RealClearMarkets Articles

The American Economic Liberties Project, a progressive think tank seeking to ingratiate itself with populists on the right, lashed out at Federal Trade Commissioner (FTC) Andrew Ferguson for abandoning a Biden-era rule that would ban all noncompete agreements. “Ferguson has once again shown his contempt for American workers by siding with the Chamber of Commerce to scrap a straightforward ban on noncompete agreements,” Nidhi Hegde, the AELP’s executive director said in a statement, claiming that the ban had “clear legal authority” and...

Products buy products. If this basic truth were understood, a lot of awful legislation and rulemaking could be avoided. Which is why it’s important to press on the point. When you walk into a small neighborhood store, to a Walmart or Target, or into a restaurant in Rome, what you get is an exchange of the goods, services, management skills, or knowledge that you bring to work each day, all in return for what you don’t have. Some will say that money buys things, but money, purchasing power, and credit are an effect of what we produce on the job. While economists imagine that...

One of the progressive era’s "innovations" was the creation of “independent federal agencies.” These agencies are not only authorized to enforce certain federal laws and regulations—they also have the power to adjudicate alleged violations of the laws or regulations in administrative courts. These agencies combine legislative, enforcement, and judicial functions making a mockery of the separation of powers which the drafters of the Constitution saw as central to the preservation of liberty. In addition, these agencies have limited accountability to the executive or...

After the Moon Landing of 1969, manned space travel stagnated for over half a century. The space shuttle was far too expensive and never lived up to expectations. It was only with the advent of private space exploration that the cost of transporting a kilogram of payload into space fell dramatically. In fact, it now costs Elon Musk only around three percent as much to transport one kilogram into space as it used to cost NASA with the Space Shuttle. Plans to establish a base on the moon – and later on Mars – or mine asteroids are becoming increasingly achievable thanks to the...

Earlier this month, S&P Dow Jones Indices introduced an S&P 500 Christian Values Screened Index. This new index “strives to adhere to expressions of Christian values while maintaining institutional rigor.” More specifically, the index seeks to screen companies from the S&P 500 based on whether their business activities align with an “Evangelical Christian Framework”. Who expected to see that investing headline? In her interview with the index creators, Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo show pointed out, “obviously there is a marketplace...

The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) recently sent a letter to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Andrew Ferguson requesting the FTC investigate whether the Biden Administration’s Office of Gun Violence Prevention worked with anti-Second Amendment organizations to demand that the agency crack down on “deceptive and misleading claims” made by gun manufacturers. These efforts were supported by a group of anti-Second Amendment senators who wrote to then-FTC Chair Lina Khan asking her to investigate the gun industry's advertising...

“I’ve just come from seeing a dead boy – and you killed him.” Those were the words of writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin (1924-1987) from a long-ago television appearance. Years after, Thomas Sowell referenced Baldwin’s appearance in a 1986 opinion piece. Sowell was making an essential point, one that the American right would do well to internalize nearly 40 years later. In a column titled “An ‘Epidemic’ of Irresponsibility,” Sowell wrote that “The decline of personal responsibility has been accompanied by a rise in...

One of the biggest mistakes investors make with secular growth themes is worrying too early about how it all ends. With growth investing, the journey matters more than the destination. Yes, we need to watch for yellow flags, but history shows there are usually more false alarms than fatal ones. Bull markets and transformative themes are built on exactly that—climbing a wall of worry. Make no mistake: AI is a spectacular boom that will become a bubble. But bubbles can run longer, get bigger, and become far more disruptive than most expect. Hedgeye CEO Keith...

“Amazon made it easy to sign up for Prime in just two clicks.” That’s how a CNN report on the FTC’s upcoming case against Amazon described it. Which doesn’t help the FTC’s case. To see why, contemplate how easy any business makes it for customers to sign up for its various services in return for an annual fee. Rare is the business that won’t go to great lengths to achieve stable, and highly predictable earning streams. What’s interesting about Amazon Prime is that it’s a waste of words describing the various benefits that come with it, and...

