The stock market hasn’t returned a single red cent in over twelve years, as measured by the S&P 500. Twelve years is a long time to go without earning a return on your investment, particularly if you are close to retirement. With the boom years of the 1980s and 1990s now a distant memory, it...Read More

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

In pre-republican France, upon the passing of a sitting monarch the Duc d’Uzès would proclaim “The King is dead. Long live the King!” The idea, of course, was that a new king was rising up to take the place of the old. The Crown as an institution was alive and well; it was just that...Read More

Demographic trends and their effects on the economy are a big part of our research. We generally have a practical goal, such as estimating the demand for a company or industry’s products. However, sometimes we like to look at the long term—the extreme long term. This month we are going to take a look at...Read More

This article originally appeared in the November 2008 HS Dent Forecast Newsletter. In the year and a half that has passed, the key insights remain: this recession is fundamentally different from all others of the post-WWII era. On Friday, October 24, 2008, the Financial Times reported that swap spreads turned negative. It would be easy...Read More