In the view of many analysts, the best way to assist “underwater” homeowners—those who owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth—is to reduce the principal on their home loans. Yet in the case of privately securitized mortgages, such write-downs are almost impossible to...

With the American economy seemingly stalling, the global economy thereby imperiled, and another electoral campaign season well underway in the U.S., the "outsourcing" of jobs from the developed to the developing world is again on the public agenda. Latest figures indicate not only that layoffs...

Present-day advocates of an “ownership society” (OS) do not seem to have noticed the means by which, since the 1930s and 1960s respectively, we have worked to become an OS already where homes and “human capital” are concerned. Nor have those advocates considered whether these same means...

Three facts bear notice in connection with our current financial troubles. The first is that the First World War, before the Second began, was known as "the Great War." The second is that the global Depression that struck between those two wars, which for now we can still label "Great,"...

This essay, an abbreviated rendition of the author's What Kinds of Stock-Ownership Plans Should There Be?, considers the prospects for generalizing the familiar Employee Stock-Ownership Plan - or 'ESOP' - in a manner that affords ownership stakes in firms to more people than currently hold this...

In the view of many analysts, the best way to assist “underwater” homeowners — those who owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth — is to reduce the principal on their home loans. Yet in the case of privately securitized mortgages, such write-downs are almost impossible to...

One way or another, the European Monetary Union (EMU) is apt to endure. The prospect of continuation under the precise contours of the regime as we presently find it, however, is anything but certain. Hence many investors and other actual or prospective contract parties are likely to remain...