A Cool New Image for Old-Fashioned Debt

Will cutting-edge layaway plans be the salvation of the retail sector and the broader economy, or are they a disaster waiting to happen? The newest experiments in making it consumer payments easy is creative, but may not bring the long-term results that retailers hope to see. Sure, they are being done through a cutting-edge Swedish […]

Who Needs a Recession When You Have Demographics?

After this Globe and Mail column came out, I had a friend call and ask whether he should re-jig his portfolio to get rid of his auto stocks. The piece is about demographics, and specifically about the implications of the fact that people spend differently over their lifetimes (spoiler: as you age you are more […]

You’re Not Old, You’re Perennial

This is my latest article for the Globe and Mail..this time on ‘Perennials’ as older workers are sometimes called. Those over 55 now comprise about 23 per cent of the U.S. workforce and 21 per cent of the Canadian one, which should not surprise anyone. Perennials now have a higher labor force participation rate than […]

Why Walmart Wants to be Hipster-Cool

Walmart buying Modcloth? ‘Say it’s not so’ went the lament from Millennials and other assorted cool people earlier this year. After all, Modcloth is a cutting-edge, online retailer that offers funky clothes for those who consider themselves the opposite of everything the world’s biggest retailer stands for. Modcloth and Walmart could never be a fit […]

Demographics is Driving M & A Activity in Japan – and Maybe Other Places Too

Demographics drives a lot of things including Mergers and Acquisitions (M & A) activity. That is a lesson we are now learning from Japan, where there are apparently too few heirs to take over large companies as their boomer-aged Chief Executives head for retirement. This piece from the Financial Times looks at what is going […]

Here’s a New One: The ‘Divorce Mortgage’

Here’s a new one to me: the ‘divorce mortgage’. No its not some crazy, invented term to describe a financing vehicle (my mind went back to ‘plain vanilla swaps’ from the days when derivatives were the buzz), but rather exactly what it sounds like: a mortgage that suits people who own a home together but […]