RealClearMarkets Articles

Fixing Social Security will not shrink the national debt, or even aid in its shrinkage. And that’s not a defense of Social Security. It’s just a comment that spending cuts or “entitlement reform” as fixes for the national debt amount to non sequitur. As the title of this piece argues, Social Security is not the cause of the national debt despite what the Washington Post editorial page argued last week, and what the Cato Institute and other right of center think tanks have argued for decades. Implied in what's consensus is that government debt just happens, and that...

After declining by roughly 3% annually between 1920 and 2010, U.S. traffic fatality rates have stagnated—falling significantly behind peer high-income nations like Germany, Canada, and the United Kingdom. As the Labor Day weekend closes out the summer and millions take to the road, we will be reminded that this plateau is an urgent economic and public health crisis, surpassing $1 trillion annually in lost lives, diminished quality of life, medical expenses, and travel disruptions. Unfortunately, in their search for solutions, policymakers, research funders, and the public are unaware...

AI is changing fast. And spreading fast. Both are problems for people seeking to regulate it. Regulation works best when regulators understand what they are regulating. That is not the case for AI. Costs are collapsing, having dropped 1000% for large language models since 2023. At the same time, capabilities are expanding, business models are changing, and market leaders are turning over rapidly. These dynamics create both opportunities and problems. Now almost anyone can use AI to manage their household or launch a business. But, as Bill Gates recently noted, they can also...

Headline Index Rises to 45.6, Its Highest Since March, as the Six-Month Outlook Rebounds and Federal Policy Confidence Posts a Fourth Straight Gain; the Investor–Non-Investor Gap Widens to 23.6 Points, the Second-Widest on Record Consumer sentiment improved modestly in September as the RealClearMarkets/TIPP Economic Optimism Index, the first monthly reading of U.S. consumer confidence, rose to 45.6 from 45.1 in August, a 0.5-point (1.1%) gain. The increase lifted the index to its highest level since March, but the gain was narrowly based: it came almost entirely from investors and...

For more than two centuries, the First Amendment has provided Americans with protection from government censorship of speech and government-enforced orthodoxy of belief. Meanwhile, our economy has blossomed under the principles of free enterprise, providing access to financial services and participation in the marketplace of goods, services, and ideas. Over time, technology has advanced to the point that our bustling public square is now digital, and online commerce is simultaneously global and local. While our Constitution’s protection from government interference remains strong, what...

America's grip on world markets — always the One Top, always setting the pace for the global economy — is behaving strangely. While everyone's attention is fixed on AI, a new current is quietly sweeping along the riverbed. Look closely at U.S. economic data for the first half of 2026, and it is not simply that industries outside AI ticked up a little. Inside the S&P 500, a new pattern is emerging: the axis of growth is spreading across a broader set of industries. As of June 30, 2026, Information Technology still commands an overwhelming 38.0% of the S&P 500's market...

Kevin Warsh has spent his first months as Federal Reserve chairman trying to get investors to stop watching him and start watching the data. "Market participants are learning to play the ball, not the referee," he said this month. Scott Bessent apparently didn't get the memo. The same week, the Treasury secretary doubled the ceiling on Treasury's long-bond buybacks, to $4 billion an operation, in a direct attempt to push long yields lower. Evercore ISI's Krishna Guha summed up the awkwardness of it: "activist Treasury policy is as material, for good and for bad, as central bank policy." Two...

On August 22, the United States imposed tariffs of 50 percent on C$28 billion ($20 billion) of Canadian goods after trade talks collapsed.  Mark Carney, Canada’s prime minister, ordered his negotiators home the night before, saying that last-minute changes to America’s terms “called into question the reliability of any deal.”  American officials say that Canada walked back commitments reached earlier in the week. Some speculate that Howard Lutnick’s arrival to the talks changed the dynamics.   The details matter, but only to an extent. Each...

Bill Gates is the latest tech titan to weigh-in with a mini-manifesto on AI. History shows, when it comes to technology, those who “invent the future” generally fail to predict what follows. Mr. Gates essay epitomizes a growing way of thinking about AI which is that it is so uniquely disruptive and dangerous that it requires heavy-handed government intervention. Let’s consider the problems with such framing. Bill Gates: “Even under the best circumstances, the transition to this new AI era will be one of the most turbulent times in human...

