stock market right now is that it’s deeply undervalued. That has been reason enough for me to tell clients over the past several months...

The markets, big business and Wall Street have been held hostage by politicians and regulators for so long that the hostages are starting to identify with their kidnappers. How else can you explain the October 30th Wall Street Journal front pager, breathlessly...

Investing is the most supremely arrogant thing that you can do. In effect, whenever you buy or sell an individual stock — or even if you trade an index fund with the intention of timing the market — you’re placing your judgment ahead of the judgment...

Friday marked the 1001st day since the Dow Jones Industrial Average touched its all-time high at 11908.50 on Jan. 14, 2000. 1,001 days was the precise duration of the bear market that followed the peak of Sept. 7, 1929 — which included the Great Crash and...

In the good old bad old days of corrupt Chicago politics, the voters were urged by city bosses to “vote early and often.” Now that’s exactly what you can do — and you might even make some money at the same time. If nothing else, you’ll be...