RealClearMarkets Articles

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...

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...

January’s above-estimates jobs report tells two very different stories.  One is about the Trump month. The other is about the Biden inheritance.  Start with the month. The U.S. economy added 130,000 nonfarm jobs in January, nearly double consensus expectations of roughly 70,000. Even more important, private-sector payrolls surged by 172,000, handily beating forecasts. At the same time, government employment fell by 42,000, including a 34,000 decline at the federal level.  That composition matters—to investors, businesses, and workers alike.  We are not watching...

The national debt will continue to soar. Bank on it. See Holman Jenkins’s column from last week for evidence. He wrote in the Wall Street Journal that “The U.S. won’t deal with its looming debt problem except with ad hockery – inflation, spending cuts, tax hikes, de facto claw-backs of government benefits via waiting lists and declining service quality.” Here's a case that the ad-hockery won’t work.   For one, it’s not just that U.S. Treasuries are the most earned income streams in the world and that the markets for them are by extension the most...

Bitcoin briefly falling below $60,000 last week has been treated as another episode of crypto volatility — familiar, dramatic, and easily dismissed as noise. That reaction misses what is actually happening. This drawdown is not primarily about Bitcoin’s technology, nor about retail exuberance. It is about what happens when a formerly insurgent asset is fully absorbed into institutional finance — and then stress-tested. Bitcoin has crossed a threshold. With spot ETFs, regulated custodians, compliance regimes, and exposure through pension-adjacent vehicles, Bitcoin is no...

Last year, the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging launched a bipartisan effort to expose the public health and national security risks America’s overreliance on foreign-made generic drugs poses to families. However, a recent piece in Real Clear Markets tried to spin our lifesaving efforts as playing political games, claiming there was little evidence or reason for concern. This isn’t a game to me, and to suggest as much downplays the very real risks of relying on adversaries like Communist China and countries like India for much-needed medicine to live. This...

For generations, Washington worshiped a strong dollar. Presidents invoked it as shorthand for American confidence, fiscal prudence and global dominance. The dollar’s strength was institutionalized. President Trump is not one to genuflect to conventional economic assumptions. In his hands, the dollar is no longer a monument to defend. It is a lever to pull, a weapon to deploy—and, above all, a tool to remake America’s economic order. Washington signals suggest dollar’s slide is neither incidental nor temporary. Last Friday, Trump formally nominated former Federal...

The proper and long-recognized goal of antitrust enforcement is to protect consumers. Today, the a new bipartisan strain of thinking suggests that big business is inherently evil—never mind the myriad benefits that vertical integration and economies of scale can offer consumers. The American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA), which some lawmakers are considering reintroducing, is one bill that embodies this wrong-headed approach to competition policy. Sponsored by Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), AICOA targets big tech companies, such as Amazon,...

Powerful new research sends a flashing red warning to the 19 states that increased their minimum wage on Jan. 1 this year. Those increases are coming with a hefty side of unintended consequences: Small business suffer as big corporations get bigger. Slowly, the new regulations strangle innovation and cut long-term growth. Minimum wages have been studied for decades to better understand their impact on businesses, employees, and job seekers. Less understood are the direct impacts on business formations and employment shifts between firms. That has changed thanks to a new paper by two...

On April 7 of last year, with tariff panic gripping the markets and the Dow plunging toward 38,000, I went on CNBC’s Squawk Box with a simple message: relax. The Dow was on a clear path to 50,000.  Last Friday, that milestone was reached.  My forecast wasn’t luck, bravado, or market cheerleading. It was analysis—rooted in a supply-side growth model that Wall Street continues to underestimate, misunderstand, or dismiss outright.  The Trump economy is engineered for sustained expansion. It runs on four mutually reinforcing growth engines.  First, tax...

Early in my investing life, I bought a biotechnology stock called Amarin. It was my first truly big trade. I had put real money on the line, more than I had ever risked before. There was no plan. In the end, I still made a profit. My father would have given me a very unhappy look for being so “careless.” I have to admit, I thought I had found the promised land. I took that win as validation. Maybe I had, for a time, discovered a winning stock on my own. That early success was exactly what I didn’t need: overconfidence. Even if I had been right on the analysis, I still had a...