I commented in a previous article that “if you think that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is unpopular, consider the tragic case of Takahashi Korekiyo, who served as Bank of Japan governor from 1911-1913 and as finance minister and prime minister in the 1920s and 1930s.” Mr. Takahashi helped to pull Japan out of the Great...Read More

Charles Sizemore was quoted in the recent Reuters article on exotic ETFs: “Investors develop taste for exotic, far-flung ETFs” Excerpt: But some investors criticized the combination of countries in the First Trust fund resulting in its memorable acronym. “BICK” was a twist on the “BRIC” theme popular last year, swapping South Korea in for Russia....Read More

I’m going to start this month with a prediction that might surprise you. I do not think that bonds are in imminent danger of a crash. I do agree with the growing legion of investors—including the legendary Warren Buffett himself—who believe that the bond market is in a “bubble” of sorts. And I would certainly...Read More

The news just doesn’t get better for Harley-Davidson (NYSE: HOG) and its peers in the “big bike” business. US motorcycle sales shrank by 14.1% in the third quarter from the year before, extending the grueling decline to 15 consecutive quarters. Remember, that is a 14.1% decline from the already deeply depressed sales figures of 2009....Read More

“The Law of Disruption,” writes Larry Downes in his new book of the same name, “is a simple but unavoidable principle of modern life: technology changes exponentially, but social, economic, and legal systems change incrementally.” Today, we’re going to focus on one particular area of the legal system that modern technology is disrupting—copyrights. This is...Read More