RealClearMarkets Articles

As rising prices and diminishing supplies have replaced COVID as the American people’s number one concern, President Biden has unsurprisingly announced several initiatives aimed at lowering prices and restocking the shelves. Unfortunately, Biden’s proposals will increase prices and decrease supply of goods and services. For example, Biden has announced plans to spend $1 billion in an attempt to increase competition in the meat processing industry. According to the President, the reason meat prices are high and supplies are low is because of greedy big business.  Not because,...

Facing another round of skyrocketing inflation, empty store shelves, and falling poll numbers, the future of President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda looks increasingly imperiled. Much fanfare has been made about the death of his signature legislation, the so-called “Build Back Better” (BBB) Act – a sweeping, multitrillion dollar partisan social welfare bill that failed because it could not win support from all members of the president’s own party in the Senate. But lest we forget, even without BBB, Democrats did pass a sweeping, multitrillion dollar partisan...

In his recently released book The Cloud Revolution, Mark Mills relayed to readers the remarkable fact that “it is one thousand times cheaper to light up a room today than it was at the dawn of the twentieth century, and ten thousand times cheaper than in 1845.” So what’s up with this big decline in price? Reduced economic growth since the mid-19th century, or reduced demand for electricity? With only slight exaggeration, that’s seemingly how expert economists like Jason Furman would explain the alleged mystery of falling prices. Thoroughly of the belief that...

The AH-64 Apache helicopters flew low over the Potomac. Everything was working as planned. After the bridges were secure, a contingent of loyal Army officers and soldiers gathered at Fort Belvoir would  stream over the river in armored personnel carriers, carrying troops wearing red  hats.  During the previous few days, over 100 current and ex-military men loyal to Donald Trump had checked into the Harrington, the Riggs and Kimpton hotels with the sole purpose of taking out the 7th floor of the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice at 955 Pennsylvania Avenue. These...

In the wake of the release of the latest Consumer Price Index data showing an untenable seven percent year-over-year inflation rate, self-proclaimed “policy wonk” Senator Elizabeth Warren has identified the problem. It’s not two straight years of extravagant deficit spendingand Federal Reserve actions that have contributed to an unprecedented spike in the money stock over the past year. No, it’s those greedy grocery stores gouging prices. According to Warren, the grocery industry is dominated by a small group of grocery stores like Kroger that can...

This week brought another spate of predictable headlines about a worthless paper (Stock, S.J., Carruthers, J., Calvert, C. et al. SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 vaccination rates in pregnant women in Scotland. Nat Med (2022), published in a prestigious, peer-reviewed journal. Although the paper’s defects are glaring, its message supports current policies. Surprisingly, this is not the usual case of reporters misrepresenting results. The paper is explicit in its misinformation. The abstract ends with, “Addressing low vaccine uptake rates in pregnant women is imperative to...

Black investors today hold just 3 percent of partner-level positions at venture capital firms. That has to change, says Sherrard Harrington, chairman and co-founder of the black-owned venture capital firm and business incubator, EonXi.  EonXI ‘s own mission includes assisting diverse influencers, athletes, and entrepreneurs in building tech-based financial empires. EonXI, according to Chief Executive Officer Aaron Wilson, focuses on staking fledgling startups in blockchain, gaming, and the metaverse. “When you get to Web 3, you get to why our company exists. Eon...

The winter was the worst it had been in forty years, and this was during a time when winters were especially brutal. In camp near Morristown, New Jersey, the half-starved, half-thawed men of Connecticut’s 8th regiment would finally surpass their breaking point. Having fought – oftentimes bitterly – for the American Revolutionary cause sustaining immeasurable heartache to go along with innumerable physical wounds, the men of those companies could no longer accept the seemingly unending universal privations forced upon them.  On May 25, 1780, one unnamed soldier had...

P.J. O’Rourke long ago quipped that what really ended the Cold War was Bulgarian blue jeans. One bets he was being somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but the brilliant satirist had a point. The quality of what was being manufactured on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain was much less than sub-standard, and unattractive. Ok, but before readers get too full of themselves, imagine what we’d look like in the free world if we had to make our own clothes. It’s no reach to say that the denim stylings of the Bulgarians would look positively Parisian next to what most of us would create....

