RealClearMarkets Articles

The Play Station 2's arrival in the U.S. apparently never kept Peggy Noonan up at night. At least not publicly. Notable about the gaming device is that while it escaped Noonan’s critiques, it didn’t that of Japanese weapons experts. In 2000, the Play Station 2 suffered military export restrictions given the view among some inside Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry that its CPU (the “brain” of the computer, or its central processing unit) could be repurposed in such a way that it could be used for drone piloting, nuclear simulations, or even missile...

Today, many homeowners considering a move face the prospect of replacing their low-interest rate mortgage of perhaps 3-percent with a new mortgage with a rate over 7-percent. Earlier this year, we published an idea that would allow homeowners to finance their move by unlocking the value of their below-market rate mortgage. The article generated a flurry of comments that said it wasn’t feasible, but we have since discovered that this idea has become reality. In April, Businesswire reports that Great Lakes Credit Union (GLCU) closed the first transaction in a new program that returns tens...

Soaring government debt bodes well for your investment returns. This is true for both stocks and bonds. Your investments rate extra thought given the nature of economic commentary now. “How the National Debt Affects Your Investments” was the headline to a recent piece about – yes – the national debt. Every time a round number is reached, in this case $40 trillion, commentary about the alleged implications of the round number picks up quite a bit. And it’s always the same. There’s writing about spending cuts that will allegedly bring the debt down, tax...

While the President is combating the widespread opposition to data centers and shouting their benefits from the rooftops–or as close as he can get with Truth Social–he is also considering imposing tariffs on semiconductors, a vital component to data centers and every other technological gadget in our lives. Most Americans are well aware of the President’s proclivity for tariffs. He has unilaterally imposed trade restrictions on everything from soybeans to lumber to vehicles, using a variety of justifications and authorizations. Tariffs enacted through the International...

At a moment when America urgently needs more electricity, the federal government should be working to remove unnecessary barriers to new power generation. Instead, an under the radar breakdown at the Department of Defense (DoD) has effectively imposed a nationwide moratorium on new land-based wind power development. This is not the result of legislation passed by Congress. It is not even the product of a new regulation with public notice and opportunity to comment. It has happened because DoD has stopped completing a review process that developers need before projects can move forward. The...

On September 18th, President Trump signed a law designed to hurt Russia and Iran by making it harder for them to sell their oil and gas. By cutting off their exports, the thinking goes, Russia and Iran will become poorer and have a harder time continuing their respective war efforts. Then the president proposed doing exactly the same thing to the United States - specifically by restricting the exportation of diesel as a ploy to counter rising fuel prices. “I’ve said let’s not send out the diesel,” Mr. Trump told reporters. Rep. Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican, has...

American democracy prides itself on being “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” But the people lack control over a key part of their daily lives: the money supply. Its expansion and contraction affect the value of every paycheck, every dollar of savings, and the price of virtually everything that can be purchased. Americans once had the ability to redeem their dollars for gold at a fixed rate. Congress should restore that power. Doing so would give every American a direct check on monetary expansion and force Washington to reckon with the consequences of fiscal...

Earlier this month, the Federal Reserve raised the target range for the federal funds rate by 25 basis points, to 3.75 to 4 percent. Inflation remains elevated even as economic activity continues to expand, productivity is strong and capital investment remains robust. At Jackson Hole a few weeks earlier, Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh highlighted another unusual feature of the economy. Business capital spending is rising rapidly, and he estimated that more than half of its growth this year can likely be attributed to the artificial intelligence buildout. AI did not cause the Fed’s latest rate...

Financial commentary often makes monetary policy sound mechanical. The Federal Reserve raises interest rates, borrowing costs rise. The Fed cuts rates, borrowing costs fall. History is considerably messier. Beginning in June 2004, the Federal Reserve raised its federal-funds target 17 consecutive times, taking it from 1 percent to 5.25 percent. What happened to the 10-year Treasury yield? It averaged 4.73 percent in June 2004. By February 2007, after the Fed had raised its target by 4.25 percentage points, the 10-year yield averaged 4.72 percent. Fed funds: 1.00% → 5.25% 10-year...

“These days, people become cooks instead of becoming lawyers or doctors.” That’s Wolfgang Puck, from a 2016 interview with the Wall Street Journal’s Alexandra Wolfe. In Wolfe’s words from the same interview, Puck “has seen the job of a chef change from a last-resort career to a ‘rock-star profession.’” Yes, precisely. Individuals we formerly described as cooks are now chefs. This evolution springs from the genius of work divided. As opposed to more workers existing as wage suppressants, or jobs “taken,” the reality is quite the...

