It’s been an unusual week in the bond market, and not necessarily in a good way. This has many investors questioning the value of bonds, which is understandable. Bonds are supposed to be the “safe” side of a portfolio, but they’ve struggled in recent years. Arguably, the drama we’re seeing in the [...]
Defending against inflation
The Open Kitchen is an old-time restaurant that’s been a fixture in Charlotte, North Carolina for 75 years. Among the memorabilia lining its walls are menus from years gone by. Those old menus provided David Enna, a financial journalist, with a laboratory for examining the long-term effects of [...]
Tariff Worries
Imagine taking dollar bills and inserting them into a shredder. This is how you might think about a concept economists call “deadweight loss.” As its name suggests, a deadweight loss occurs when there’s an irrevocable loss of economic output. Deadweight losses can occur under a variety of [...]
What the SAHM Rule Is (or Isn’t) Telling Us
For two years, market observers have been predicting a recession. Why? They’ve pointed to what’s known as an inverted yield curve—when short-term interest rates are higher than long-term rates. Historically, this has been a bad omen for the economy, and that’s why investors have been worried. The [...]
Understanding Inflation, and Guarding Against It
Among the topics that receive attention in the world of personal finance, inflation was for many years near the bottom of the list. Between 2010 and 2019, inflation was so low, averaging just 1.8% per year, that the Federal Reserve was actually struggling to lift it. Throughout 2019, the Fed lowered [...]
