RealClearMarkets Articles

As a longtime professor and leader of the College of Public Affairs at the University of Baltimore, I spend a good deal of time thinking about power – who exercises it, how it’s employed, and whose ox gets gored when it’s constrained. Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) provide a classic case study in the politics of power. The faculty I lead are hardly trying to wall AI off from their classrooms. Indeed, my university took the opposite approach by launching a Center for AI Learning and Community-Engaged Innovation (CAILI) and then purchasing...

West Virginia’s relative poverty isn’t an effect of California’s enormous wealth. The better way to look at it is to consider how much poorer the Mountain State would be minus all the advances hatched in California, and for that matter around the world. What matters is that people are producing, not where they’re producing. The more that “hands” and machines the world over are productive, the better the odds that American hands get to realize their enormous potential. Trade is not war, rather it’s mutual enrichment that makes war less...

One of the many complaints the free market right had with Lina Khan’s performance as Chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was her use of federal antitrust and consumer protection laws to advance progressive goals. For example, one of the pillars of Khan’s “neo or hipster Brandeisian” approach to antitrust was focusing on how a merger or acquisition would affect workers as part of the FTC’s approval process. In practice, this meant the FTC would claim that a merger or acquisition would harm workers by decreasing wages, worsening working...

President Trump recently declared that “people should live in homes, not corporations,” echoing a widespread frustration with rising housing costs and the belief that Wall Street landlords are crowding out families. The sentiment is understandable. But it is largely aimed at the wrong target—and risks distracting policymakers from the federal policies that are quietly making homeownership harder for first-time buyers. The House Financial Services Committee just considered legislation on February 10 to codify the president’s executive order on...

The rich of tomorrow will happily be quite a bit richer than today's rich. That’s because the proliferation of AI meant to do and think for us will unearth superhuman qualities in a growing number of us. Even better about a rising wealth gap is that as it grows, the lifestyle gap between rich and "poor" will shrink. Oh, to be poor in America in the future... So many oddly fear what Nvidia’s Jensen Huang says about AI representing “work,” and more crucially “thought,” but Huang is in truth signaling a beautiful future in which individual weaknesses on the...

Conventional investment advisors generally recommend that seniors delay taking Social Security as long as possible to maximize their lifetime benefit. The logic is simple: waiting until age 70 locks in a higher "bond-like" guaranteed return. However, this advice relies on a critical assumption: that the U.S. dollar will maintain its purchasing power. THE "MELTING ICE" OF FIAT CURRENCY Watch an ice cube in a glass of cola. Within minutes, it begins to melt—disappearing into the liquid, never to return. This is exactly what happens to the purchasing power of your Social Security benefits,...

If “the border” informs your thoughts about immigration, then your mind is wandering. Seriously, how often have you crossed the border (on foot, no less) to go to work in or visit any other city, state, or country? Which is why the immigration debate is so ridiculous and sad. Some in the debate are said to be for “open borders,” others are said to be for “secure borders” with a very wide entrance for “legal” entrees, and still others are for “closing the border.” President Trump is famously on the “closing the border”...

For decades, marketing has often been treated like a game of psychological chess. Companies spent millions learning how to outsmart consumers, crafting scarcity, urgency, and clever persuasion tactics to get us to click, buy, or subscribe. The prevailing wisdom was that attention was everything and conversion was king. But that mindset, built on manipulation and mind games, is crumbling.  Today’s consumers are more skeptical, more informed, and more connected than ever. They can spot insincerity from a mile away, and they’re not interested in being sold to. They want to be...

The recent 10% credit-card interest-rate cap proposed by Donald Trump triggered a frenzy of responses from the financial giants. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon warned of an “economic disaster,” a view echoed by Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, who said the cap would “slow down credit availability”. While the public debate focuses on balance sheets and macroeconomic impact, what is most concerning is that the banking industry’s digital plumbing is fundamentally incapable of absorbing a policy shock of this magnitude at speed.  A Policy Shock that Breaks...

People travel from around the world to visit Brooklyn. The “outer borough” formerly known as “Crooklyn” is increasingly a destination for travelers the world over. As David Ibsen, executive director of Americans for Free Markets explains it, family members regularly visit him without entering Manhattan. Ibsen lives in Manhattan, and while living there has long been tantamount to having an endless string of visitors, his family and friends prefer the bars, restaurants and skyline views that Brooklyn provides. Ibsen shares their adoration. Which is the point, though not...

