Forbes Magazine Review

Forbes is painfully expensive ($60 for 26 issues) and a bit too politically conservative leaning for my taste, but the financial insight is as good as I've seen. Much better than Money Magazine.

Forbes is intellectual, extensive, and insightful. If you aren't turned off by the price tag, I strongly recommend Forbes. I suggest purchasing Forbes at Magazine.com for $30 per year.

The Good

Forbes has some of the best financial articles I've ever read. The articles are deep, academic, and extremely well thought out. I also subscribe to Money Magazine, which is a bit more basic. Forbes is more Peter Lynch while Money is more Suze Orman (I happen to really like Suze, she just has a different style, scope, and expertise.)

Articles range from macroeconomic trends (will Democratic control of Congress lead to higher interest rates, slowing investment and the stock market?), to stock market trends (Is it time for value stocks to struggle while growth stocks explode?), to business news stories (An expose on a city in California that is run like a monarchy. Coverage of interesting companies, like one that dumps iron dust in the ocean to collect phytoplankton to form on the ocean's surface, taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and fighting global warming.), to individual stock tips (Companies that would benefit by being broken up. An individual stock with a low p/e and an event that could increase eps growth).

In each issue, Steve Forbes writes a couple pages of articles in the front, which are usually very insightful and interesting. They also bring in fantastic guest columnists, usually professors of economics or business at top universities.

The Bad

Sometimes (Steve Forbes is most guilty of this), Forbes strays from business topics, where they are very strong, to politics, where they are as biased and opinionated as anyone else with an emotional political opinion.

To be fair, not all of Forbes' political commentary is bad. Sometimes Forbes has great articles on the business implications of political events or proposals. But too often the old ultra-conservative bias finds its way into the otherwise highly academic Forbes pages.

Most recently, Steve Forbes boldly dove into commentary on the Scooter Libby trial. Mr. Forbes defended Scooter Libby against perjury charges on a technicality - that memory is "fallible". That people who work long hours and give contradictory testimony aren't lying, they're just forgetful. Somehow, this made the judge and prosecutor the "real wrongdoers". Yes, the judge and prosecutor are the bad guys, not the guy who got eliminated an opponent by leaking classified information about an undercover CIA agent

Something tells me Forbes didn't run a similar article defending Bill Clinton during his perjury trials.

We realize Scooter is (was) a member of the current Republican administration. We also realize that Mr. Forbes once was a Republican candidate for President, and may choose to make another run at the presidency. As a political moderate, I was shocked to see such a logically weak defense of a man who intentionally harmed people who are serving their country.

Mr. Forbes would be wise to keep his political commentary closer to topics like his flat income tax proposal. That's an ultra-conservative idea I can disagree with, but not be offended by.

Fortunately, these political distractions are rare enough to make the magazine enjoyable even for open-minded non-conservatives.

Price

The little cards in my Forbes magazines advertise subscriptions for $60 per year. The magazine is bi-weekly, but I still wouldn't subscribe at that price. I suggest purchasing Forbes at Magazine.com for $30 per year.