A new poll found that 44.9 percent of Florida residents would vote to pass Amendment 3, previously titled “Save Our Homes from Excessive Property Taxes,” in November, even as multiple municipalities across the state warn of deep cuts to critical services such as police, fire, and other emergency services. However, the tax reform initiative would exclude these expenditures and more, including road and bridge infrastructure, stormwater control, natural resource and flood control projects, and employee retirement benefits and debt service. What’s more, the measure also...

Economic debates about inequality usually begin with a familiar question: Who has how much income? It is an important question. But perhaps it is not the only one we should be asking. A society can change who becomes rich without substantially changing how unequal the society is. Regulation can weaken one economic elite while creating opportunities for another. Entrepreneurs and investors may lose relative influence while lawyers, compliance specialists, lobbyists, consultants and regulatory experts gain it. The Gini coefficient may barely notice. Income distribution and income-source...

President Trump’s urging of his supporters to “cheat like hell” in the upcoming midterms has significantly elevated concerns that election outcomes will not reflect the will of the people. The conventional view holds that the surest safeguard for democracy is a thoroughly informed public—and if voters dislike the candidates or policies they elect, it is their own fault for remaining ignorant. However, this view ignores a massive, unbridged, livelihood-based gap in worldviews. Voters generally evaluate the world through the lens of their daily work, falling into two...

Governmental surveillance cameras have been popping up here, there and everywhere. If you don’t see them on the street corners of your neighborhood, you haven’t been looking closely enough. Civil libertarians are aghast. This intrusion violates the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which prevents such intrusions, without benefit of any search warrants. On the other hand, they clearly reduce crime. Criminals are shy folk. They hate to have their pictures, or those of their license plates, being bruited about. The advent of cameras all over the place will put them off their...

Le Diplomate is one of the toughest tables in Washington, DC. When it opened in 2013 its wildly popular Burger Americain (with French fries) set diners back $14, according to the Washington Post. Thirteen years later, the same meal retails for $29. As Tim Carman and Federica Cocca report at the Post, “the wholesale price of ground beef has soared between 18 and 30 percent in the past few years.” Ok, so why the higher ground beef prices, and beef prices in general? As you read this barbecue restaurants in Texas are quite literally removing brisket from the menu so expensive has it...

The Securities and Exchange Commission has just proposed to repeal Rule 14a-8 governing shareholder proposals. The new proposal would return shareholder-proposal regulation to the states, whose laws govern those proposals in the first place. The legal diagnosis is correct. But the timing and state-law aftermath are a problem. It’s a case of shutting the barn door after the corporate horse has escaped—and the free-market-oriented SEC commissioners are not going to try to recapture the horse. After the election of Ronald Reagan and a Republican-controlled Senate in 1980, the...

Hard on the heels of the emergence of any new technology come hoards of politicians, like so many moths to the flame of Prometheus, eager to regulate the new innovation. The resulting policies in some instances are sensible, even necessary; and yet, in many others, the hurry to regulate smothers young technologies, depriving ordinary people of many, if not all, of the advantages that new product or service might have brought about. Wearable devices, such as smartglasses, have arrived on the market, and the heavy tread of regulators close behind already is audible. California’s S.B....

The U.S.-China trade truce, negotiated after a tumultuous back and forth that saw tariff rates climb as high as 145%, a ban on Chinese rare-earth minerals, and a massive reduction in Chinese purchases of US soybeans, is set to expire in just seven weeks. Jamieson Greer says that the two sides are still far apart but that Washington still has plenty of time between now and when the truce expires. Scott Bessent agreed, saying that America is “not in a rush.”  Since the truce began in May, some outlets have alleged that China has all the cards while others report the opposite....

Without the rich, non-profit organizations would be relatively scarce. The previous statement isn’t ideological as much as it’s merely a statement of the obvious that whether the arts, ideas, health, and countless other worthy causes, they generally require patrons. Except that there’s a growing amount of controversy in what’s seemingly obvious, innocuous, or both. Consider the view that non-profits should be relieved of their status that spares them from taxation. That's how Tax Foundation President emeritus Scott Hodge sees it. The speculation here is that he could...