POLITICS

Covering International equities over the last decade has been an interesting experience. Emerging markets in Asia and Latin America have gone through a couple of rounds of boom and bust, compressing into a few short years as much euphoria and desperation as most...

America dodged a bullet on Super Tuesday. G. W. Bush, governor of Texas and candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, swept seven of the eleven primaries held on March 7, winning such delegate-rich states as California, New York, Ohio, and Georgia. In one...

The past arrest of Peng Cheng by the Chinese Government, and the more recent “strong” statements against Taiwan, shows how little has changed in that country. Take the case of Mr. Cheng. Mr. Cheng was sentenced to three years in a labor camp on...

Environmentalists — notorious for making doomsday predictions about man’s industrial activities while appealing to “science” — are now turning to religion to halt the “sins” of industrialization and development. Over a year...

A lot of friends who dabble in the stock market have been calling me lately to pick my brain about this or that Internet stock. Of course, any word of caution or concern I express over lofty valuations invariably falls on deaf ears. God forbid I actually say anything...

Have you ever suffered from any of the following symptoms? Poor concentration. Forgetting to do important tasks. A pervasive sense of helplessness or hopelessness. Nervous behaviors (shaking leg, biting nails). High blood pressure. Blowing up or snapping at loved ones...

When Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan speaks, markets listen. But Mr. Greenspan doesn’t create wealth, as E.F. Hutton did when he spoke. Mr. Greenspan’s speeches tend to destroy wealth. Last week, for example, Greenspan told Congress that...

Q. If you do not think libertarians are taking the correct action, may I suggest that those of us who are interested can join together to form a new country? A. This amounts to the idea that it is time to follow John Galt’s advice and strike from the world....

Many people wonder about Alan Greenspan. As a student and associate of Ayn Rand in the 1960s, he wrote many articles on the virtue of capitalism, some appearing in her seminal work, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. An eloquent and ardent advocate of the free market, he...

Stock market indexes and market leadership has been growing increasingly concentrated in a small number of stocks and sectors. Professional portfolio managers often react to this market concentration by allocating more money to fewer stocks, reducing their...

This article is an adaptation of a lecture Mr. Salsman gave at Harvard University, in May of 1999. The print version has been edited lightly in order to retain it’s spontaneous quality. Mr. Salsman has not reviewed the edited version. I’ve mentioned some...

A good therapist can offer you something most other people cannot: psychological information on how to explain troubling emotions, better manage stress, and obtain an objective perspective from somebody not involved in your personal life. No therapist, however, can...

Question. In a recent program, you claimed the actions of several businessmen were driven to do business with the government by the morality of altruism. Isn’t pragmatism a more accurate description? Given the extent to which property rights have been eroded,...

President Clinton is angry because Americans supposedly waste too much food, especially at holiday time. World hunger is not a problem of redistribution. World hunger does not exist because you throw out half a stick of butter or an unfinished Coke. The real problem...

Bill Clinton is not leaving quietly, certainly not when it comes to health care. In a Presidential and Congressional election year and in a cultural climate where the public has been “educated” to believe that health care is an entitlement, Clinton is...

The rioting and demonstrations at the World Trade Organization in Seattle offered us a view of a world in which everything is upside-down and backwards. It is a world in which hordes of middle-class students and $25-an-hour union workers band together to take away...

I’ve worked as an equity analyst and portfolio manager for about eight years now, focusing on international markets. The question that I and most others in my profession are constantly asking ourselves is, “is the market wrong about this?” As a...

In my last article, I talked about the contradictory nature of the economic theories representing various schools of thought, and the fact that some of the most useful theories, those of the Supply-side school, are receiving the least amount of attention. Many of the...

The rate hike by the Federal Reserve has spurred a lot of discussion and a lot of disagreement about inflation and the economy. While differing opinions in economics have always been a reality, I thought it would be a good idea to clear the air a bit and go over the...