It won’t stop with melanoma. Yes, you read that right. That’s the beauty of commercial leaps. They beget copious investment in search of the advances given life by the original advance. As readers already know well, and as was discussed here last week, Moderna’s long-term collaboration with Merck has resulted in a vaccine for melanoma. While it’s not yet seen as a certain cure for the would-be killer, the vaccine is seen as effective when it comes to keeping melanoma from returning or spreading. As a New York Times headline put it about this amazing jump,...

Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh used his Jackson Hole speech last week to lay out what he thinks of monetary policy. Two things jumped off the pages of his speech. First, “Fedspeak” may be making a comeback. Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan became famous for phrases like “irrational exuberance.”  One section of Warsh’s speech, titled “Preparing for Future Policy Conjunctures,” felt like a throwback. “Conjunctures,” really?  Greenspan would be proud. Second, the narrative about Warsh is that he will get rid of forward...

The U.S. was the first country in world history to be founded on skepticism about politicians. Implied in openness to foreigners who shared the origin view was a belief that people weren’t poor as much as the politicians they labored under limited their ability to prosper. In a free country defined by limits on political power, they would cure their poverty. They did, and they still do. Evidence supporting this claim can be found in the happy fact that the world’s poorest continue to risk their lives to reach the most wealth unequal country on earth. The U.S.’s existence as...

Few Americans are familiar with brands like LKQ Corporation, Dorman Products or Standard Motor Parts. Yet the chances are high that a majority of U.S. households unknowingly rely on their products every day. These companies are part of the automotive aftermarket, a $2.65 trillion global industry. While the aftermarket doesn’t enjoy broad awareness, perhaps that should change. The aftermarket is a bit like the air we breathe: It’s everywhere and we depend on it, but it’s not a topic we think about often. The aftermarket is defined as the products and services that sustain the...

A growing number of companies are folding AI usage volume into hiring and layoff decisions. If your intention is to spotlight your organization as an industry leader and a top trusted entity in your markets, poor measurement of AI use in your company is about the worst possible way to start. Here’s what to measure instead. Companies are increasingly factoring AI usage volume into decisions about who gets hired and who gets riffed. The intent is understandable: leadership wants proof that the organization is adapting and using new technologies and achieving ROI on AI token spend. But AI...

Somewhere inside Deloitte's partnership ranks, a staffer built a spreadsheet. It sorted candidates for partner, principal, and managing director by race and sex, then circulated the list with a note urging colleagues to “equitably maintain the current mix.” That spreadsheet is now sitting inside a $21.5 million settlement Deloitte reached with the Justice Department this week over allegations that its diversity programs broke the anti-discrimination terms of its own federal contracts. I've spent thirty years reviewing internal documents in litigation. I've rarely seen...

Do you relish going to the DMV? The answer is in the question. And the question is a civilized discussion tool for investor Rob Arnott. Rather than make an impassioned case against government to every left-leaning type he meets, Arnott asks them their level of enjoyment when interacting with government at the various levels. The question elicits a more reasoned exchange of ideas. Arnott’s technique rates more consideration from right-leaning pundits as they let New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s city grocery stores occupy a substantial portion of their writing output. The...

As I write this, the jury in the Lindsay Clancy case has not reached a decision. Hundreds of psycho women wearing pink shirts are protesting in solidarity with the woman who ruthlessly killed her three children with her bare hands. No, this isn’t an episode of The Twilight Zone. Dear Reader, in case you haven’t noticed, we have a crazy problem in this country, and it all stems from the “I’m a victim” movement. Nothing is anybody’s fault. Here’s a general rule that the American Psychiatric Association won’t tell you. Its members are all...

In the realm of technology policy, one should always treat assertions of “fairness” with some skepticism. A new amendment offered by Sen. Katie Britt (R-Alabama) to the National Defense Authorization Act seeks to add a title called the “Fair Access to Critical Computing Technologies.” On the face of it, who could be against such “fair access”? Yet, dig a little deeper and this legislative proposal risks all sorts of unintended consequences. In fact, its passage could provide a huge boost to Beijing in the race for dominance in artificial intelligence...

Elizabeth Holmes is a hero. What you just read is true even if you believe that she failed. Holmes’s heroic nature recalls Carver Mead at Caltech. Mead has written about weekly gatherings of Caltech professors not to talk about their successful experiments, but those that failed. Success was confirmation of existing knowledge, or stasis, while failure was rich information that moved the pursuit of even more valuable information forward. Applied to Holmes, and assuming you think she and Theranos failed, you should still revere her for having successfully raised so much money in pursuit...