RealClearMarkets Articles

Across the country, lawmakers are rushing to regulate artificial intelligence (AI), restrict digitally-enabled pricing solutions, and attempting to break up major technology companies. More than 1,500 AI-related bills have already been introduced at the state level alone. At the same time, federal regulators continue to pursue sweeping antitrust actions against digital platforms. Amid this hasty wave of regulatory actions, entrepreneurs are reaping the benefits of the platform-based economy and tech innovation.  Unfortunately, the bulk of proposed government actions would...

It is difficult to believe that the French courts and government authorities can expose themselves to more ridicule than they managed with the October 19, 2025 heist from the Louvre Museum at 09.30 am.  But they did – and the events are relevant for the U.S. Recall, back in October, four thieves arrived with a stolen vehicle-mounted mechanical lift to gain access to the museum from a balcony close to the River Seine. Breaking the windows, they got into the Galerie d'Apollon. By 09.38, the four escaped on two scooters with about U.S. 100 million worth of jewelry –...

New York City isn’t usually where energy headlines are made. But earlier this month, Manhattan judge Joel Cohen did just that when he sided with upstart liquefied natural gas (LNG) producer Venture Global over Shell in a multimillion-dollar contract dispute that offers a revealing glimpse into the entrepreneurial forces driving American energy dominance. Over the past two decades, American oil and gas companies have redrawn the world’s energy map. Today shale gas fracked in West Texas is piped to the Gulf Coast, liquefied and shipped to...

At 2 p.m. on Wednesday, the Federal Reserve released its policy statement and updated projections. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, sitting at 46,517, barely moved, up just 27 points by the time Powell stepped to the podium at 2:30. By the time the press conference ended, the index had fallen 215 points. By the close it was down 319 points from when Powell began speaking. The statement announced policy. The press conference moved markets further and faster. That has become a pattern. The Fed designed the press conference to reduce uncertainty. In modern markets it regularly creates a second...

The old adage goes: “Two heads are better than one.”   That likely is true when the two heads agree with one another. But when they disagree, only one head can, and should, prevail. Bad and costly turmoil ensues when two entities each believes it has the right to make decisions. Consider that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently remanded a case, Ligado v. United States. That case is ultimately a dispute about which of two federal agencies, the until-recently independent Federal Communications Commission (FCC or Commission), or the...

The great Andy Kessler says it’s “crazy” that California imports oil extracted in Iraq. Or maybe not. As Kessler knows better than anyone reading this, rare does a week go by that some California-based startup isn’t valued in the billions. So, while Texas likely doesn’t take in oil imports from Iraq, it’s similarly not importing nearly as much global capital as California is. It raises a question: why is the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page dismissing David Ricardo? Oil isn’t unique. Kessler knows, and the editorialists at the Journal surely...

Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Andrew Ferguson has found a novel use for consumer protection laws: violating the First Amendment rights of online news sites. Chair Ferguson’s target is pioneering technology company Apple. On February 12th, 2026, Ferguson sent a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook warning him that the company could face a formal investigation into whether Apple was using “unfair or deceptive practices” in violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act. The alleged deception is that Apple’s news service is marketed as a neutral aggregator that...

Lawmakers in Congress are attempting to test whether the U.S. Code and the bureaucrats who interpret and enforce it can substitute effectively for parents. In almost every context, this proposition would be dismissed by the American people as absurd. The internet has, however, destabilized this conviction, and many now believe that the government ought to operate as a parent in the digital domain to a degree unthinkable in any other.  This month, the House Energy and Commerce (E&C) Committee advanced the Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act (a compendium of ten or so...

In holding rates steady, Jerome Powell—the worst Fed Chair since Arthur Burns—has once again let his anti-Trump animus cloud his judgment. The damage will not show up only on Wall Street.   It will show up in the monthly payment on a starter home, the financing costs of a machine-tool purchase, the builder who delays a project, the manufacturer who shelves an expansion, and the family that watches its credit costs stay painfully high while the Powell Fed congratulates itself for being “disciplined.”  This is not just a spiteful and damaging policy mistake. It...

No individual or nation need ever worry about the supply of oil or Artificial Intelligence (AI). The latter holds true whether both are sourced across the street or on the other side of the world.  The only barrier to oil or AI accession is a lack of production. Put another way, wherever there’s production there will always be oil and AI in amounts commensurate with production. This is the markets at work contrary to popular opinion suggesting otherwise.  In a recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece about oil supply for the U.S. amid the bombing of Iran, it was written that...

