I believe investors should invest for the long run, so I don't buy and sell. I usually maintain the classic index of global equities, diversified U.S. and global and emerging markets, and when the risk is larger, I diminish the amount in global equit...
I was born in Jamaica but was educated by, and now serve, prestigious First World institutions, so I believe that I have a unique, dual perspective. To sidestep any biases I might have, I use the objective lens of the stock market to discover which p...
Between 2001 and 2011, Brazil lifted 20 million people out of poverty and into its growing middle class, and in the last quarter of the twentieth century Botswana's gross domestic product per capita grew faster than that of any other country on the p...
People and their values are almost infinitely diverse, and people will never agree on many elements of social arrangements that might be subjected to uniform rules of governance. Hence, the greater the scope of strictly individual self-determination,...
I knew from reading about Sarah Grimke that she'd been given a handmaid to be her personal slave and that her name was Hetty. The only other fact I knew about her was that Sarah taught her to read: They conspired in a very subversive way, by locking ...
I worry about growing income inequality. But I worry even more that the discussion is too narrowly focused. I worry that our outrage at the top 1 percent is distracting us from the problem that we should really care about: how to create opportunities...
The old adage about giving a man a fish versus teaching him how to fish has been updated by a reader: Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries! Moreover, some politician who wants his vote will declare all these things to b...
I have two daughters: One an open book, one a locked box. So the question of privacy is a challenging one. How much do kids need? How much should we give? How do we prepare them to live in a world where the very notion of privacy opens a generational...
I try to take a weekly digital Sabbath, batch my emails so I deal with them a few times a day rather than constantly, and increasingly give myself permission to ignore unsolicited communiques. I try, too, to give others more slack. The respond-now cu...
It's time to pull the bandage off America's foreclosure problem. The economy is ready to emerge from its recent dark period, but to make it happen soon we need to speed the resolution of millions of troubled home loans. Six years have passed since th...
America has the highest standard of living of any major country in the entire world. To maintain and enhance that standard of living, America should continue to embrace those qualities which have made America great: openness and dynamism. Openness to...
Every time you have a carrot instead of a cookie, every time you go to the gym instead of going to the movies, that's a costly investment in your health. But how much you want to invest is going to depend on how much longer you expect to live in the ...
Surely we cannot take an open question like the supernatural and shut it with a bang, turning the key of the madhouse on all the mystics of history. You cannot take the region of the unknown and calmly say that, though you know nothing about it, you ...
What we're going to do is redouble our efforts on financial regulatory reform, because that has in it sensible things like say on pay, so at least the shareholders are minding the store, sensible things like saying, for heaven's sakes, compensation s...
Cold-turkey deficit reduction would cause a significant recession. A recent analysis by the Congressional Budget Office estimated that going headlong over the cliff would cause our gross domestic product, which has been growing at an annual rate of a...
One senses that Hegel was possible only in German, and finds it natural that Locke in a language where and precede should have arrived at the thing after sorting out its sensory qualities, whereas Descartes in a language where follows should have com...
For a variety of reasons, I have always felt myself an outsider. I don't know how to classify myself in economics. I am a loner. I do not like groupthink, which, if anything, has become more important in economics. In addition, a lot of the values I ...
Beaumont: Man, you must be out of your fuckin' mind if you think I'm gonna get in this dirty-ass trunk. Ordell Robbie: We ain't going nowhere but to Koreatown, man. You ain't gonna be locked in here no more than ten minutes. Beaumont: I ain't ridin' ...
Eddie: They're armed. Soap: What was that? Armed? What do you mean armed? Armed with what? Eddie: Err, bad breath, colorful language, feather duster... what do you think they're gonna be armed with? Guns, you tit!
"Hatchet" Harry: You must be Eddie, J.D.'s son. Eddie: Yeah. You must be Harry. Sorry, didn't know your father. "Hatchet" Harry: Never mind son, you just might meet him if you carry on like that.
John: Jesus, Plank, couldn't you have got smokeless cartridges? I can't see a bloody thi - Ah! Shit! I've been shot! Dog: I don't fucking believe this! Can everyone stop gettin' shot?