Headline consumer prices rose just 0.17 percent for the month, pulling year-over-year inflation down to 2.4 percent. Core inflation came in contained at 0.30 percent for January and 2.5 percent over the past year. For business leaders and investors focused on trajectory rather than noise, the direction is unmistakable: price pressures continue to ease while growth remains intact.  That supply side mix changes the policy calculus—and once again reminds the Fed it is waiting too long to further cut rates.  Energy again did much of the heavy lifting. Prices fell 1.5 percent in...

For six weeks starting October 1, the federal government was shut down because of Democratic Party concerns that the ending of the temporary Affordable Care Act enhanced subsidies, enacted in 2021, would have a devastating impact on many Americans. In September, the Urban Institute had estimated that over 7 million households would no longer receive government subsidies, leading 4.8 million to lose health coverage. Ads began appearing showing older married couples whose premiums would more than quadruple. Fast forward to January, the Democrats were again threatening a...

Ed Crane lived a big life. Some will see the previous statement as an obvious one, and one made evident by the fact that Ed, along with Charles Koch, founded the Cato Institute, the world’s foremost libertarian institution. Except there was more. While there will be obituaries of Ed all over print, online and other prominent media in the coming weeks, they’ll arguably gloss over that first and foremost, Ed was an entrepreneur. Evidence supporting this claim can be found in the numerous billionaires, executives, policy visionaries, and politicians who will note his passing while...

Today's January employment report came in at 130,000 jobs, well above the consensus estimate of somewhere between 55,000 and 75,000 (take your pick of forecasters). Stocks initially rallied. Then they didn't; all the major averages closed lower. For all the anticipation around this report — it was delayed a week by the partial government shutdown, after all — the market's inability to hold its gains tells you something. It could be telling you that investors are finally, slowly, learning a lesson that has been staring them in the face for years: the first release of any monthly...

Total healthcare spending by the American people is projected to reach at least $5.9 trillion this year. Over $2 trillion of that is estimated to be spent by the federal government on programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and veterans’ healthcare. That is approximately 30% of all federal spending—thus making healthcare one of the biggest items in the federal budget and a major reason why the federal debt is increasing by almost $1 trillion every three months! With healthcare constituting such a large part of the federal budget— and with...

Last October, Jamie Dimon cut the ribbon on JPMorgan Chase’s new Manhattan headquarters. The $3 billion tower, one of the most expensive buildings in New York City history, is considered a monument to Dimon's 20-year legacy at the helm of America’s largest and most powerful bank. This month, Dimon joined fellow bank CEOs and the industry's lobbying arm in Washington D.C with an urgent message for Congress: kill a provision in the CLARITY Act that would allow stablecoins — digital dollars that pass Treasury yields directly to holders — to compete for your deposits. When...

From now until November, congressional candidates and members of the Trump administration will be on the campaign trail touting the ways in which Americans are benefitting from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). That landmark tax bill, which President Donald Trump signed into law last July, includes many provisions that are now saving individuals, families, and employers billions of dollars every year. However, the first thing that needs to be said is that federal income tax rates would’ve risen for every income tax bracket at the end of last year had Congress and President Trump...

The U.S. economy would be a fraction of its incredibly vibrant self if investors truly keyed on “quarterly earnings.” Amazon and Google continue to show us why. For background, in the 1970s the cable television industry was a nascent concept. It gained obscure lift by connecting houses well outside U.S. cities to television and movies. Still, thanks to the original cable television entrepreneurs, wires were being installed underground throughout the United States. Unknown to the cable pioneers was that they were creating the infrastructure for the rollout of the internet twenty...

Public policy debates in the United States are often framed as efforts to protect consumers from corporate power. However, when policies are designed without adequate consideration of structural inequality, they can unintentionally reinforce systemic racism and deepen financial exclusion. As recently articulated by Paul Weinstein Jr. and Malena Dailey of the Progressive Policy Institute, The Durbin Amendment to the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 illustrates how a well-intended economic regulation disproportionately harmed low-income households and Black and Brown families by weakening...