RealClearMarkets Articles

In July, Roger Alford, Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust, and William Rinner, the Antitrust Department’s head of merger enforcement were fired. The reason for the firings was “insubordination” over the department’s dropping of a lawsuit challenging Hewlett-Packard Enterprises (HPE)’s purchase of fellow tech company Juniper. The lawsuit blocking the merger was the first antitrust suit filed in the Trump 2.0 Administration. The suit was motivated by concerns that HPE and Juniper are two of only three companies that provide internet services for...

Look for the United States to soon fundamentally change how it deals with the European Union (EU) on tech policy, and for the EU to wake up and start to finally treat leading U.S. tech companies with respect. Since taking office, President Donald J. Trump has been blisteringly critical, and appropriate so, of the EU for its digital service taxes and a bevy of other confiscatory instruments. These are discriminately targeted at hurting just U.S. tech companies. A series of digital taxes, onerous rules and regulations from the EU have resulted in tens of billions of dollars’ worth of...

The Supreme Court has agreed to rule on the legality of the tariffs imposed by President Trump under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act of 1977. Those tariffs have already been found unlawful by the Court for International Trade and the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, by bipartisan majorities. If SCOTUS agrees, it will be a victory for delimiting presidential power within the rule of law. Mr. Trump will surely come back with other tariffs promulgated under other statutes. Those would be less expansive and capricious, but they would nevertheless be anti-growth tax hikes....

Who wants to invest in my newest venture? You will make oodles of money. You will need a wheelbarrow to carry all the cash to the bank. I only need $100 million. I can send you the private placement memorandum, and you can wire me a check this afternoon. Okay — since I know you can’t wait to be a gazillionaire, I’ll just tell you about the private placement so you won’t have to read all that Regulation D, Rule 506(b) or (c), Bluesky, SEC, Securities Act of 1933 blah-blah nonsense. This way you can just wire me the money before lunch! Okay, get ready — here...

People drive economic growth. Which means President Trump’s problem isn’t the Fed, it’s his own administration’s deportations. Trump wants economic growth, but he doesn't want the people who make growth abundant. Which is just a comment that whatever one’s opinion on immigration, a lack of it combined with aggressive ICE attempts to arrest and deport workers already here will have a very quick, and very negative impact on economic growth. The irony is that conservatives know why this is true without needing to ask why. Think their frequent commentary informed by...

Doctors are now happening upon ways to regenerate a brain compromised by stroke. Stop and think about that and perhaps read the opening sentence once again. This is quite the leap. Broken bones can be healed, organs throughout the body can be operated on or enhanced with pharmaceutical advances, but it’s long been accepted wisdom that when parts of the brain are killed off, that’s it. There’s no fix. There’s only medical care, or put more bluntly, there’s doctor “demeanor” in place of advances that can actually improve what’s died a little or a...

Americans consumed just as much Arab oil during the 1973 OPEC “embargo” as they did before it. By some accounts, they consumed more. Which is a reminder that if you’re producing, you’re trading with the world. And vice versa. So-called “Arab oil” that the Arab members of OPEC weren’t selling directly into the U.S. was still reaching the U.S. via those the Arab producers were selling to. As Saudi Oil Sheikh Yahmani ultimately acknowledged, the embargo was “symbolic.” The truth about global trade came to mind quite a bit while reading...

People have always been envious, prejudiced and holding grudges. Human nature has not changed. Yet, what sheds light on the timing of such sentiments resulting in persecutions, rationalized by new jargons and “isms”?    Since World War II, Western societies came to believe that that they had built back institutional and legal barriers to prevent hate and prejudices from turning into savagery that brought havoc to Western Europe between the two World Wars.  Recent events show that these barriers have weakened, as reflected in daily anti-Semitic and anti-Israel...

People are not a burden, nor are they a job taken. See Detroit, MI. The continuous arrival  of automotive jobseekers over 100 years ago didn’t shrink work options for those already there, rather they expanded them. And for obvious reasons. The more people working together, the more those same people are specialized. To be specialized is to be more productive, which means specialization is the path to surging demand for all manner of things unrelated to one’s specialty. That’s why the instigator of Detroit’s expansion (the rise of the automobile industry) occurred...

