Representation without taxation

On Dec. 16, 1773, demonstrators boarded ships in Boston Harbor and threw chests of tea into the water. This was the culmination of the resistance movement against the taxation of t... Read More

Finance

All that twitters isn’t gold

By Alan Silverman

On March 10, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell made the first telephone call — to his assistant in the adjoining room — uttering the immortal words, “Mr. Watson, come here, I w... Read More

Finance

Mind the Gap!

By Alan Silverman

The London Underground Railway System (lovingly known as The Tube) opened in 1863 and soon carried about 25,000 passengers a day. It now carries more than 1 billion passengers per ... Read More

Finance

Too big to jail?

Why crime still pays

By Alan Silverman

Willie Sutton was a famous bank robber who is alleged to have said, in response to a question asking why he robbed banks, “Because that’s where the money is.” Whe... Read More

Finance

Chutzpah: Businessmen behaving badly

By Alan Silverman

Chutzpah is a Yiddish word that does not have a simple English synonym. It combines the concepts of insolence, gall and audacity. An example is the young man who murdered both his ... Read More

Finance

Frothy coffee: Letting off steam

By Alan Silverman

The U.K. Parliament recently held hearings concerning the amount of tax paid in the U.K. by the subsidiaries of international companies. They called on Starbucks, Google and Amazon... Read More

Finance

Good old Yankee ingenuity

By Alan Silverman

In 2008, representatives from the U.S. Government Accountability Office took a trip to the Cayman Islands – not to lie on the beach at our expense, but to visit a five-story ... Read More

Finance

How gross is your domestic product?

By Alan Silverman

What do Monaco, Liechtenstein, and Luxembourg have in common? I am sure that you can hardly wait for the answer, but we need to discuss a few fundamentals of economics first. Barel... Read More

Finance

It’s not cricket

By Alan Silverman

The game of cricket has been played in England since at least the 16th century. It is played with a bat and ball, and a match can last as long as five days. As the British spread t... Read More

Finance

The best politicians money can buy

By Alan Silverman

Will Rogers once said, “Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated.” I am sure Meg Whitman would agree. Her unsuccessful run for go... Read More

Finance

An economic safari

By Alan Silverman

I have spent a lot of time in Africa watching lions hunt. The hard work is done by the lionesses, but the male eats first – sound familiar, ladies? When the lions have had th... Read More

Finance

The usual suspects

The economic crisis rogue’s gallery

By Alan Silverman

In the classic 1942 film Casablanca, when French police captain Louis Renault hears that German Major Strasser has been shot, he utters the famous words: “Round up the usual ... Read More

Finance

Deficits do matter

By Alan Silverman

In late 2002, Vice President Cheney was holding a meeting with then Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill to discuss another round of tax cuts. O’Neill was concerned that the... Read More

Finance

Bridge financing in an economically turbulent era

What we learned — and didn’t learn

By Alan Silverman

As we celebrate the Golden Gate Bridge, let us not forget the tenacity of those who raised the money against all odds during the Great Depression. Our story starts on January 13,... Read More

Finance

A financial tour of two ancient civilizations

By Alan Silverman

Rome and Greece dominated Europe and much of the known Western world for hundreds of years, and it is interesting to see how they have progressed in the 2,000 years since then. Our... Read More

Alan Silverman