Imagine a local merchant barging into a wildly popular marketplace, demanding the prime stall rent-free, and when refused, returning with armed muscle in the name of marketplace “freedom.” Today, Apple’s App Store is that marketplace; Epic Games the interloper; government the hired muscle. Epic’s campaign of exploitation began in August 2020, when it smuggled an unauthorized payment system into Fortnite to dodge Apple’s 30% App Store commission. Apple removed the game; Epic sued, accusing Apple of “monopolizing” iOS payments. A judge...

The leading proponents of a wealth tax have released a new study claiming that billionaires pay lower tax rates than the average American taxpayer. The study is co-authored by the UC Berkeley economics professors who made the case for the wealth tax supported by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. And just like their wealth tax study, this new study is coming under fire for using questionable assumptions and flawed data.The authors of the study contend that billionaires on the Forbes 400 list pay a lower effective tax rate than average Americans, due in large part they say to the...

“Washington’s spiraling debt trends are simply unsustainable.” Those are the words of Manhattan Institute budget expert Jessica Riedl in the Washington Post. But unless Riedl knows something that the deepest markets in the world don’t know, what she describes as unsustainable is quite sustainable. The $37 trillion (and rising fast) worth of federal debt is loud evidence of the previous truth. As is made plain throughout The Deficit Delusion with numerous market-based examples, money is ruthless. Only those expected to have sizable future inflows can borrow in sizable...

On July 29, Dr. Vinay Prasad abruptly left his job at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA); less than two weeks later, on August 9th, he returned. It’s been a long, strange season for the director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), who only began work at the agency in May. His brief tenure was disrupted by MAGA influencers such as Laura Loomer, who accused Prasad of being a “progressive left saboteur” bent on undermining the Trump administration. Shortly before his departure from the FDA, the Wall Street Journal editor...

Don’t be swayed by “open” letters signed by well-known and well-respected scholars, experts, professors, and businessmen. In recent years, it has become usual to find in the popular media that a new group of apoplectic economists—substitute “doctors,” “scientists,” or “tech leaders” depending on the days—have written another open letter (signed by many of their own), rather than debate the merits of the argument. In particular, it has become fashionable for large groups of economists to weigh in on pressing political...

Senator Dick Durbin has spent much of his career in a love affair with price controls. He flirted with them in his infamous Durbin Amendment, the addendum to the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act. He renewed his vows with Senators Bernie Sanders and Josh Hawley in pushing a 10 percent ceiling on credit card interest. And now, determined to consummate the relationship, he’s demanding a nationwide 36 percent cap on personal loans with Senators Whitehouse and Blumenthal, regardless of the loan’s length or size. The Illinois Democrat has staked his legacy on the belief that...

When asked in a CNBC interview about his dissent at his first FOMC meeting, in which he voted for a 50 basis point cut when the rest of the board voted for 25, Stephen Miran said: I’m clearly in the minority in not being concerned about inflation from tariffs...There will always be relative price changes, but whether or not it’s inflation that’s macroeconomically significant of the type that monetary policy should respond to is a different question.  When explaining the reason for his decision, Miran said he doesn’t “see any material inflation from...

While President Donald Trump has shifted some long-held conservative positions on things like trade and immigration, the majority of voters still perceive the Republican party to be more friendly to business than the Democratic party. The belief that economic growth should be an important priority for our government is a core reason that many Americans choose to support the Republican party.  Today, many people believe that the development of artificial intelligence, or AI, will be the catalyst for economic growth in the next decade, and its impact on the nation’s economy and...

Few businesses have presented more of a paradox than EchoStar.  On the one hand, it had a portfolio of largely fallow wireless licenses from the Federal Communications Commission worth many tens of billions of dollars. On the other hand, it hemorrhaged cash, had approximately $24 billion of debt at high interest rates, and teetered on the brink of bankruptcy with seemingly no possible escape?  In the past few months, a miraculous escape was found, and EchoStar went from Skid Row to the Yellow Brick Road.  What happened? EchoStar was ultimately bailed out by an...

You would have felt lazy, and likely viewed as pathetic and stupid if you were alive in 1825. Why? Because 200 years ago your work options were almost certainly limited to farm drudgery six days a week, dawn to dusk. The truth about how life used to be is useful to think about in the age of “universal basic income.” It didn’t exist then, and for obvious reasons. Not only was most human exertion directed at the creation of one thing (food), the sad fact that so much of humanity could only do one thing speaks to the likely possibility that much of humanity 200 years ago was...