Researching Stocks: The Shaw Group (Updated)

A friend whose judgment you trust tells you about an interesting stock. Or you read a newspaper article about an intriguing business, or run across one at work or at the mall. Or your dentist tells you that there’s this company that makes a terrific new drill....

The Voice of the People in Philadelphia

The Penn’s Landing redevelopment issue in Philadelphia raises an interesting and concrete example of the relationship between government and public property development and improvement. We would all like to see something beautiful and valuable happen on the...

Why The Bush Tax Plan Will Work

If you hoped that Alan Greenspan’s congressional testimony last month would help cut through the thick fog of competing opinion on President Bush’s tax-cut plan, you were probably bitterly disappointed. Greenspan proved once again, in my opinion, that...

Justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal–Execute Him

Writing from death row, ex-Black Panther minister of information Mumia Abu-Jamal, convicted murderer of 25-year-old Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner, states that America’s impending war in Iraq is simply a case of white capitalists killing for oil:...

Iran, Not So Far Away

President Bush issued an executive order declaring a national emergency with respect to Iran — exactly two years ago on Thursday, [March 13]. Bush declared: “The actions and policies of the [theocratic] Government of Iran … threaten the national...

Bush on Israel: Heartburn for All

Consistency and predictability are core strengths of George W. Bush as a politician. Be the issue domestic (taxes, education) or foreign (terrorism, Iraq), once he settles on a policy he sticks with it. There is no ambiguity, no guessing what his real position might...

FTC Outlaws Freedom in the Ice Cream Market

When antitrust cases are about complex technical subjects like Microsoft and the market for PC operating systems, or Hughes/Echostar and the market for satellite TV broadcasting, it’s easy just to throw up your hands and assume that the government’s...

The Arab Summit: Even Arabs Don’t Like Arabs

The shouting match that broke out at the March 1 “Arab Summit” in Sharm El-Sheikh, an Egyptian Red Sea resort, was instructive on a number of levels. What it mostly confirmed was that even Arabs don’t like (or trust) Arabs. Behind all the wrangling...