Bill Barnhart

The stagflation scare is back. Beware. The notion of stagnant economic growth plus inflation is a conundrum ideally suited for doom-and-gloom forecasters. It sounds like an unsolvable riddle: The economy...

Wall Street continues to pout over its subprime mortgage mess. But the blow-back from outside Wall Street is getting louder, as well. The financial press and financial cable television channels...

After a few days of debating Federal Reserve policy, an ethereal subject for most investors, we can start chewing on more familiar fare. Economic reports on producer price inflation, unemployment...

The Federal Reserve's latest interest-rate cut, announced Tuesday, was not aggressive enough toward preventing a recession and rescuing major banks, according to most critics. The question for investors is whether...

The stock market wants to rally to close out the year. That's one of just two things you need to know about the Federal Reserve's interest rate meeting Tuesday. Economists...

Civil War buffs are familiar with characters known as camp followers. They were peddlers, including flesh peddlers, and other entrepreneurs who followed the armies of the North and South in...

Much is riding on the November report on job growth and unemployment due Friday from the Labor Department. But investors tempted to place a quick bet on the jobs data,...

A nostalgic metaphor has entered the anxious conversations about the health of the global banking system. We're told it's like the Y2K problem. Let's hope so. As New Year's Eve...

Efforts under way at the highest levels of government to ease the pain in the housing and mortgage markets serve an important purpose. By providing leadership against a tide of...

Stocks on Monday began the new week and new month lower, as the well-known litany of problems in the economy and financial markets continued to weigh things down. The Dow...