There has been some recent panic in the financial and mortgage markets over the concern that interest rates seem to be headed up. This has happened suddenly and stands in contrast to what I have been saying from the beginning of the pandemic: interest rates will stay low for a very long time. So what changed? It began when a…
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by Pierre G. Villere We all know there have repeated efforts for decades now to increase the federal gas tax, which has stood at 18.4 cents since 1993, almost 30 years without an increase.
Read Moreby Pierre G. Villere Those of us who are older and have had multi-decade careers have seen this play out before in Washington, D.C.: The opposing party wins the White House, and a majority in both houses of Congress. While the 50-50 split in the Senate is not technically a majority, the vice president holds the power to break a…
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by Pierre G. Villere As we all know, terms like “disruptive technologies” and “disruptive innovation” have moved into the mainstream business lexicon, and mark the distinction between the way it has always been done, and the opportunity for change as a result of new technologies or processes.
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by Pierre G. Villere A couple of months ago, I wrote about my most recent crystal ball prognostications, and expected the decade of the 2020s to resemble the 1920s, a period of unprecedented growth and prosperity coming out of World War I and the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-19. I dubbed this economic expectation for the 2020s the “Roaring Twenties…
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by Pierre G. Villere In one of the scenes in the iconic motion picture Casablanca, Captain Renault attempts to arrest the protagonist, Victor Lazlo, and in one the most famous lines in movie history, Humphrey Bogart’s character Rick Blaine pulls a gun on Renault and utters the famous words “Not so fast, Louie”… .
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by Pierre G. Villere Last month, I wrote about the lasting effects of Covid-19 long after a vaccine and herd immunity allow us to climb out of our world of lockdowns, quarantines, masking, and social distancing. I keep hearing about the “new normal,” and thought it would be interesting to review how the world emerged from the last great pandemic,…
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by Pierre G. Villere
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by Pierre G. Villere As I approach five decades of practicing in the investment banking world, one truism that has been consistent is that housing always leads us out of recessions. As a matter of fact, the housing industry serves as a source of strength during an economic recovery, as has been the case in nearly every recession over the…
Read Moreby Pierre G. Villere I have been told in the past that I have a crystal ball. I don’t … like the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” I just make sure to see the obvious, while others go through life with filtered views that obscure reality. The unleashed power of the millennials and the impact they…
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