RealClearMarkets Articles

Recent headlines indicate that American employers are worried about a labor shortage due to President Trump’s enforcement of U.S. immigration law. A labor shortage, of course, will be good for American workers. His immigration and tariff policies indicate that Trump favors protecting both American producers and American workers. This was the policy that the U.S. adopted from the 1920s to the 1960s, usually seen as a golden economic age. Liberals laud this era, known as “The Great Compression,” as the apex of American economic equality. America’s early history was one...

As the midterm election campaigns start to heat up, a key question for voters is what will Democrats do if they win control of Congress in November?  They do not talk about it,  but it is almost certain they will do what they did the last time they had control—-raise taxes and increase spending. As the Wall Street Journal has noted, Democrats are “on a taxing binge,” with Democrats in Washington and across the country proposing all sorts of tax increases.  Republicans should be warning voters about these tax hikes, and promising instead to cut not raise...

“Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root.” Those were the words of Ronald Reagan.  Reagan was describing the communist opposition. He knew they would lose because countries defined by freedom and free markets always beat nations and ideologies rooted in authoritarianism and a lack of markets. Conservatives rightly believe Reagan was one of the foremost statesman of the 20th century, if not THE foremost. Having entered the White House in 1981, and when substantial parts of the world weren’t free, by the time he left the White House in 1989, communism was on the...

Today’s business ownership landscape is increasingly complicated by financial, voting, contractual and capital arrangements. A direct relationship between ownership and control can no longer be assumed, particularly for strategically important companies. Sika, a Swiss chemicals company, entered a four-year corporate battle in 2014, when building-material firm Saint-Gobain announced it would buy a controlling majority. Although the Burkard family owned 16% of shares, a dual-class structure granted them over 52% of voting rights. Sika showed why economic ownership does...

The Federal Open Market Committee votes on interest rates September 16. Two weeks later, on September 30, the Bureau of Economic Analysis will revise the PCE price index, the inflation measure the Fed targets, back to 2021 and publish the August reading in the same release. Governor Christopher Waller has already said which way one of the changes is expected to go. On September 3 he said the change in the way the Commerce Department measures fees paid to stock-market traders and related professionals could lower 12-month PCE inflation by a few tenths of a percentage point. He called it "a...

Oil in abundance is a given. The United States could find itself 100% bereft of oil, all the while at war with or embargoed by every oil-producing nation on earth, and the truth about oil abundance in the U.S. wouldn’t change one iota. What ensures enormous amounts of oil consumption in the U.S. is NOT related to copious “proven reserves” in the U.S., but is instead 100% related to the fact that the American people are the most productive people on earth. And so long as Americans are economically productive, the world’s oil will flow to the U.S. no matter what. It...

According to a recent Reuters-Ipsos poll, Democrats and Republicans are tied on the question of which party voters trust more on economic issues. This follows a similar Reuters-Ipsos poll from earlier this year that put Democrats slightly ahead of Republicans on the economy. These polls are the first time in a decade that Democrats have either been tied or ahead of Republicans as the party voters trust to pursue policies that will deliver a strong economy. The same poll that showed Democrats and Republicans tied on the economy also showed that voters preferred the Democrats’ approach to...

The Strait of Hormuz is one of the world’s most important energy chokepoints. It carries around a quarter of global seaborne oil trade, as well as major flows of liquefied natural gas and fertilizer. Recent conflict and attacks on shipping have sharply disrupted traffic, with serious consequences for energy and commodity markets. The point is not that the Strait of Hormuz does not matter. It plainly does. The point is that a chokepoint’s strategic importance, its effect on global markets, its burden on a particular household, and the amount of public attention it receives are four...

The United States fixed poverty over 250 years ago. Evidence supporting this claim can be found in the fact that the world’s poorest have long made the U.S. their destination not to attain security or handouts, but to find the work necessary to permanently escape poverty. The U.S. as a magnet for the world’s poorest is an answer to Joe Rogan’s comment from one of his recent podcasts. Rogan asked his guest and viewers to “imagine how much less crime there would be if no one was ever starving.” The easy and true response is that there wouldn’t be any less...

