RealClearMarkets Articles

I grew up on a farm in Iowa, surrounded by cooperatives long before I understood what they were.  We bought seed and fertilizer from co-ops. We sold our crops through them, and relied on a rural electric cooperative to power our home.  Like millions of Americans, I was part of the cooperative economy without realizing it. Today, as president and CEO of the National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA), I see that same model not as a relic of rural America, but as one of the most underutilized tools we have to build a more resilient economy. Cooperatives are simple in concept but...

Earlier this month, the U.S. Senate took its summer vacation before finishing work on the Clarity Act, cutting the chances that the major crypto finance legislation will pass Congress and become law by Election Day in November. This delay is not a disaster for the crypto finance industry — yet. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has promised to bring the bill to the Senate floor in September, making it one of the few remaining issues to be debated before the midterms. Yet a prize remaining just inches out of reach is cause for heartburn, even as serious supporters like Wyoming Senator...

Established by President Trump on the first day of his second term to “dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies,” the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) ended its operations on July 4. President Trump envisioned DOGE’s eventual accomplishments as “the perfect gift to America on the 250th Anniversary of The Declaration of Independence,” and DOGE itself asserts $215 billion in savings. However, an August report released by...

The Trump administration has consistently implemented (and recently lowered) Section 232 tariffs on industries critical to America’s economic and national security, including aluminum and steel. But as it considers similar action on semiconductors, we face a fundamentally different challenge.  Semiconductors are not like other inputs; they can be found inside nearly everything Americans buy. They are a vital component of modern life, and a secure semiconductor supply chain is essential to protecting everyday consumers and the economy writ large. The impacts of broad semiconductor...

When Henry Ford’s Model T revolutionized the car market, affording everyday Americans the opportunity to buy a car, automakers realized they needed local businessmen to sell their product. The car dealership was born. Protected by numerous state laws to manage the initial rocky relationship between dealers and manufacturers, the franchise model has remained the standard for decades. Lawmakers talk a lot about affordability these days but seem to overlook regulations impacting one of the largest expenses consumers face: buying a car. While necessary in the 20th century, automobile...

In June, Apple did the thing it almost never does. It raised prices across the lineup at once. The base 13-inch MacBook Air went up two hundred dollars to $1,299. The entry 14-inch MacBook Pro climbed three hundred. The 11-inch iPad Air rose a full 25 percent, and the cheapest iPad went higher than that. On his final earnings call July 30, Tim Cook called it a "100-year flood" in memory pricing and said Apple had raised prices reluctantly. That part is true, and unusually candid for a company that treats margin as scripture. The flood is real. What is not being said is where the water is...

Bernie Sanders spent this week doing something he has done before, only with sharper teeth. In a letter first published by Axios, he wrote to OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, quoting their own past warnings back at them, then told them to stop. “Pause AI development,” he wrote. “It is not too late to avoid disaster.” He also wants Congress to consider a 50 percent government stake in AI companies and a one-time 50 percent tax on their stock, building on the AI Data Center Moratorium Act he introduced with Rep....

The profit motive produces its own “gravediggers.” That’s what Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels argued in The Communist Manifesto. Marx’s very own writing explains why the future he and his patron envisioned will never come to be. At least not in the way that the duo imagined. Quoting George Will’s recent quotation of Marx in a piece about Democratic Socialists, “Under capitalism, he wrote, man ‘is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood.’ But in communist...

I knew the private equity party was over when I started hearing about PE firms "rolling up" the car wash industry. I live in a small town of 40,000 people, and we now have a car wash on, seemingly, every single corner. Every last one of them wants me to sign up for a monthly subscription. A monthly subscription for a car wash? Are you kidding me? If I am anywhere close to representative of the average American, we are about one more subscription from an armed insurrection.  American consumers are at their wit’s end. If you doubt that, take a look at the University of Michigan...

Socialists are winning Democratic primaries. But are they winning over Americans? On paper, many love socialist economic policies but hate the word "socialism." At the same time, they're losing faith in "capitalism," but they still love the "free market." If your head is spinning, you’re not alone. The political debate over economics has become as much about language as policy. Yes, socialism is gaining ground. Younger voters support it, and it’s gained more footing with Democrats. Voters under 35 prefer socialism to capitalism by 18 points, according to CNBC’s All-America...

