RealClearMarkets Articles

An insufficiency of share supply was holding down Goldman Sachs shares not long after it went public in 1999. That’s why Goldman’s partners were given a chance to sell more of their shares in a secondary offering. A lack of “float” in GS shares made it difficult for the biggest institutional investors to own a piece of the company. To buy GS shares they needed the capability to sell them, but with the float so slight, exits would be challenging. The lack of supply was paradoxically holding down investment in GS, and with it, the share price. The Goldman anecdote is yet...

For free-market conservatives, Teddy Roosevelt is less a hero than a temptation – a larger-than-life figure whose legacy invites admiration even as it points toward the very expansion of government conservatives resist. That tension is now being exploited by a new generation on the right, eager to wrap progressive antitrust policies in Rooseveltian nostalgia. For the remaining tribe of free-market, smaller-government conservatives, the legacy of Teddy Roosevelt elicits conflicting impulses. As the first progressive president, TR inaugurated the era of the nation’s chief executive...

While the public’s attention is fixed on an external energy shock they cannot control, they are overlooking a far more damaging, self-inflicted wound to their standard of living. The real threat to the American wallet is a domestic policy failure, but it’s not an affordability crisis. The reason is simple: if firms want to stay in business, they must have a sufficiently large pool of customers who can afford to purchase their products or services. If firms’ offerings were truly unaffordable, the market would cease to exist. The perceived crisis is actually a competition...

Critics argue that predicting markets allows wagerers to profit from tragedy. However, when the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange invests $600 million in this emerging space, it’s no longer a novelty; it’s a financial reality. The media and lawmakers have focused on the possible drawbacks of prediction markets, overshadowing the benefits. The information generated on these platforms can help improve decision-making and, in some cases, save lives. Regulators should avoid bans and excessive red tape. With proper oversight in place, prediction markets can effectively...

Retirement is so last century. It’s the stuff of Bruce Springsteen songs about gallant Americans picking themselves up each morning to do work they can’t stand, but that they do with fantastical visions of a merciful endpoint.  New York Times columnist Jessica Grose is arguably channeling a dated vision of retirement. Consider her recent piece titled “The Fantasy of a Comfy Retirement Has Always Been a Mirage.” Oh wow, how depressing. How untrue? Explicit in Grose’s title is that a comfy retirement has always been a mirage. Really? According to a recent...

In his record-breaking State of the Union speech, President Trump renewed his attack on institutional investors who buy private homes and blamed them for the housing shortage. This is one of the few areas where MAGA populists agree with the left. Congressional Democrats have introduced legislation to limit institutional investors' ability to claim tax deductions for housing purchases. The idea that institutional investors’ purchases of single-family homes are depriving middle and working class Americans of access to affordable housing is a good talking...

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has teamed up with liberal New York AG Letitia James to reject a settlement negotiated by the Trump administration over Live Nation’s alleged antitrust violations. While President Trump’s settlement was widely recognized for preserving a lighter-touch regulatory framework, Paxton appears eager to return to the aggressive antitrust enforcement of the Biden years — a period marked by the across-the-board targeting of American businesses arbitrarily deemed "too big." From an economic standpoint, Paxton’s new alliance should be...

The March ISM manufacturing report says something important and unmistakable: American manufacturing is expanding again.  The headline PMI rose to 52.7 in March, beating expectations and marking the third straight month above the 50 line that separates expansion from contraction. That is not noise. That is not a rounding error. That is a signal that the factory sector is moving in the right direction.  And the internals make the point even clearer.  New orders came in at 53.5. Production rose to 55.1. Supplier deliveries jumped to 58.9. Read together, those numbers tell a...

No individual, corporation, or government ever gets to choose how much money to borrow. Only in academic and pundit circles is such a fanciful notion accepted as realistic.  A recent op-ed penned for a think tank purported with alarm that “Congress Knows It Has a Spending Problem, But Won’t Fix It.” And at Fox News last week, Ted Jenkin published an opinion piece in which he predicted a $50 trillion national debt by 2030 alongside the expected rhetorical flourish about how “America has a serious promises problem and is writing checks that it won’t be...

