Real

Edward Lotterman Before his disastrous invasion of Russia, Napoleon Bonaparte said, “Geography is destiny!” And even today, this assertion prompts useful occupied with how geography influences development of economies over time and why apparently similar countries can have quite different outcomes. Such...

Edward Lotterman I can imagine the barb coming all the way in which from Stockholm: “Take that Tommy, you ignorant twit!” Um, well, no. The Swedish Royal Academy didn't give Harvard Prof. Claudia Goldin the 2023 Economics Nobel simply to flip...

Edward Lotterman The recent threat by Indiana GOP Congresswoman Victoria Spartz to resign her seat if Congress doesn't establish an independent “debt commission,” and what it implies, is as welcome as cool fall air. Here's a self-proclaimed Tea Party member recognizing...

Edward Lotterman Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Zelenskyy has presented his earnest pleas to Congress and President Joe Biden and is off to Canada. A recent poll reflects our nation’s political dividedness as at no other time since 1861. Some 71%...

Edward Lotterman The Consumer Price Index for August — the federal government’s headline measure of inflation — was announced last week as up 0.63% over July. It was 3.7% over the 12 months since August 2022. But when the seemingly tepid...

Edward Lotterman Robert E. Lee supposedly once remarked, although he could have been quoting another person, that “It's well that war is so terrible – otherwise we must always grow too keen on it.” And therein lies a terrible paradox. Everyone...

Little has modified in international currency issues since last week. The BRICS conference was held, and 6 latest countries added. Then everyone went home with nothing really done. Exchange rates have modified little nor have trade flows. But what...

In downtown St. Paul, an investment company’s recent enterprise capital subsidiary has made a notable hire with ties to the world of start-ups and downtown industrial real estate — as has the St. Paul Port Authority. Scott Burns, the founding...

Edward Lotterman A French president once asserted, to much acclaim, that the U.S. dollar’s status as a “reserve currency” conferred an exorbitant privilege on our nation. As I write this, members of the six-nation BRICS bloc are meeting in South Africa....

Edward Lotterman Sometimes a sardonic quip for one era preserves wisdom for a later one. During World War II, Bill Mauldin, a young soldier and editorial cartoonist, created and published popular cartoons concerning the war’s realities featuring GI characters Wille and...