This week, President Trump signed five proclamations that should end any illusion in Ottawa that this trade fight is a negotiation among equals. As of September 29, Canadian beer, wine, spirits, whey, molasses, and heavyweight motorcycles will not be taxed at the American border. Under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, they will be banned.  This is the lawful and entirely predictable consequence of a choice Prime Minister Mark Carney made three weeks ago. It will end very badly, not for America but for the Canadian economy and people.  Roughly three-quarters of everything...

Every transformative period in American history has required new physical infrastructure. The Industrial Revolution required railroads, factories and electric power. The automobile required highways. Commercial aviation required airports. The internet required fiber-optic networks and cellular towers. Artificial intelligence requires data centers. Yet politicians in both parties are suddenly campaigning against them. Some want moratoriums. Others warn that data centers will drain lakes, pave over farms and raise electric bills. Instead of explaining how America can build this infrastructure...

 America's debate over water is becoming a familiar story, unfortunately, its a horror story. Competing interests take legitimate concerns and turn them into opposing camps with divisive words and behaviors. Data centers are portrayed as reckless water hogs. Agriculture is sometimes treated as an outdated industry unwilling to adapt. Industrial users are cast as threats to communities and the environment. This all happens as ordinary consumers are told their access to affordable water may somehow be incompatible with economic growth. Water is essential to life, but it is also essential...

Financial markets are supposed to provide valuable information about how investors view the economy. However, that signal is clearest when policymakers let markets speak. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s recent intervention in the bond market risks doing exactly the opposite.  For most of the past year, long-term Treasury yields have steadily risen against the backdrop of enormous debt issuance. These yields tend to reflect expectations about future interest rates and inflation, along with the debt trajectory and growth outlook. The U.S. government is expected to run the largest...

Eight times a year, financial America stops to listen to the Federal Reserve. Traders watch the clock. Television networks interrupt regular programming. Economists parse individual words in the Federal Open Market Committee's statement. Minutes later, the Fed chair faces reporters, and markets react to whether a phrase sounded more "hawkish" or "dovish" than expected. One could easily conclude that American monetary policy is conducted eight afternoons a year. It is not. The FOMC announcement is only the first step in a much larger process. The Federal Reserve must implement its target...

Conservatives and libertarians must stop pandering. They’ve long done it with taxes and education, and now they’re doing it with data centers. To see where this is going, let’s start with taxes. The right reveled in the fact that more than 75% of the 2017 Trump Tax Cuts went to taxpayers earning less than $500,000/year. Translated, the right cheered a tax cut that on its own wouldn’t drive much growth, and that decidedly would not boost opportunities for those earning less than $500,000/year. And that’s because there are no companies, no entrepreneurs, and no...

Conde Nast’s Vogue recently released its famed “September Issue.” Long viewed as the bible of high fashion, Vogue’s September edition marks the rollout of fall and winter designs. The various photo layouts of the new designs unsurprisingly attract a lot of would-be buyers, and by extension lots of glossy ads meant to win the business of those buyers.    Notable about the page count of the September Issue is that it reached a high of 916 pages (over 4 pounds) in 2012. No wonder Conde Nast employees, and Vogue employees in particular, were living and working so...

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is approaching the end of eight years in office. It’s a good time to put away the campaign slogans and look at the scoreboard. Has Michigan become a more dynamic place to live and work? A better place to start and grow a business? Did we finally “fix the damn roads”? The results are, at best, underwhelming. Michigan added only 42,700 jobs between January 2019 and April 2026. Just 1% growth. That ranks Michigan ninth worst among the states. And most of the jobs “gained” (14,000+) over the past year are in the government...

You finally did it. You opened the brokerage account. You bought your first shares. Maybe you picked a few companies you actually know. Maybe you went the boring-and-responsible route and bought an index fund. Congratulations. You're officially an investor. Well… sort of. Because here's the part nobody tells you when you're downloading the app, watching the little green numbers bounce around your screen and congratulating yourself for finally getting serious about your financial future: You may own the stock, but you don't necessarily control the vote. And that little distinction turns...

On the last day of August, Washington officials released two reports related to the quest for American energy dominance. The first is a White House fact sheet detailing a major partnership between the United States and the Venezuelan oil industry. The second, a report to Congress prepared at the request of Energy Secretary Chris Wright by the advisory National Petroleum Council, is a call to action for the U.S. government and industry to invest in new, more effective subsurface intelligence technology. Better subsurface intelligence – “eyes underground” – is crucial to...