RealClearMarkets Articles

Higher tariffs are often thought to present a problem to monetary policymakers at the Federal Reserve (Fed).  Tariff shocks raise prices and reduce output and employment, which seems to push in opposite directions from the perspective of the Fed’s dual mandate to stabilize prices and maintain full employment, creating challenges for the Fed in crafting a response. Reflecting these concerns, the word “tariff” appears 36 times over 18 pages in the latest Minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC).   But the “problem” of tariffs for...

What’s the bigger generational burden: small amounts of annual borrowing to pay for small governmental overages in a nation full of 20 percent taxed middle earners (governments can't borrow substantial sums on average taxpayer earnings), or a much bigger budget in balance via nominally light, 1 percent flat-tax style taxation of a numerically small 0.001 percent dense with wealth of the Elon Musk variety? Clown question? If only. So focused are deficit and debt hawks on the alleged immorality of debt left to future generations that they gloss over the true burden of government spending:...

Consumer sentiment weakened in September as the RealClearMarkets/TIPP Economic Optimism Index, the first read on U.S. consumer confidence each month, fell from 50.9 in August to 48.7, a 2.2-point decline (-4.3%). After briefly breaking a five-month streak of pessimism in August by rising above the neutral 50.0 mark, the index slipped back into negative territory. September’s Economic Optimism Index reading of 48.7 is 0.93% below its 296-month historical average of 49.2. Investor confidence fell 4.0% (2.6 points) to 62.5 in September, while non-investor confidence declined 3.7% (1.6...

Few can dispute the fact that the health care exchanges — where people without employer-provided insurance obtain their health coverage — have had their problems; I’ve written several critiques myself. The recently passed tax law — the One Big Beautiful Bill — attempts to address concerns over fraud and double coverage on the exchange. While its goal of eliminating waste and fraud makes sense, the ham-handed approach it takes will result in people losing health insurance for no good reason, with no money saved.  For starters, many of the...

In addition to my annual messages honoring Memorial Day and Independence Day, I've often written one celebrating Labor Day. Not infrequently, I've been asked why the president of a think tank that proclaims its devotion to advancing free market, property rights, and limited government principles would do so. After all, there's no question that the celebration of Labor Day in the United States has its origins in the late 1800s in the organized labor union movement. No matter. For me, Labor Day is not about celebrating the organized labor union movement that played a key role in...

Basic income guarantees won’t define the future, opposite the predictions of more than a few AI visionaries. That’s because what replaces human effort does so by powerfully raising the productive value of human beings. Machines and robots that will do for us and think for us won’t make us useless any more than extra hands in the proverbial factory render workers redundant. The more hands and machines, the more specialization per worker. Which means a great deal more productivity per worker. It’s a happy way of saying that AI advances will make humans more valuable on...

Quick question: would you order the bombing of an enemy country? One more quick question: would you order the bombing of an enemy country populated not just by your own family members, but also the family members of every one of your colleagues? To say that the answer to the second question would vary from the first insults obvious. Readers know why. The obvious seemingly eludes Mike Gallagaher, the former congressman from Wisconsin. Writing from a surely much cozier, post-politics perch at Palantir, Gallagher recently published a Wall Street Journal opinion piece titled “Send...

Economic activity in cities is the life blood of an economy.  The U.S. conference of Mayors estimates that cities generated almost 91 percent of aggregate U.S. gross domestic product and about 88 percent of total employment in 2024.  Prosperous cities increase national output and employment, raising the U.S. standard of living. While the President claims his economic policies will invigorate the economy, his immigration policies hit urban areas hard.  This stifles economic activity in these areas which hurts the U.S. economy. The President’s approach to...

Last month marked a little-known legal anniversary with big-time consequences for Americans’ public health: Back in July 2012, British biopharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline reached a record $3 billion settlement with the Justice Department, pleading guilty to promoting its profitable antidepressants for unapproved uses and distributing phony data to push the drugs on children.  The GlaxoSmithKline case, which resulted in what was until then the largest health care fraud payout in U.S. history, established new standards for the regulation of misleading marketing by...

Shortly before the House adjourned for the August district work period, the Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government of the House Appropriations Committee passed the Fiscal Year 2026 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill. Amongst the agencies funded by this bill is the Federal Trade Commission(FTC). The bill reduces the FTC’s budget by $37 million or 8.7%. The bill also forbids the FTC from using taxpayer funds to make any changes in the pre-merger approval process. This stops the FTC from implementing Biden-era FTC Chair Lina...

