RealClearMarkets Articles

Elon Musk is brilliant, but he also has fortunate timing. That’s because leaving technological advances aside, his electric vehicle vision likely wouldn't have taken flight in the 1980s and 1990s. Evidence supporting the above claim can be found in a recent New York Times cost comparison of gasoline versus electric cars. The Times reported that “Driving 100 miles in a typical gas car that gets 25 miles per gallon costs, on average, about $13. In an electric vehicle, if recharging at the average home electricity rate, it would cost $5." In those numbers, those old enough to...

The Congressional Budget Office has released its budget review for fiscal 2025. The report shows that total federal revenue for the fiscal year that just ended exceeded $5 trillion, reaching $5.2 trillion. By comparison, total federal revenue was $500 billion in 1980, the year before the Reagan tax cuts were enacted.For those too young to remember, the Reagan tax cuts reduced individual income tax rates across the board for all taxpayers, reducing the top marginal tax rate from 70% to 50%.  Critics said the huge tax cuts would “hollow out” the government by slashing tax...

Political parties and pundits are fiercely debating the economic benefits of President Trump’s landmark tax bill, recently rebranded the Working Families Tax Cut. That’s to be expected with upcoming mid-term elections and in an economy as complex and challenging as ours.   Tariffs aside, the Administration and Congress has moved with commendable speed to implement proven pro-growth policies of lower taxes, balanced regulation and a smaller burden of government on job creators large and small.  Lost in the current debate is recognition that the most powerful benefit...

Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Andrew Ferguson may not be a consistent defender of free-markets—but he has done an admirable job of defending American businesses and consumers from regulation-happy politicians and bureaucrats of the European Union (EU). This is a refreshing change from his predecessor, Lina Khan, who assisted the EU in placing new regulations on American tech companies. Chair Ferguson has been critical of the EU’s Digital Markets Act, while Khan sent FTC employees to Europe to help implement the act. The DMA targets “gatekeepers” by...

“Those of us who call ourselves Republicans have a choice to make: We can choose to stand for our historic principles, or we can continue on the road to angry populism.” Those are the words of former U.S. Senator John Danforth (R-MO) and Rina Shah, respectively founder and senior adviser of Our Republican Legacy. Danforth and Shah are trying to make the Republican Party normal again. They properly disdain the unrecognizable modern GOP of “high tariffs,” “ownership stakes in corporations,” along with directives on “what universities can teach, where...

Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) play a large role in deciding which drugs patients receive and how much they pay. Yet their fees, rebates, and contracts remain largely hidden from employers, insurers, hospitals, and pharmacies. Opaque practices have led to PBMs favoring high-cost medicines instead of less expensive options. The solution is transparency: when the rest of the market can see how PBMs operate, competition can encourage real savings. In today’s market, PBMs profit when list costs and rebates are large. In a practice called spread pricing, PBMs make a profit by charging...

When a shareholder asks a company to demonstrate the financial return on a major investment, you’d expect an answer. But when the National Center for Public Policy Research asked Cisco Systems to affirm that the company’s investments in its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs were properly assessed via expected value and return on investment (ROI) analysis, the company refused to engage. That refusal arguably says a lot about the current state of corporate accountability on DEI. The National Center’s shareholder proposal (on file with this author) was...

Financial markets just sent a wakeup call to the U.S. Eleven nations in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), including Ukraine, eliminated the dollar as a reserve currency. This is the most recent signal of fundamental changes in the dollar exchange system. Other countries, most notably the BRIC nations, are aggressively expanding the use of their own currencies, especially the Yuan, as reserve currencies and as a medium of exchange. The U.S. can no longer prop up the dollar exchange system. Donald Trump is in much the same situation as Richard Nixon in the 1970s. In those years the...

Every few years, Washington rediscovers a “big idea” in tax policy that promises to fix everything from trade imbalances to corporate inversions. The latest revival comes from former House Speaker Paul Ryan and economist Kyle Pomerleau, who recently used the Wall Street Journal to champion a destination-based cash-flow tax—an elegant-sounding reform they claim would strengthen U.S. manufacturing and make tariffs unnecessary. It sounds clever: tax goods where they’re consumed, not where they’re produced. Under the plan, imports would no longer be...

