RealClearMarkets Articles

Behind every hyperscale data centre lies a global free market of energy, copper, and logistics that must be discussed just as much as artificial intelligence. The Hidden Supply Chain Powering the AI Revolution The AI boom sweeping across the United States is one of the most consequential economic developments of our lifetimes. It promises to transform medicine, commerce, and communication on a scale that very few people are seriously grappling with. Most of the commentary focuses on software: the models, the breakthroughs, the jobs that will exist or cease to exist. Far fewer people are...

More than a year into President Trump’s second term, most of the Biden administration’s aggressive antitrust agenda has been rolled back. But one major case remains: the Federal Trade Commission’s lawsuit against Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits. It is one of — and arguably the very last of — the leftover Neo-Brandeisian Lina Khan cases still on the FTC’s docket. Ending it would finally close the book on an era that treated low prices and business efficiency as suspect, saving taxpayers tens of millions in litigation...

The O’Hare Airport is important for more than just Chicago: As the busiest airport in the country and hub for the two largest airlines, it has a disproportionate impact on the national air system. Delays, cancellations, and missed connections there inevitably propagate across the country.  Its outsized importance is precisely why the Federal Aviation Administration’s new proposal to reduce overscheduled flights at O’Hare is so important and welcome. It is a commonsense intervention aimed at preventing chaos before it starts. At issue is the...

The Trump administration is urgently moving to bring down energy prices. From releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to considering temporary waivers of the Jones Act, the White House is signaling that stabilizing fuel costs and ensuring reliable energy supply are top priorities.Those efforts reflect a basic reality: energy affordability underpins the broader American economy. When oil, gasoline, diesel, and electricity prices rise, the effects ripple through manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, and household budgets.But even as the administration takes steps to increase...

Lately, PJM, the regional electric grid manager that connects 13 states and the District of Colombia, has been in the news but for all the wrong reasons. Stretching from the Carolinas to Chicago, PJM’s core problem is that customers who live and work inside its footprint are facing higher electric bills, and there are no plausible solutions that will provide ratepayers relief anytime soon.  PJM was created in the early 1920s, but its current construct took shape about 25 years ago during the energy deregulation movement that swept the country.  There were many rationales for...

Today - Part 2 of a discussion with Garrett Gregory, who spent a dozen years as an IRS attorney in its Office of Chief Counsel before founding  Dallas-based Gregory Law Group, focused solely on tax law and IRS enforcement actions. What’s The Current State of the IRS and What Can Be Done About It? Bruce Willey: It feels like the IRS has been under siege over the past few years. Let’s start with how you see what the IRS is up against here in 2026. Garrett Gregory: The biggest challenge for the IRS, and it's probably always been the case, is keeping up with...

The U.S. dollar's role as the world's reserve currency is often portrayed as an "exorbitant privilege" granting America endless benefits like cheap borrowing and global clout. Career economists fill books and panels with this narrative, implying dollar dominance is a perpetual free lunch. But common sense reveals a simpler truth: The dollar's power stems 90% from U.S. economic fundamentals—scale, stability, productivity—with reserve perks adding modest, often net-neutral gains that balance out across society. Disproportionate Wealth, Modest Perks America's household net worth...

If you've heard that "real" inflation is under 1 percent and the Federal Reserve is wildly overreacting, you can thank a little-known website called Truflation. Pundits are pouncing on its numbers to claim prices are up barely a third of what the official Consumer Price Index (CPI) shows. Truflation even says prices declined by nearly 1 percent since mid-September—a drop CPI indicates only occurred twice since World War II. Unfortunately, Truflation gets three things dangerously wrong: what inflation statistics measure, housing costs, and...

“It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.” Words spoken by Robert E. Lee as he watched James Longstreet’s First Corps (Army of Northern Virginia) decimate the Yankee army as it attacked his defensive position on Marye’s Heights on December 14, 1862. Twelve thousand Union casualties—dead bodies everywhere. Dad stormed the beaches at Normandy, fought in the Normandy hedgerows, and helped liberate Paris. There, the Army made him an officer. During the Battle of the Bulge and the freezing cold, he and his men repulsed the...

