Once upon a time there was a company that made very powerful workstations -- super-duper PC's that put the final nail in the coffin of the mainframe computing model. This company developed servers that treated these workstations as clients, and linked them together in...
Don Luskin
Greenspan, Recessions, & “Market Bubbles”
When Ronald Reagan accepted his party's nomination for president in 1980 he said, "When your friend is out of a job, that's a recession. When you are out of a job, that's a depression. And when Jimmy Carter is out of a job, that's a recovery." But today it's more...
The Social Security Debate: A War of Lies
The battle over restructuring America's Social Security system into individual, privately managed accounts is heating up again. So the winds of change keep blowing, foreshadowing what may be the most profound economic transformation since the Reagan tax cuts of the...
A Recession-Proof Tech Stock?
My favorite stock in The Luskin Report's model portfolios is Numerical Technologies. Now that I'm not running Other People's Money in a mutual fund anymore, I'm free to buy individual stocks in my account for the first time in almost two years. Numerical Technologies...
The U.S. Economy is in a “Recession”
My hopes that the markets had reached a secondary bottom last week were completely dashed Wednesday and yesterday, as the bad news came pouring out like blood from an open wound. The charts of all the broad indices have completely ruptured. Yesterday's cavalcade of...
Deflation In the Spotlight At Last
Comments and questions continue to flood in about deflation. After months of writing about it the subject is finally getting real traction. You read about it in the mainstream financial press and hear about it on CNBC almost every day now. So let's get to some of the...
The FED, Alan Greenspan, and Ayn Rand
I've written a lot about deflation over the last three or four months. But yesterday's column on it, published here, got me an especially big flood of responses. One especially interesting one came by email, and I'm going to reproduce it here, and respond to it point...
Made in Japan
Remember all those books in the 1980s about "kaizen," "kanban," "keiretsu" and all the other secrets of Japanese management that were supposed to save American industry? Well, it must have worked -- and perhaps too well. Because American industry is back on top of the...
Cisco Blows It
I've been saying for weeks that the markets would be waiting for Cisco's earnings report -- which was released yesterday after the bell -- to set the tone for the post-earnings season world. That's because Cisco was a winner of "the gorilla game" as it was played...
Questions & Answers On Privatizing Social Security
Aren't most people too unsophisticated to manage their private account? This is a valid concern, but there are simple solutions that have worked well over twenty years with 401(k) plans, and they could easily be applied here. First, rudimentary investment education...
George Gilder Shouldn’t Blame His Bungle on the Government
Yesterday the Wall Street Journal ran an extraordinary op-ed piece by George Gilder, called Tumbling into the Telechasm. In it, the celebrated author of Telecosm and the publisher of the Gilder Technology Report lists all the federal government's catastrophic policy...
Intel Crushes AMD: Will Cisco Join Them?
As we continue through the slow and painful process of building a bottom after the great techwreck of 2000/2001, we have the opportunity to crash-test a great investment thesis from the irrationally exuberant era of the late great bull market -- "gorilla investing."...
A Cost Benefit Analysis on Privatizing Social Security
In my commentaries this week, I've discussed the transcendent importance to the economy and the markets of the potential for restructuring Social Security, to include individually managed private accounts. I've talked about some of the myths about Social Security, and...
Lessons from Chile on Social Security
This week I'm focusing on the myths that will keep investors from grasping the risks and opportunities on the road ahead as President George W. Bush pushes for restructuring Social Security -- probably with the introduction of private accounts that could be invested...
Privatizing Social Security is Good for the Economy
We may be on the brink of a once-in-a-decade investment opportunity, a rare chance to catch a huge environmental change in the economy and the markets. And it's still early on this one -- you can still catch this one before it becomes part of the conventional wisdom,...
A FED without Alan Greenspan
Does the market ever go up on a day when Alan Greenspan talks? I can't remember when it ever has. On July 18, 2001, the markets gapped lower on the opening. They tried to recover in the first hour, but as soon as the prepared text of Greenspan's testimony before the...
Charting the Market: The Past 25 Years
Ever since I started trading and investing in the 1970s I have looked at stock charts every day. I am entirely aware of -- and respectful of -- the empirical and theoretical arguments against the predictive value of charting. And yet, at the same time, I remain to...
Point of Disorder
What to make of this completely crazed market? It's simple (but that doesn't make it any more bearable): we're right on a major cusp. Four critical indices -- the NASDAQ Composite, the Russell 2000, the Wilshire Total Market Value Index, and the S&P 500, are all...
Senator Jim Jeffords and the Power of the Turncoats
Suddenly we find ourselves back in the nightmare world of the pregnant chad. And everything was going so well, too. Whatever you may think of the policies of George W. Bush's new administration, at least it was clanking along pretty well and the political railroads...
The Third Rail of Gold
I have touched the third rail, and it is made of gold. For millennia gold has excited mankind's passions, goading us to the heights of achievement and the depths of evil. Now, since I've been writing about gold's role in the international monetary order over the last...
T For Two
On Friday investors will have to decide whether to exchange their shares of AT&T for shares of the AT&T Wireless tracking stock. When the big index funds decide, it will move the market. In the exchange offer that expires Friday, AT&T will accept up to 427...
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