You know what’s the most important news item going on this week?The war in Iran? No.The TSA mess at airports? No.March Madness? No. The most important news of the week is old news—2,000-year-old news. It’s HOLY WEEK. Ok, I know what many of you are thinking: “Oh God, Smith’s going to give a sermon again.” Relax. I’m not some tight-ass moralistic crusader! Listen up. I often think of nekid women. Actually, I think of them as clothed, and then they magically become unclothed under the influence of my boyish charm. I admit to having bouts of...

Politicians constantly find their way into your pocket book — and not just to take their cut, but to tinker with how our cards and accounts function. From new, product-specific sales taxes to insurance mandates, the government just can’t kick the urge to meddle with our means of procuring goods and services. Their latest target is credit card swipe fees. In recent years, these fees have reached a record high — totalling $246 billion in 2024. Consumers have noticed this at the cash register, as their grocery bills and routine shopping costs come with an extra...

Last summer, the U.S. government became the largest shareholder in Intel, the flagging firm designated a national champion of the semiconductor industry by Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump. The Trump administration, which seems to have conceived of the idea for the acquisition, had little trouble convincing Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to accede to its terms; the deal seems to have been concluded during a single meeting at the White House on August 11. However, as a new lawsuit alleges, it seems to have been coercion, and not economic considerations, that produced...

One year ago, the case for tariffs rested on four pillars: they would fund the government, decouple supply chains, rebalance trade, and give America negotiating leverage.  I argued, using theory and history, that none of them held much water. But now we have something better to look at than theory or historical analogues: evidence. On April 2, 2025, President Trump announced “Liberation Day,” where sweeping tariffs were imposed on nearly every country on earth, whether they were friend or foe, rich or poor, or (strangely) inhabited or uninhabited. The rates ranged from 10 to...

Should you pay off a 6–7% loan, or invest the money instead? If you ask a financial professional, the answer is usually immediate: invest. The market returns more over time. The math supports it. The outcome, however, depends on something the math doesn’t measure. This isn’t really a question about debt. It’s a trade. On one side: A guaranteed 6–7% return. On the other: A probable 10–12% return. One is certain. One is expected. And most people treat them as if they’re the same thing. The case for investing instead of paying off debt assumes something...

Spring is in the air and Tax Season is here, and with it, tax increase plans are sprouting on Capitol Hill. Four Democratic Senators have introduced separate tax plans, each presented as helping working people.  In reality, any one of these plans would slow economic growth and harm working people.Senator Bernie Sanders has introduced a 5% annual wealth tax, raising an estimated $4.4 trillion in new revenue to spend.  Like other wealth taxes imposed in Europe, this tax would not raise the promised revenue, be impossible to administer, and encourage capital flight.Senator Ed Markey...

“Daddy, that’s not fair.” The late, great P.J. O’Rourke used to joke about one of his young daughters pulling out the “fair” card, only for the satirist to respond with how unfair it was that she was so smart, so cute, so well-off, not to mention that she was born American. O’Rourke was cheerfully clear to her that she had better hope life never became fair. O’Rourke’s perfect response about life in wildly prosperous America came to mind a lot while reading about this week’s jury verdict against Meta and Google. They were held liable...

He did not intend to lose $50 million. No one does. It happened in a decentralized finance market — a system with no intermediary, no routing discretion, and no mechanism to question the order. The screen did not feel like risk. It felt like function. A clean interface. A position on one side, a token on the other. A path between them, already drawn. The system had done the thinking. All that remained was consent. There was a warning. There is always a warning. But warnings, when they are attached to ordinary actions, become part of the ritual. A box to check. A friction to clear. Not a...

For millions of Americans, affordability isn’t just about gas or groceries. It’s also about whether they will be able to retire comfortably and with dignity. The Department of Labor (DOL) may imminently propose a rulemaking that could set the stage for a modernized retirement system for working Americans with 401(k) plans.  President Trump has made lowering costs and expanding financial opportunity central to his economic agenda. At his recent State of the Union address, he highlighted efforts to expand access to retirement savings for workers without employer-sponsored...

I read Atlas Shrugged in 1994. It was also in 1994 that I first read about cable television visionary John Malone. He was in the news quite a bit thanks to the growing prominence of cable, but also because Al Gore had formerly referred to him as “Darth Vader.” It’s hard to say why, but Malone was the person I associated Hank Rearden with. Unhappy that such a prominent doer was routinely under attack by government, but also of the view that Malone must be brilliant if the small minds in government disliked him so much, I made it a point from 1994 on to own shares in Liberty...