"Having to get up and read in class when I couldn’t make sense of the words felt like a fate worse than death.” That’s how the late Ozzy Osbourne described life at school while growing up in Birmingham. To read about what he endured is to be sickened, and to want to wring the necks of those prone to describing the halcyon, care-free days of childhood. Sorry, but childhood is frequently brutal precisely because whether private or public, education is largely one size fits all. Imagine having to do every day what has little or nothing to do with the skills and intelligence...

There are a significant, but hopefully only a small percentage of libertarians who maintain that utilizing the ballot box is incompatible with our philosophy. What are their arguments? First and foremost they assert that if you vote for candidate X, you are giving him your imprimatur. You are supporting him. You are, hence, at least partially responsible for his actions. There has never been a U.S. president who acted completely compatibly with libertarian principles. So, in casting a ballot for one such you are per se acting contrary to the freedom philosophy. This sounds awful, but consider...

Somewhere along the way Republicans forgot that when governments take in dollars, they’re not staring lovingly at them. Each dollar represents access to resources for politicians who will direct those resources not to their highest use, but to the most politicized ones. Which brings us to a recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece that former House Speaker Paul Ryan co-authored with American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Kyle Pomerlau. The authors discouragingly saw fit to introduce President Trump to a globally popular industrial policy concept (as if Trump needs new ways to copy...

Liberal bureaucrats are up in arms after President Trump’s Department of Housing and Urban Development scaled back enforcement of the 1968 Fair Housing Act. The left-leaning Guardian quoted multiple HUD whistleblowers in an article published Wednesday, including one who accused Trump’s appointees of “dismantling the capacity to protect people’s rights.” Ironically, the same progressives who insist loudly on “housing justice” often fail to see how their own policies have made it harder for American families to keep a roof over their...

What is Canada’s greatest export? Molson’s? Canadian bacon? Hockey? If you’re a fan of classic rock you might say Neil Young. In his 50 plus year career Young has produced dozens of truly classic songs. He is also one of, if not the, most versatile of modern artists. His catalog includes folk, hard rock, country, and even electronic music and rockabilly. Many of Young’s most beloved songs  (Ohio, Helpless, After the Gold Rush) reflect his strong political beliefs—particularly his opposition to war and his support...

It’s not infrequently said that Adam Smith “invented” capitalism with his publication The Wealth of Nations, but the real truth (one stressed by Matthew Hennessey in Visible Hand) is that Smith reported on capitalism as it was happening. That’s because profit-motivated human action is as natural as breathing, as opposed to something humans needed instruction in. What arguably drives the mistaken narrative about the greatest economics book ever written (one that is probably the least read economics book ever written relative to purchases of same) is the popular notion...

The recent increase in gold prices in the United States and around the world has been driven by a confluence of economic, financial, and political factors.  This environment, where gold has outperformed U.S. GDP and the four major U.S. stock markets, began in 2000 and has continued to date (see Exhibits 1, 2, 3).  We outline 13 reasons why gold has outperformed most major investments and why it is likely to continue attracting individual and institutional investors.  A haven during uncertain times. Throughout history, people — from merchants to royalty —...

Despite the shutdown chaos, lawmakers are staying focused on what matters most: protecting America through the 2026 defense bill.  The Senate has passed the annual NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) authorizing new spending for defense priorities, such as military equipment and technology. But hidden deep within the bill is a provision that quietly reverses one of President Trump’s biggest economic wins that was passed as a part of the One Big Beautiful Bill: broadband spectrum auctioning.  Tucked inside the NDAA’s pages is a clause that would restrict...

If you’ve been glancing nervously at the news lately, you’ve probably noticed that artificial intelligence is no longer science fiction—it’s your new coworker, your competition, and maybe even your boss. The robots aren’t coming. They’re already here. A recent Goldman Sachs report estimated that 300 million jobs worldwide could be affected by AI automation over the next decade. That’s not a typo. Three hundred million. Entire departments are being quietly replaced by algorithms that don’t take lunch breaks, complain about meetings, or...

Total federal debt was $620 billion in 1976. Why 1976? In a recent column, Holman Jenkins referenced Jimmy Carter’s contention in a 1976 debate that “The best way to control inflation is to cut down government waste…and to let the American free-enterprise system work freely and effectively.” Jenkins subsequently wrote that Carter had “given voice to the animating spirit of American reform that would transcend the parties over the next 20 years.” There’s no disagreeing with Jenkins about the free enterprise portion of what Carter said, but Jenkins...