ON MARCH 10th United Technologies, mangled by the economic crisis, became the latest American industrial giant to announce massive layoffs, cutting its workforce by 11,600, or around 5%...

In this fiscal crisis, the public wanted one big thing to quote Archilochus: A reform of the banking industry that offered federal-guaranteed lines of credit to ensure liquidity, and a new transparency so investors would at least know that their supposedly blue-chip AIG stocks or Lehman Brother portfolio was, in fact, a house of cards based on the serial reselling of sub-prime mortgages—and in the end hinged on whether a wage-earning Bill Smith in Merced could keep servicing an 8% loan on a $400,000, 3,000 sf home that he bought with no down payment...

While predicting recessions may be difficult, detecting when they've arrived is a bit easier...

The words “To Counterfeit is Death” appear on the reverse side of the paper money issues of several of the British American colonies. Massachusetts was the first to issue government paper money in the Western world, followed by the other 12 original colonies...