RealClearMarkets Articles

Those residing in the Pacific Time zone will have the interest rate of their loans fixed at 5%; Mountain Time will be 6%; Central Time, 7%, and Eastern Time, 8%. Yes, the above decrees sound absurd, but they also reflect the ridiculous reality in which we find ourselves.  The Federal Reserve’s price control of just one interest rate for the entire country is somehow regarded as all well and good, but we’re likely far more outraged at changing our clocks twice per year.  The physical pain endured after changing the clocks is much more tangible than the price...

U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg’s decision dismissing the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) lawsuit against Meta, which accused the company of maintaining a monopoly in the market for “personal social networking,” may have closed the door on one era of activist antitrust enforcement against so-called “Big Tech.” If enforcers do not learn from the mistakes that doomed the FTC’s case, however, we could soon be in for another protracted, yet ultimately fruitless battle targeting the still-emerging market for artificial-intelligence (AI)...

Earlier this year two of America’s largest railroads – Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern – announced their intention to merge. If approved by the government, the combined entity would establish the nation’s first single-line transcontinental railroad. It would reach across 43 states and encompass a network of tens of thousands of miles, providing shippers access to 10 international interchanges and nearly 100 ports while opening myriad new routes. Most importantly, a transcontinental railroad would sharply reduce inefficiencies and costly interchange delays in the...

Economists don’t know economic growth. See New York Times columnist and economist Rebecca Patterson. In “Watch Out, It’s the Jenga Economy,” Patterson expresses worry that “Without income from jobs, consumers pull back on spending.” Except that no non-PhD would ever think about consumption. That’s because consumption is a certain effect of what truly matters: production. Yet Patterson has no evident interest in the production without which there is literally none of the consumption she so values.   Which means Patterson’s interest in...

I’ve seen Barry Diller four times in public. First at a restaurant in Sag Harbor, two more times at Manhattan restaurant Michael’s, and last at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. I knew who he was, he not me, but at Hoover I walked up and shook his hand to tell him what a big admirer I was of his many business achievements. To this day, I wish I’d asked why the longtime Democrat was at right-leaning Hoover, but this was Barry Diller. Everyone wants to talk to him. Which in a sense explains this review of his excellent new memoir, Who Knew. There’s no need to lead...

With the federal funding situation resolved and the government open, Congress can finally return to legislative business and begin to address the real concerns of Americans who have grown more anxious about the state of the economy, inflation, energy costs, and a government-created health care crisis. Yet, rather than tackle those problems, a small cadre of senators are instead channeling their efforts to give a banking boost to the wealthiest among us. That is a serious misallocation of valuable time. The issue at hand centers around deposit insurance, which protects the accounts of people...

Biologic medicines—drugs with complex molecules developed in living cells—have saved lives and improved the quality of life for millions of Americans. Yet despite their value, problems in the industry are driving up the cost of these already expensive medicines. Just as less complex drugs have generic versions, biologics have biosimilars. But despite the fact they are just as safe and cost less biosimilars are rarely actually dispensed to patients. One barrier to biosimilar uptake is perception. Despite extensive evidence of safety and efficacy, many physicians have been...

What our greatest civilizations shared wasn’t just power or prosperity—it was a fierce belief in themselves, something the modern West is forgetting. Did you hear about the time George Washington, Winston Churchill, and Marcus Tullius Cicero walked into a bar? Cicero headed straight for the jukebox, slipped in a sesterce, and out poured Merle Haggard’s 1970 hit The Fighting Side of Me: “When you’re runnin’ down my country, hoss, you’re walking on the fightin’ side of me…” “Hell yeah!” all three roared. Cicero...

In May 2021, the Luna stablecoin lost its algorithmic peg to the Dollar, which led to the erosion of $45 billion for cryptocurrencies and various other assets in the hours immediately following this event. Even financial institutions with no obvious exposure to cryptocurrency felt the impact of the collapse. While many U.S. regulators may wish the asset class didn’t exist, it has become impossible to ignore it and pretending that doing so will insulate the rest of financial markets from its impact will no longer work.  The passage of the Genius Act earlier this year created a...