Progressives are portraying Judge Amit Mehta’s opinion in the Google antitrust case this week as a whiff for the ages.   Matt Stoller quickly penned a piece headlined “A Judge Lets Google Get Away with Monopoly.” Nidhi Hegde of the American Economic Liberties Project told HuffPost, “you don’t find someone guilty of robbing a bank and then sentence him to writing a thank you note for the loot.”   David Dayen called federal Judge Amit Mehta’s opinion “one of the most cowardly, contradictory rulings I have ever...

The Washington Post has reported that House Democrats have launched a new effort to “redefine” what their party stands for. They are working on a new agenda for the 2026 midterm elections following the party’s devastating losses in 2024, when they lost the White House, the House, and the Senate.According to the article, a Democratic pollster who worked for the Biden campaign in 2024 is advising the House Democrats on their rebrand. But instead of poll testing failed policies of the past, Democrats should look at how the Republicans rebranded after one of their greatest...

Democrats are facing a crisis of credibility on the economy.  A visit to the grocery store, even the price of eggs, tells a political story. Many families are feeling the sting of even higher prices, but they don’t think Democrats have the answers either. These everyday struggles compound in canceled vacations, drained savings, and stacked-up bills, leaving voters hungry for real leadership. And they too often don’t see it coming from Democrats.   President Trump is polling worse on the economy in his second term than in his first, according to CNBC’s...

When most people think of ASEAN – a diverse association of Southeast Asian nations that include Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam – they picture Thailand's beaches, Singapore's gleaming skyline or Indonesia's temples.  What they don't see is an economic juggernaut that will drive some of the planet’s largest growth in energy demand. Vietnam has emerged as a global manufacturing hub. Indonesia processes the world's nickel for electric vehicle batteries. Thailand manufactures automobiles for export...

$37 trillion in total debt is a loud, bullish sign that the U.S. is the world’s richest country…by far. But don’t misread what you’ve just read. The total debt run up by the U.S. Treasury isn’t powering economic growth, rather it’s a consequence of it. This is a crucial distinction. Government debt is an effect, not an instigator of prosperity. To suggest that government borrowing boosts economic growth is to believe that growth is a function of politicians taxing or borrowing wealth from productive hands, after which they dole out the taxed or borrowed...

Imagine curing every disease — not in the next century, but in the next seven years. Cancer, neuromuscular diseases, maybe even male pattern baldness. That includes aging, to the extent reversing, stopping, or slowing aging is physically possible. It can be done. Drug discovery and disease treatment generally are in the dark ages. Discovery usually begins with molecular screening, which is done by computers. Computers, well that’s advanced right? No, not when you consider that most of the molecules chosen end up being expensive dead ends. Which means that presumably a lot of...

President Trump’s focus on reshoring industry and putting American workers first is laying the foundation for a long-awaited manufacturing revival. His agenda is clear: rebuild the industrial might of our nation, cut dependence on foreign supply chains, and make America the world’s undisputed leader in production and commerce once again. To achieve this, America needs not only new factories, but also the modern infrastructure to connect them and to quickly move goods between them. The proposed merger of Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern, two of the nation’s...

Recently, private market skeptics, fueled by a misleading, high-profile report from a large financial institution [State Street Private Capital Insights Q4 2024], have again suggested that the long-run performance of private equity has lagged that of public markets.  This is an increasingly important topic as discussions intensify around broadening access to private markets.  As policymakers weigh whether, and how, individual investors should be allowed to invest, it’s essential that we begin with a clear view of the historical facts.  It is certainly true that...

When you are lying on your deathbed, reflecting on how your life has been spent, you’re not going to lament that you didn’t make more money or wish you had accrued more power. You’ll be thinking about one thing and one thing only: “I wish I had listened to Mr. Rob Is Right.” Soon after these despairing thoughts, your monitor flatlines in your grimy hospital room, then beeps to summon the Babushka nurse. Without showing a trace of emotion, she pulls the sheet over your head. No family members are with you; they are either in the gulag or were long ago...

The Justice Department’s approval of the $14 billion merger between Hewlett Packard Enterprises (HPE) and Juniper Network has caused speculation that there is a split within President Trump’s antitrust team. However, a close examination of the settlement and the positions of those charged with enforcing federal antitrust laws suggests the extent of the split is exaggerated. The lawsuit to block HPE’s acquisition of Juniper was motivated by concerns that the acquisition would reduce the number of companies providing WiFi to big institutions—such as major...