The objective of this paper is to provide a perspective on the current financial state of the U.S., with the aid of more than two dozen charts depicting key trends. A marked change in U.S. consumer behavior – shifting from a policy of moderate personal savings to a more-heavily...

The eurozone sovereign debt crisis, characterized by enormous debt burdens faced by its weakest economies, has also induced a parallel credit crunch and illiquidity concerns for European banks. Bank holdings of sovereign debt issued by peripheral eurozone countries have dropped in value and are...

The eurozone, composed of 17 countries which have adopted the euro as their currency, has been struggling with an apparently-intractable crisis over the enormous debts faced by its weakest economies and by countries impacted by the bursting of the housing boom in the past global recession of...

The U.S. economy continues to be characterized by a persistently-high rate of unemployment, with at least another three years before attainment of the pre-recession unemployment rate.Six significant structural trends are identified and their impacts discerned. The pernicious impact of...

Alvin E. Roth and Lloyd S. Shapley were awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economic Science "for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design;" (Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, 2012).This paper, motivated by a desire to understand their accomplishments, reviews successful...

An assessment of the current state of housing viewed from the perspective of the slowly-recovering economy, coupled with valuations of the housing market, suggests there is a high likelihood of a double dip in housing prices. With current prices nearly 30 percent below their April 2006 peak, an...

In The Mortgage Crisis, a PowerPoint presentation, tipping points and enabling trends are identified which, in the author's opinion, played key roles leading to the housing boom and the subsequent mortgage crisis, which eventually spread to the entire financial system and the real economy. For...