An INS Horror Story

The INS bureaucracy is a cesspool of elbow-rubbers, string-pullers, chest-puffers and cover-uppers who care more about protecting their backsides than upholding the law. Look no further than the man who currently heads the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization...

Laffer’s Curveball

Arthur Laffer’s op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal (November 21, 2001) will set supply-side tongues wagging — or more likely, supply-side teeth gnashing. The upshot is: Laffer is endorsing the idea of a 10-day federally underwritten suspension of state...

The Trouble With ‘Timing’: It Doesn’t Work

In the stock market (as in much of life), the beginning of wisdom is admitting your ignorance. One of the many things you cannot know about stocks is exactly when they will go up or go down. Over the long term, stocks generally rise at a nice pace. History shows they...

Protect Yourself Through Diversification

Warren Buffett, who was probably the greatest investor of the 20th century, is fond of quoting the salacious actress Mae West as saying, “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.” In the market, such a motto would lead you to avoid diversification and...

The End of the Beginning

“This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” So declared Winston Churchill after an early allied victory in World War II. It was a reminder to his nation that the war would require many more...

Contradictory Notions of Fairness

There was a time when Thanksgiving meant an occasion for counting our blessings. But, now that we have so many blessings that previous generations could hardly have dreamed about, we take them all for granted and are much more likely to count our grievances and the...

Arab World Poverty: Whose Fault?

“I don’t have the knowledge to blame a government,” said Bakhtiar Khan, an Afghan man in his mid-twenties. “I don’t know about politics, but for our problems I blame the world community. All humans should be equal, but we are not. You ask...