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Chris Lester is The Star's assistant managing editor/business. His columns appear on Tuesday. To reach him, write in care of the business desk at 1729 Grand Blvd., Kansas City, MO 64108, call (816) 234-4424 or send e-mail to clester@kcstar.com.
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R.I.P., free markets (1776-2008). I am exaggerating, a little, for dramatic purposes. Actually, my sense is that the free market hasn’t been truly free for more than a century, and, on balance, we’re marginally better off for it.
For a guy who is almost unimaginably rich, Warren Buffett sure is good at coming off just like regular folks. The Oracle of Omaha’s down-home personality is nearly as charming as his incredibly fat wallet.
Wall Street is having its George Bailey moment. The credit crisis roiling the financial system — larded as it is with terms such as mortgage-backed securities, credit default swaps and derivatives — is so complex that it’s incomprehensible even for many of the would-be masters of the universe who got us into this mess.
Once upon a time, the average American had to make a choice to invest on Wall Street. Now, all the average taxpayer has to do is wait around for the government to take over the latest ailing financial behemoth.
The fireworks have faded into the night sky. The balloons have dropped and popped. The candidates have cleared the stage. The partisan crowds have drifted away.
Some folks spend Labor Day grilling meat for family and friends. Others attend festivals and parades marking a day honoring their fellow hardworking Americans.
Another month has passed, and we still await the single most important data point of this wrenching economic cycle — one offering convincing evidence that the price of existing single-family homes has stopped falling.
File this one under wishful — but not totally irrational — thinking. The consumer inflation rate for July came in particularly hot, at 5.6 percent, posting the highest year-over-year increase in what we pay for the stuff we buy since January 1991.
The chirping cell phone broke my slumber in the wee hours of Thursday morning. “Yeah,” I grumbled.
The Conference Board today will release its monthly index of consumer confidence. Wall Street and the financial media that cover it will pounce on it like ravenous dogs — ripping it to shreds in search of what the cable guys love to call “instant analysis.”