Despite the negative spin from the news media, the latest government economic report showed positive signs of strength in the U.S. economy, with strong evidence that the tax cuts enacted last year are working to increase consumer spending, business investment, and economic growth.The recently released advance GDP estimate for the second quarter showed real GDP growing at a 1.5% annual rate, compared to 2.1% for the first quarter.  The New York Times reported the “economy is slowing,” and CNN said the “economy is losing steam.”  But that is not the case at...

Washington is debating nearly every aspect of economic policy, from taxes and tariffs to interest rates and the future of the Federal Reserve. Yet one of the greatest threats to long-term financial stability is barely part of the conversation: the continued expansion of credit far beyond the growth of the nation's underlying productive wealth. Markets may continue climbing, but history suggests periods of financial optimism often mask growing structural vulnerabilities. Throughout America's 250-year history, cycles of speculation have repeatedly given way to financial crises. The creation...

Rather than inevitable, as Marx claimed, what defines socialism are its inescapable aspects.  The hallmarks of socialism are its inescapable economic failure and social oppression. These are not coincidental but simultaneous and reinforcing. Marx claimed that socialism was the inevitable final development of capitalism.  For Marx, socialism and communism would occur as the culmination of economic development; eventually, too, the need for the state (viewed by Marx as the means by which the bourgeoisie held the proletariat in check) would wither away.  Of course, neither of has...

In March 2024, the American Enterprise Institute published an article titled “Canada’s Jew-Hatred Problem,” advocating that Washington consider asylum pathways for Canadian Jews. Although Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, the U.S. special envoy for combatting antisemitism, stated that Washington was not looking at resettling Canadian Jews, and that U.S. officials expected the Canadian government to step up security and better protect its Jewish citizens (subject to 71% of hate crimes though less than 1% of Canada’s population), Tulsa, Oklahoma is presently stepping in to do what...

Fancy cars don’t impress me. Neither do fancy lawyer offices, oriental rugs everywhere, and oil paintings of the founding partners (Mr. Fleecum, Mr. Cheatam and Mr. Steel). When I was younger, I did some real estate deals with Mr. Jones. Clarke Jones was in his seventies and rich as all get out. A homespun, modest and courtly gentleman with a raspy Bear Bryant voice, he wore a houndstooth hat and drove a twenty-year-old, beat-up Country Squire station wagon. My secretary loved him. “While you were out, Mr. Jones came by to see you,” she would say, practically melting....

The power “team picture” routinely changes in Washington. This historical truth doesn’t seem to be landing with Republicans in Congress, or their media allies.  Think the Wall Street Journal editorial board. Puzzlingly writing in glowing fashion about the Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act after having puzzlingly done so previously, the editorialists acknowledged last week a rather obvious problem with the legislation, specifically the “wisdom of ceding more tariff authority to the White House.” Well, yes. Does anyone remember the stock market reaction to...

Elon Musk--the world’s first trillionaire--has a dizzying array of businesses. For instance, Tesla is the most valuable car company in the world, and it also sells battery storage for homes, businesses, and utilities. Musk is also a majority owner of X (formerly known as Twitter) which is perhaps the most important social media platform on the globe. He controls xAI, which developed and operates the AI system that drives the Grok platform, and he runs Neuralink, which researches brain-computer interfaces. He also runs SpaceX, which is the clear leader in the market for space travel....

America will win the race to superintelligence unless we defeat ourselves. Unfortunately, there is a scenario where that happens — and as a policy matter, it’s already under consideration. The bans and restrictions on open-weight AI models floated by politicians and Anthropic alike are exactly that scenario. To give a brief primer, an open-source AI model is one whose code is made publicly available to anyone, anywhere in the world, so that they may adapt it as they wish. Motivations for doing so include fixing errors within the AI system or retooling it so that it can be...

U.S. retirees plan to work until they die. Which is a very happy story about the evolution of retirement. The previous truths are seemingly lost on policy writer John Mac Ghlionn. Writing recently at The Hill, Mac Ghlionn asserted with evident misery that “There are already a record 11.6 million Americans aged 65 and older still punching the clock.” He should be cheering what has him so downcast. While Americans used to work until 65 fully aware that they wouldn’t live much past “retirement age,” now they’re “still punching the clock.” Those who...