It’s Jeff Bezos’s money. And it wastes words to say that he has a right to not lose tens of millions annually on the Washington Post. At the same time, it seemed like Bezos knew he would lose enormous sums when he bought the Post in 2013. The $250 million he paid relative to what prominent newspapers were formerly worth (Rupert Murdoch paid $5 billion for the Wall Street Journal in 2007) was arguably the market signal that Bezos was buying a money loser. Furthermore, wasn’t losing money the point? In August of 2013, not long after the purchase, I wrote at Forbes (“Is...

Government spending is by far the biggest, most freedom and economy-sapping tax of all. While Larry Ellison, Elon Musk and Reed Hastings will work at all sorts of tax rates, they can’t innovate without the capital that government consumes in humongous amounts. This is important right now given the growing amounts of noise the great Rep. Thomas Massie is making about Washington's waste. He’s right that government spending brings with it very real horrors, but his examples near totally miss the horrors. See a recent post on X by the congressman. Massie wrote that “When...

Across the country, lawmakers are rushing to regulate artificial intelligence (AI), restrict digitally-enabled pricing solutions, and attempting to break up major technology companies. More than 1,500 AI-related bills have already been introduced at the state level alone. At the same time, federal regulators continue to pursue sweeping antitrust actions against digital platforms. Amid this hasty wave of regulatory actions, entrepreneurs are reaping the benefits of the platform-based economy and tech innovation.  Unfortunately, the bulk of proposed government actions would...

It is difficult to believe that the French courts and government authorities can expose themselves to more ridicule than they managed with the October 19, 2025 heist from the Louvre Museum at 09.30 am.  But they did – and the events are relevant for the U.S. Recall, back in October, four thieves arrived with a stolen vehicle-mounted mechanical lift to gain access to the museum from a balcony close to the River Seine. Breaking the windows, they got into the Galerie d'Apollon. By 09.38, the four escaped on two scooters with about U.S. 100 million worth of jewelry –...

New York City isn’t usually where energy headlines are made. But earlier this month, Manhattan judge Joel Cohen did just that when he sided with upstart liquefied natural gas (LNG) producer Venture Global over Shell in a multimillion-dollar contract dispute that offers a revealing glimpse into the entrepreneurial forces driving American energy dominance. Over the past two decades, American oil and gas companies have redrawn the world’s energy map. Today shale gas fracked in West Texas is piped to the Gulf Coast, liquefied and shipped to...

At 2 p.m. on Wednesday, the Federal Reserve released its policy statement and updated projections. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, sitting at 46,517, barely moved, up just 27 points by the time Powell stepped to the podium at 2:30. By the time the press conference ended, the index had fallen 215 points. By the close it was down 319 points from when Powell began speaking. The statement announced policy. The press conference moved markets further and faster. That has become a pattern. The Fed designed the press conference to reduce uncertainty. In modern markets it regularly creates a second...

The old adage goes: “Two heads are better than one.”   That likely is true when the two heads agree with one another. But when they disagree, only one head can, and should, prevail. Bad and costly turmoil ensues when two entities each believes it has the right to make decisions. Consider that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently remanded a case, Ligado v. United States. That case is ultimately a dispute about which of two federal agencies, the until-recently independent Federal Communications Commission (FCC or Commission), or the...

The great Andy Kessler says it’s “crazy” that California imports oil extracted in Iraq. Or maybe not. As Kessler knows better than anyone reading this, rare does a week go by that some California-based startup isn’t valued in the billions. So, while Texas likely doesn’t take in oil imports from Iraq, it’s similarly not importing nearly as much global capital as California is. It raises a question: why is the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page dismissing David Ricardo? Oil isn’t unique. Kessler knows, and the editorialists at the Journal surely...

Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Andrew Ferguson has found a novel use for consumer protection laws: violating the First Amendment rights of online news sites. Chair Ferguson’s target is pioneering technology company Apple. On February 12th, 2026, Ferguson sent a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook warning him that the company could face a formal investigation into whether Apple was using “unfair or deceptive practices” in violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act. The alleged deception is that Apple’s news service is marketed as a neutral aggregator that...

Lawmakers in Congress are attempting to test whether the U.S. Code and the bureaucrats who interpret and enforce it can substitute effectively for parents. In almost every context, this proposition would be dismissed by the American people as absurd. The internet has, however, destabilized this conviction, and many now believe that the government ought to operate as a parent in the digital domain to a degree unthinkable in any other.  This month, the House Energy and Commerce (E&C) Committee advanced the Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act (a compendium of ten or so...