The future of digital asset regulation is being written right now and we can all hope collaboration carries the day.  But for those who believe that peace is best achieved through strength, contingent battle plans must be readied.  And that means understanding the legal terrain on which any conflict would unfold.  For now, opponents of regulatory overreach hold the high ground. Over several years and three Supreme Court Justices, the law of federal regulation has changed dramatically and for the better.  In a series of decisions about everything from veterans benefits to a...

Stocks routinely do what is both least expected and surprisingly rational afterwards. While I only forecast one year at a time, what nobody expects now—hence, what is likeliest—is two or three more great bull market years. Before you reject this, let me explain. First, my 2022 forecast: A sideways, often scary global stock market through summer, followed by a strong autumn and winter, delivering double-digit 2022 gains. Last January I told you 2021 looked great for US and world stocks—fueled largely by America’s political cycle. Since 1925, stocks fell in about half of...

Some would say it’s the education system’s failings, but the view here is that confusion is a bullish signal of prosperity. Staggering amounts of it enable the kind of sloppy thinking that would be rather impolitic to express during times of relative desperation. All of this and more came to mind while reading a Wall Street Journal account of the economic implications of the 2020 shutdowns. According to a cheery report on A1, they “threatened to ruin Americans’ finances”, but “for many, the opposite happened.” Based on this summation, Congress...

Trouble is brewing for Korean Internet users.  Government officials are actively considering legislation that would allow local Internet service providers to effectively inflict a tax—so-called “network usage fees”—on “global platforms” in order for their content to reach Korean consumers.  This follows litigation by SK Broadband to require similar payments from Netflix, whose content apparently accounts for a large share of Korean broadband use.  President Moon Jae-In has publicly supported the idea of ISPs charging “network usage...

To paraphrase Ben Franklin, the only certainties in life are the passage of time and taxes. In that spirit, a new year means the approach of a new Tax Day. As much of a hassle as filing taxes can be, many Americans actually look forward to April 15, as tax filing means a tax refund for over three quarters of filers. Unfortunately, many Americans already planning how to spend their tax refunds may not get what they expect. The American Rescue Plan Act, passed into law in March of last year, expanded the Child Tax Credit (CTC) from $2,000 per child to $3,000, with a $600 bonus for children...

I have mapped out positions on all major issues of national importance.  I can tell you what works and exactly how to fix any national problem.  However, there is one issue I don’t understand. I have struggled to understand how close to 50 % of the American population can be so mindlessly trusting of Big Government.  What ever happened to critical thinking? Why can’t people form their own opinions using facts and logic to reach a reasonable conclusion? What is it that makes people believe politicians who have lied to them over and over? Even when they don’t...

A little less than six months ago, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that real GDP for last year’s second quarter in the US had regained its pre-COVID high set back in the fourth quarter of 2019. The announcement seemed somewhat perplexing given that many in the public had been led to believe the American economy was on fire; Warren Buffett had even declared it “red hot.”  Therefore, taking six quarters, a year and a half just to get back to where we started might have seemed troublesome, perhaps even a bit of a contradiction to the widely reported...

In an era of hyper-partisanship in the nation’s capital, it’s refreshing to see members of Congress working across the aisle on legislative solutions that fix loopholes or systems being exploited by bad actors. Such is the case with the “Advancing America’s Interests Act” (AAIA) introduced byReps. Suzanne DelBene (D-WA) and David Schweikert (R-AZ). The AAIA aims to modernize practices at the International Trade Commission (ITC) and stop the Commission from being abused by patent trolls. The ITC was established to protect U.S. industry from unfair foreign...

"They should have their passports stamped right away." That's what Cato Institute co-founder Ed Crane once remarked about Cuban refugees who had navigated shark-infested waters to get to the U.S. His thinking was that people who had risked so much for freedom had shown that they were American, through and through. Confirm their citizenship right away, along with the citizenship of others making the ultimate sacrifice to be American. Crane would likely enjoy the story of Roman Kaplan. Kaplan recently died, but did so as an American. And was he ever an American. This most enterprising of...

When I was younger, I used to be an addict. I wasn’t an alcoholic. Not a porn addict.  I smoked pot a couple times after football practice in high school, but no drugs since. I have been to Monte Carlo without the urge to lay one franc on the roulette table. I was a special kind of addict. I was a “DEAL” addict. The world needs Deal Makers. My guess is less than 1% of the public is or even has the tools to be a Deal Maker. I loved the hunt. Like a bird dog working a hedgerow, sniffing out deals takes energy. The joy is finding something no one else has found. Sometimes...