The Calendar section in the Los Angeles Times used to be thick Monday through Saturday, and then near book-length on Sundays. So many ads promoting released and soon-to-be-released films, and so many articles about the movie industry that has long animated business activity in Los Angeles. The Calendar section, and surely Variety to a smaller but much more substantive collection of industry insiders, fed Hollywood and broad excitement about it. It was in Calendar sometime in the early 1980s that I was introduced to Michael Ovitz as the most powerful person in Hollywood. It sparked a lifelong...

With inflation surging, the Trump Administration’s August 1 tariffs hit already reeling American businesses. This round of tariffs – touching some $1.6 trillion in goods from 90 countries – layers on top of levies on steel, aluminum, copper, cars and auto parts, and a host of other goods from select countries. Will additional tariffs land on the dozens if not hundreds of products currently under ‘Section 232’ national security investigations, including semiconductors and downstream consumer technology products? Will the trade deal frameworks the U.S....

Poor financial policies have destabilized community banking for too long with excessive regulation and insufficient relief. 2023 saw the highest amount of bank closures since the Great Recession, in part due to legislation like the Dodd-Frank Act which crushed community banks’ abilities to offer loans and services. Inspired by the damage, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell refused to lower interest rates this year, forcing local banks to continue bleeding money on extraneous upkeep operations. Michelle Bowman, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of...

What’s firstly puzzling about the right’s Ivy League and Ivy League-adjacent hatred, and the belief that so much of what ails us is an effect of what "they're teaching" on campus, is that so many of their own attended Ivy League schools themselves. Tom Cotton attended Harvard and Harvard Law, Ted Cruz went to Princeton before Harvard Law, while Ron De Santis attended Yale before Harvard Law. Trump Supreme Court appointees Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh attended Harvard and Yale Law respectively, while the Trump appointee conservatives most love to hate (Amy Coney Barrett)...

The editor of RealClearMarkets, John Tamny, has a point. An important question to debate today should be: is the Bureau of Labor Statistics still relevant today? While the August firing of BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, and the subsequent appointment of E.J. Antoni by President Trump have created quite a political stir, the discussion should focus on the use and importance of the BLS’ major product: the monthly jobs report which is eagerly awaited by the business community, the White House and the media. As a key indicator, the BLS’ Current Employment Statistics (CES)...

California’s debt, currently around $1.6 trillion, is poised to soar in the coming years. Bank on it, though don’t be so simplistic as to blame the debt surge on Governor Gavin Newsom, or his eventual replacement in Sacramento.  Evidence that California's debt will rise no matter who is governor is all around us, and it prominently revealed itself in the past week alone. In concert with media reports indicating that San Franciso-based Databricks has achieved a valuation of $100 billion, it was announced that the next funding round for San Francisco-based OpenAI would value...

Letitia James is once again ramping up the lawfare machine from her perch as New York Attorney General. This time, rather than pursuing presidential candidates or thwarting DOGE cuts to the bureaucracy, she’s directing legal firepower at fraudsters using peer-to-peer finance apps, specifically Zelle.  Oddly, it’s not the well-documented networks of scammers and fraudsters using finance apps to lure unsuspecting New Yorkers into financial oblivion that are getting the bulk of James’ ire, but bankers. In a lawsuit filed last week, James is...

The defenders of corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs cannot stop twisting the truth. Their arguments are so flimsy that they rely on sleight of hand, misrepresentation, and wishful thinking to keep the DEI project alive. First, consider shareholder votes. DEI advocates love to point to low vote counts on anti-DEI shareholder proposals as evidence that investors are overwhelmingly supportive of DEI. But this is misleading. They conveniently ignore the fact that pro-DEI proposals often receive similarly low levels of support. If a 5 percent vote in favor of a...

I think that while I am certainly a conservative/libertarian ideologue, my allegiance is to a set of ideas and not a political party. There are several Democrats (adverse to my political philosophy) currently in hot water for mortgage fraud. I am one of those legal purists who “loves the law” for what it is intended to be, and I find it deeply troubling when it is abused for political purposes. The Anglo-American common law, combined with our constitutional and legislative systems, has created a beautiful symbiosis of cognitive purity that I absolutely revere, respect, and...