Rent Versus Buy-2025
February 2025 “Owning a home is a hedge against rising rents.” Warren Buffett For decades, the American Dream has centered on home ownership as a fundamental pillar of financial security. Conventional wisdom has long held that renting is simply a stepping stone to owning, with homeownership viewed as the wiser long-term financial decision. But soaring […]
By The Numbers
Weekly Blog #3 “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” Benjamin Franklin Real estate has long been a cornerstone of wealth building. Unlike stocks or bonds, it offers investors a tangible asset with inherent value. Furthermore, while stocks have historically provided double-digit growth, the average dividend yield is a paltry 1.43%—meaning stocks tend to […]
Housing Market Outlook 2025
“Real estate cannot be lost or stolen, nor can it be carried away. Purchased with common sense, paid for in full, and managed with reasonable care, it is about the safest investment in the world.” Franklin D. Roosevelt Between 2000 and 2007, annual housing starts soared from 1.6 million to 2.3 million. Cheap money combined […]
Inflation: It’s Complicated
“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.” Vladimir Lenin Inflation is one of those things that everyone thinks they understand but few can define precisely. Today, it’s commonly used to describe rising prices—the cost of groceries, gas, or just about anything creeping higher over time. […]
Higher or Lower?
“Interest rates are to the economy what gravity is to the physical world: they control everything.” Warren Buffett While Wall Street obsessively scrutinizes the Federal Reserve’s speeches and statements for clues about future policy, it’s focus—the federal funds rate—is merely a short-term, interbank lending rate with little connection/correlation to long-term market rates, like the 30-year […]
Weekly Blog #1
Money Talks “Price is the purchasing power of any good or service expressed in money.” Mark Lazar One of the most seemingly simple yet completely misunderstood concepts in the world today is that of money. We all use it but most of us have never given more than a passing thought as to what it actually is. […]
December 2024
The Gilded Standard “Gold is money. Everything else is credit” J.P. Morgan For centuries, gold served as the foundation of Western economic systems due to its intrinsic value, scarcity, and role as a reliable store of wealth. The gold standard, formalized in the 19th century, ensured that every dollar issued was backed by a tangible […]
November 2024
Cause and Effect “Nothing good can come from the Federal Reserve. It is the biggest taxer of them all. Diluting the value of the dollar by increasing its supply is a vicious, sinister tax on the poor and middle class.” Ron Paul Among the many topics debated going into the November election, inflation stood out […]
October 2024
Economic Alchemy “We’re all Keynesians now.” Richard Nixon Undergraduate econ students are typically introduced to several schools of monetary theory, such as Classical, Keynesian, and Modern—although in good conscience I hesitate to refer to the last one as a legitimate academic theory. Here’s a quick summary of each: Classical Theory–Milton Friedman was a leading advocate […]
September 2024
Price Controls “As president, I will go after the bad actors. And I will work to pass the first-ever federal ban on price gouging on food.” Kamala Harris Between 1965 and 1968, Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society social welfare programs increased government spending (demand-side economics) by 60%, which, not surprisingly, increased price levels over 5% per […]
