RealClearMarkets Articles

The top 400 American taxpayers pay more in federal taxes than the bottom 70 percent of U.S. taxpayers combined. The previous truth is a friendly reply to Cliff Asness and Michael Mendelson’s recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece in which they critiqued Mitt Romney’s surely misguided call to tax rich people like him more. In Asness’s inimitably entertaining style, the two helpfully took apart Romney’s thinking without making it personal. It was in their conclusion that Asness and Mendelson arguably faltered. They wrote, “Mr. Romney, please write an essay...

No government should pressure a bank to cut off customers innocent of any wrongdoing. Yet that is what happened with Operation Choke Point under the Obama administration and that is what happened again with “Operation Choke Point 2.0” under the Biden administration. Even today, countless customers are debanked because the laws and regulations in place have made banks too cautious. It’s time to bring governmental debanking to an end. Governmental debanking can occur in many forms. It could be the result of something as formal as a court order or as casual as a comment from a...

Investor confidence weakened by 9% in January, while overall optimism slipped 1.5%. Consumer sentiment edged down in January, as the RealClearMarkets/TIPP Economic Optimism Index, the first monthly read on U.S. consumer confidence, slipped from 47.9 in December to 47.2, a 0.7-point or 1.5 percent loss. The index stayed below the neutral 50 level for the fifth straight month, keeping the nation in what we classify as the pessimistic zone. January’s reading of 47.2 is 3.9% below the 300-month historical average of 49.1, indicating that confidence remains subdued and not yet fully...

Congressional Democrats keep saying they are focusing on the affordability crisis, promising that they will soon come up with an agenda to lower costs for working people. What they won’t tell you is that their real affordability agenda centers around one policy priority—-increasing taxes on the American people to fund new spending programs, and they are already working on their tax increase plans.A new paper by a leading Democratic economic adviser and strategist spells out in detail how their plans to address the cost of living will “require raising taxes on a far larger...

Housing debates often get lost in abstractions about “affordability” or arguments over subsidies. But mortgage rates are not set by rhetoric, press releases, or political messaging. They are set in bond markets—specifically, in the market for mortgage-backed securities (MBS).  That distinction matters, because it determines whether policy actions affect housing finance through durable market mechanisms or short-lived political optics.  That is why President Trump’s decision to direct Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to deploy roughly $200 billion into the MBS...

They thought Elon Musk was retarded. That’s what Walter Isaacson reports in his biography of Musk about the teachers at Musk’s elementary school. Musk’s response to Isaacson was “I wasn’t really going to put an effort into things I thought were meaningless.” From Musk’s reply readers can hopefully see true hope for education. Opposite members of the right, it won’t be fixed with more government (educational vouchers, tuition tax credits), nor will it be fixed if the left gets its way and more resources are directed to teachers and...

There’s an old African proverb that says, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” Its origins trace more specifically to a Luo tribal saying from East Africa: “Alone a youth runs fast, with an elder slow, but together they go far.” It’s a truth leaders have recognized for centuries and one we’re in danger of forgetting today. CEOs from companies like Apple and PepsiCo have said what a lot of us feel: Leadership can be lonely. Oftentimes, the higher one climbs on an organizational chart, the greater...

“While the music industry continues to get buffeted by technological change – here comes the AI wave, next.” That’s how media visionary John Malone describes the relentlessly changing circumstances of the music business in his remarkable new book, Born To Be Wired. Though Malone’s Liberty Media has prospered in the music space, including with an investment in SiriusXM that has turned out to be “one of the biggest returns on investment in the history of business,” Malone is repetitive about the dangers of believing you’re bulletproof....

This is the first installment of “Auditing the IRS," a series of dialogues focusing on the IRS, its mission, and its challenges and opportunities. Host Bruce Willey is a CPA, attorney, and CEO of American Tax & Business Planning. He regularly observes and analyzes IRS news for Real Clear Markets. Today’s guest: David Ransom, Washington DC-based attorney and Shareholder at the powerful law and lobbying firm Brownstein, Farber, Hyatt, Schreck. Ransom is one of Brownstein’s top advisors to tax services industry clients, giving him unique insight into the state of the...

