John T. Reed’s news blog

Page A12 of today’s East Bay Times has a very ominous headline: “No protectionism pledge dropped by economic powers.” The key event was a change in the wording in a statement issued by the G-20 finance ministers at their annual meeting.   Last year it pledged to “resist all forms of protectionism.” This year they dropped that statement and vaguely allude to “working to strengthen the contribution of trade to their economies.” Too similar to the run-up to the Great Depression The stage for the Great Depression was set by easy money margin loans that caused an irrational exuberance boom...

Brett Bair is doing a series on the government again kicking the can down the road. In that regard, Trump, uncharacterstically, is ignoring his campaign promises like the usual politicians and acting just like Obama did in recent years.A reader here recently asked why I could possibly thing the most economically powerful country in the world—the U.S.—could possibly need to worry about hyperinflation. One phrase: kick the can down the road.That road is a dead end.One of the big lessons I learned at Harvard Business School is size does not matter. Only ratios do. We have the largest national GDP...

I recently noted the immigrant crime disaster in Sweden and that nation’s lying about it and suppressing the facts. Some readers denounced me for that. I think they were Americans who felt it could not be true and you simply cannot accuse an entire nation of lying and covering up. America is a nation of immigrants. Sweden, for millennia, was not. Until the recent Middle Eastern immigration, in fact. Sweden was a nation of Swedes. So an accusation against all Swedes is sort of an accusation against all members of a large family. Not quite so outrageous by American standards. Sweden...

I keep hearing that ETFs are cheap and a great new way to invest. I am leery because I suspect they may not behave the way you need during a major financial crisis.Here is a paragraph from a 3/11/17 Wall Street Journal article about the SEC rejecting an application from the Winkelvoss Bitcoin Trust.“The decision comes as SEC officials have voiced concern about the complexity of some exchange-traded products and how volatile they can be during market routs. Trading in hundreds of exchange-traded products was halted on August 24, 2015, wen the market value of their shares diverged widely from...

Former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for the national anthem last season because America’s treatment of blacks. In Kaepernick’s case, the mistreatment included his last contract with the Niners which was for $126 million.For the record, he is free to leave the country and I suspect a plea to crowdfunding would raise the money for his one-way ticket in about 30 seconds.Kaepernick was applauded for his self-proclaimed moral principles. Then he recently declared free agency, i.e., quit the 49ers, and simultaneously proclaimed that he would stand for the anthem at his next employer’s games, if indeed there ever...