Over 5 million children in the United States live in what the federal government designates as “persistent poverty” counties. That designation means a county has had high poverty rates (20 percent or greater) for the last 30 years. Persistent poverty occurs in rural areas of the South, parts of Appalachia, tribal areas of the West, and large urban areas on the East Coast (New York City and Philadelphia). Trump Accounts, technically 530A accounts, are a new policy tool that could help break the persistence, or intergenerational aspects, of poverty in these areas....

At the January 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos, President Trump reinstated his vow to make the United States the “crypto capital of the world.” This is an admirable goal that America should strive for, but one that cannot be achieved without Congress establishing a clear digital asset market structure by getting legislation across the finish line. The digital assets market is one of the fastest growing sectors in the United States, yet elected officials have debated its market structure for far too long. Multiple proposals, drafts, and committee processes have...

Money doesn’t solve poverty. Say repeatedly what politicians don’t grasp. Republican politicians used to understand that money is unequal to poverty, but in modern times they’ve become as wedded to redistributionist big government as the opposition.  Take the so-called Trump Accounts. They exemplify just how much the Republicans and conservatives have retreated as a source of innovative ideas. Conservatives of old would have recoiled at this wholly redistributionist policy concept that is a total non sequitur when it comes to poverty.  The modern Republicans? Not...

In the subhead of its obituary of the world’s most celebrated doomsayer Paul Ehrlich, The New York Times referred to his predictions as “premature.” Oy, Gevalt! So, like, maybe he was actually just a bit ahead of his time? No, actually the butterfly specialist became both rich and famous by scaring the pants and skirts off the public despite being correct less often than the proverbial stopped clock. Consider such assertions as: ·         Mass starvation in the 1970s and 1980s — In his 1968...

Energy markets are in turmoil. Prices are lurching, supply chains are being redrawn, and within weeks the confident forecasts will be quietly revised — and the new ones will be just as confident. This is the ritual. Every year, the world’s most sophisticated energy institutions publish charts showing exactly where we will be in 2035, 2040, 2050. Smooth curves. Precise numbers. The future, apparently, has been solved. Then a war reshapes European gas supply overnight. Venezuela collapses. Military strikes on Iranian infrastructure reroute tanker traffic across ocean basins. The...

In the book When We Are Free, an anthology published by Northwood University Press with a foreword by Milton Friedman, economic historian Dr. Lawrence W. Reed contributed a chapter titled The Fall of Rome and Modern Parallels.Reed examines how the Roman Empire collapsed and draws striking comparisons to the fiscal habits of modern governments. His warning is worth revisiting today. In the United States, federal law does not allow states to declare bankruptcy. To prevent fiscal collapse, 49 out of 50 states operate under some form of balanced budget requirement. These rules...

A balanced federal budget in the United States is consistent with a massively bloated government operating well beyond its constitutional limits. This is what the budgetary experts at libertarian and conservative think tanks like Cato and Heritage ignore: balanced budgets and spending cuts will do nothing to shrink the federal government, and they won’t because both gloss over why we have big government and debt to begin with. To understand why this is true, readers need only look at the national debt of $39 trillion. It’s a powerful market signal that federal tax revenues today...

Standing for Delivery. The easy answer to where the silver went. And then the harder one. Part One: The Story That Makes Sense There is a phrase in the futures markets — standing for delivery — that sounds almost ceremonial, like something from a medieval guild. You have purchased a contract, a promise written in numbers, and now you are declining the paper exit. You want the thing itself. In the silver market, the act of standing for delivery has become something closer to a siege. For fifteen consecutive months through early 2026, physical silver has been leaving COMEX...

Overcorrection is a well-documented behavioral risk: respond to one mistake with excessive force in the other direction and you create a second, often larger error. In 2021, Federal Reserve officials misread the inflation signal. Their models said supply disruptions would resolve and prices would fall on their own. They were wrong, and the costs were real. The lesson the institution drew: do not misread inflation again. And that lesson, when it hardens into reflex, is how the next mistake gets made. This week's FOMC meeting is where that reflex becomes dangerous. The economy is softening....