President Trump's commitment to establishing America as the global leader in cryptocurrency represents exactly the kind of policy for the United States to be at the forefront of this financial innovation that can provide a faster and cheaper method of transacting compared to existing alternatives.  This is demonstrated by the achievement of the GENIUS Act, signed into law by President Trump with strong bipartisan support, creating a regulatory framework for stablecoins. However, a loophole in its implementation threatens to provide a neutral competitive environment in which financial...

“We thought Grease was going to be a disaster.” That’s how Barry Diller bluntly puts it in his memoirs (Who Knew) about one of the many blockbuster films that Paramount Pictures released during his tenure as CEO. When it comes to audience tastes, it’s frequently true that no one knows. All of this is worth remembering as the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page continues to promote the notion that the Chinese, seemingly for being Chinese, are not restrained by historical absolutes involving the marketplace. To read editorials and op-eds on the page is to...

Luddites were a 19th century movement of textile workers who protested the adoption of automation by breaking into factories and literally smashing the machines. The Luddites believed automation would lower their wages and eventually cost them their jobs. In fact, the opposite happened. The increased productivity made possible by the use of machines led to higher wages and better working conditions. Unfortunately, opposition to progress did not stop with the original Luddites. One industry that has been particularly prone to both innovation and Ludditism is the movie...

A weak dollar will sap Donald Trump’s presidency like no other policy. This is something Steve Moore, a top outside economic adviser to Trump, knows well. So does Moore’s great friend, Larry Kudlow. Back in 2008, Moore and I published a piece titled “Weak Dollars, Weak Presidencies.” It made a clear case that presidents who make a sound currency (Reagan, Clinton) a policy priority thrive economically, while those who don’t (Nixon, Carter, George W. Bush) ultimately fail economically. At the time that we published the piece, Kudlow was so enthused that he sent it...

South Africa’s once dominant ferrochrome industry is on the brink of collapse and requires a government bailout. That decline is not because the world no longer needs ferrochrome. It is because South Africa’s leaders tied their industrial policy to a “green” agenda that undermines reliable, affordable energy and sacrifices economic strength. What is happening in South Africa should concern every country that still cares about manufacturing jobs, supply chains and energy costs for ordinary people. Ferrochrome – made largely of chrome ore, coal products and with...

How does a country with the world’s largest oil reserves go from being the richest country in Latin American to being one of the poorest in a few short decades?  As with almost all the countries which went from being relatively rich to impoverished,  the answer is one word – “socialism.” After the U.S. military and law enforcement performed the flawless abduction of Venezuelan dictator Maduro and his wife, President Trump went on TV to explain what happened.  Unfortunately, during his remarks, he said we will now be...

Central planning is bad, which means government spending is bad. Contra the most prominent number in economics (GDP), government spending is by its very name an economic wrecking ball. These truths rate repeated mention, particularly given the rising tendency of natural government skeptics to cheer more tax collections for the U.S. Treasury. In a recent piece published at the libertarian Cato Institute, its excellent immigration specialist David Bier wrote what’s true about the highly positive economic impact of foreign workers, but puzzlingly added that immigrants are additive when it...

Recent multi-billion-dollar infrastructure investments like Meta’s plan for another gigawatt AI data center in El Paso, Texas, signal that the Lone Star State plans to defend its 20th-century dominance of the energy industry and convert it into the 21st-century nexus of tech and computing. This shouldn’t surprise anyone. In fact, using its massive size and geography to position itself at the intersection of revolutionary tech seems to be as Texan as beanless chili. Before the world associated it with cattle drives or Permian crude, Texas sat at...

Approximately 3.2 million Americans suffering from cancer, heart disease, and other serious or life-threatening diseases benefit from home infusion therapy. As the name suggests, home infusion therapy allows these patients to receive intravenous treatments at home instead of at a hospital. This improves the patient’s quality of life—as well as their health—by reducing their risk of contracting infections from spending too much time in hospitals. Infusion therapy is also more cost effective than hospital-administered treatments, and can be as much as 12 to 24...

America stands at a crypto crossroads. We can lead the next era of financial innovation, expanding opportunity for hardworking Americans to grow their savings and investments and strengthen U.S. economic leadership. Or we can fumble this opportunity, allowing regulatory uncertainty and disagreement on a small fraction of crypto market structure legislation to push innovation abroad. As a former member of Congress, I understand that legislating is difficult, especially when tackling complex issues like establishing a market framework for digital assets. But deciding to do...