The rich prosper only insofar as the poor and middle see their earnings and living standards soar. This is important to remember as economists and pundits waste a lot of time promoting the impossibility that is a “K-Shaped” economy. The claim from the deep in thought is that the rising stock market is lining the pockets of the rich as everyone else stagnates. Naaah. The rich only own equities, and grow rich from owning equities, insofar as the underlying businesses are prospering. And they’re prospering because the productivity of those in their employ is growing by leaps...

The Trump administration’s tariffs are the talk of the town in Washington. At the end of October, the Senate rejected the administration’s national emergency declaration issued to rationalize the tariffs in a bipartisan vote. On November 5th, the Supreme Court took up the issue of the constitutionality of the tariffs. If oral arguments are any indication, it did not go well for the administration. Despite the clear opposition, there are voices calling to go even further, potentially threatening America’s supply chain o low-cost, effective...

Back when Google first launched its email service, “Gmail” was free for users, and the platform was monetized primarily through ads. However, as the platform grew in its success, so did the amount of data stored in its users’ inboxes. This came with added costs for Google, which, in turn, continued to offer a standard 15 GB of free storage while requiring a small fee for those in need of more. YouTube also made similar changes to its business model to pay for the necessary investments amid rising costs of doing business stemming from its growth. Crucial in both anecdotes...

Imagine a rule that forced banks to hand over your bank account credentials and sensitive transaction information to third parties with no guarantee of security, and all for free.   It’s no fantasy–this is exactly what the Biden CFPB attempted in its 2024 Open Banking rule. It would have sanctioned state-mandated data expropriation in the name of consumer empowerment.   The Biden-era Open Banking rule would have forced banks to hand over their data to any third-party that customers authorize, without compensation. The rule, based off section 1033 of the Wall...

The rapid adoption of artificial intelligence has been the key driver of economic growth in the United States in the 2020s. In the first half of 2025, AI-related capital expenditures contributed 1.1 percentage points to GDP growth, outpacing the American consumer as the main engine of expansion. Corporate adoption of AI has gone from curiosity to ubiquity: 88 percent of firms report using AI in at least one business function, up from 55 percent just two years ago. AI-related stocks have generated over half of total equity-market returns since 2023, and corporate...

Money buys nothing, while products always and everywhere buy products. Which means governments that produce nothing can only spend insofar as they have taxable access to private sector production, not an active printing press. Without the former, they have no spending power. None. The obvious requires stating firstly because Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is having its proverbial 15 minutes. The latest outbreak of astrology asserts that governments can spend as they wish by printing fiat monies exchangeable for goods, services and labor. But for one problem: money once again buys...

Dear Starbucks Employees, I saw the sign on my neighborhood Starbucks’ front door announcing that you are on strike. The way to get ahead in life is not to sabotage the hand that feeds you. You work in a climate-controlled building, have an easy job, and receive the highest pay and best benefits in your industry. For God’s sake, your job is pouring coffee. How tough can it be? Here’s a tip if you ever want to move out of your parents’ basement: outwork, outthink, and outhustle everyone, and show your superiors the value you bring. Collectivism is Loserville....

In Love, Actually, aging rocker Billy Mack keeps slipping back into the old lyrics. “You did it again, Bill,” his manager groans. Billy shrugs: “It’s just that I know the old version so well.” That’s the Federal Reserve. That’s Jerome Powell. He learned the Exxon–GM–three-networks version so well that he keeps singing it while the orchestra has gone electric, wireless, remote. Inputs were predictable; outputs arrived with a bow. You sat at Jackson Hole and pronounced. But the modern economy is atomized, software-paced, real-time....

Silicon Valley’s most revealing moment this year didn’t come from a breakthrough model or a new hardware announcement. It came from an unprompted reassurance. The CEO of OpenAI recently insisted that his company “does not want government guarantees” for its massive data-center and semiconductor expansion. No one had accused OpenAI of seeking a bailout. Yet the denial was emphatic. For investors, this is a tell: insiders are thinking about the downside. That one line exposed the tension beneath the AI boom — a trillion-dollar infrastructure race built on circular...

The U.S. and Japan are shedding the paralysis of irrational climate policies with a strategic pact covering rare-earth minerals, critical components for semiconductors and next-generation nuclear reactors. Forged through the leadership of two no-nonsense politicians – President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi – the clear-eyed agreement abandons more than a decade of energy uncertainty that was marked by unpredictable supply chains, unrealistic net-zero pledges and overreliance on unreliable wind and solar energy. This rightly places  energy and...