Here's the count. You decide.

Dwight Eisenhower: 2 recessions
Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford: 2 recessions
Ronald Reagan: 1 recession
George H.W. Bush: 1 recession
George W. Bush: 2 recessions

Here are the Democrats:

John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson: no recessions
Jimmy Carter: one recession,...

This morning, walking dogs, I ran into a neighbor who works for a well-known fashion company. "Business is dead," she said. "I wanna complain about how they're treating us. But I better keep a lid on it."

I couldn't have agreed more -- business is dead....

Making banks solvent was never going to be all that was necessary to make the American economy whole again. The inexorable recessionary process is now well on its way. We will learn more about how far and fast we are sinking in the next couple of weeks, as the data...

Are you kidding me? Alan Greenspan told a House committee headed by Henry Waxman today that his analytical structure was wrong. You'd think he merely misplaced a decimal point. He thus alienates his allegedly objective analysis from any other more suspect motive. And, yes, he was shocked that...

If you turned on Charlie Rose last night, you noticed a slice of the establishment discussing the limits of private markets. It is hard to believe your eyes and ears. Since the credit crisis, the establishment is registering their fears of free markets across the American landscape. But where were...

Many economists, even some liberal ones, seem to think that ending a "run" on banks and supplying them with capital is essentially the solution needed to right the economy again. Any further help is useful but secondary. This is wrong. The $700 billion bailout package sponsored by Treasury Secretary Paulson...

If there's any silver lining to the current credit crisis, it is the widening realization that forcing people to manage their own retirement accounts is nasty and irresponsible public policy. It's one thing to manage your 401(k), knowing a fixed pension is also coming your way from Social Security. It...

The so-called bailout package contains controversial restraints on executive compensation. Some may think these restrictions are just about getting even with the financial community. But this issue is not just about fairness. Compensation excess is at the heart of this crisis.

Are the people managing financial...

Of course, Americans workers are energetic and skilled. Our business people are entrepreneurial. Our nation is vast. Its resources are deep. Its spirit strong. Well, sometimes strong.

But this does not mean the fundamentals are nearly in place for rapid economic growth in the new global environment. John McCain...

There is no contest between Senators Obama and McCain on the content and quality of their economic programs. McCain is essentially absent, wrapped up in sloganeering, and repeating callously the same policies as the Bush team.

Obama has given two of the most thoughtful, nuanced speeches on economics...

John McCain's economic programs are so meaningless and damaging they require new adjectives. Absurd won't do.

But Barack Obama's campaign is tragically modest. A soft kiss on the cheek for those in trouble. And it could cost him the election. More to the point, it will cost...

Two recent big-time media articles again suggest how we have been misled by the consensus of economic opinion. I referred to one last week.

Many economists, including Ben Bernanke and the powers at the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, argued that speculation did not drive up the oil price. This...

With crude oil prices now twenty percent below their levels of just a month ago, and other commodities down as much or more, it's time for the countless economists who told us the rapid prices increases had little to do with speculation to stand up and explain themselves.

Now,...

I have delayed writing this brief piece for some time. But there is something sad if not tragic in watching so many economists rail on today about the dangers of inflation in the current environment. The double digit inflation of the 1970s was a watershed event that changed the predominant...

Barack Obama has come home from the Mideast and Europe to talk about the economy. Among his first public announcements is that he will meet with former Treasury Secretaries Bob Rubin and Lawrence Summers, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, and billionaires Warren Buffet and Eric Schmidt, head of Google....

It was the show of shows last week for those of us who watch the financial markets and worry about the state of the economy. Which I guess means a lot of us. The collapse in share prices of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was startling. The general fall in...

Why bother rebutting Karl Rove, you might ask? He is basically a partisan name caller, not an analyst. But every once in a while you've got to give them their own medicine.

In the Wall Street Journal he wrote a piece calling John McCain and Barack Obama economic illiterates....

The papers all have the same story. The Federal Reserve won't increase rates in the next go-around. Bernanke and his colleagues should be applauded, even though producer prices rose fast as reported this morning. Note that when you delete energy and food costs, the core rate rose modestly again.

People ask me all the time what can be done about this economy. Usually, they mean it rhetorically. That is, we fouled up so much, there isn't anything we can do, is there? Squeeze your hands in frustration. Wait it out.

But my answer is not rhetorical. In fact,...

Inflation or no inflation? That's the big question now.

Fed chairman Ben Bernanke suggested yesterday that there will be no more easy cuts in interest rates. Is he succumbing to the growing pressure from Wall Street and hard line mainstreamers that inflation is now America's concern, not recession?