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Dec 7, 2022
On March 23, 2021 Illinois legislators imposed an interest rate ceiling of 36 percent on all non-bank and non-credit union loans under $40,000. The stated intent was to reduce the...
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Dec 6, 2022
As the valuation of Amazon has risen, so has investment in the company’s most crucial assets: the people who arrive for work each day. Since Amazon must answer to shareholders...
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Dec 5, 2022
What U.S. News perhaps doesn’t realize, and that Yale and Harvard are loathe to admit.
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Dec 3, 2022
As is well-known now, the shortsighted powers-that-be in college football are soon to announce a 12-team college football playoff. The only hold up to the agreement up until now has...
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Dec 1, 2022
It’s a known quantity in the world of startups that your failure is your credit. Please re-read the previous sentence. While failure in most walks of life hangs over those who...
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Nov 30, 2022
When Cato Institute co-founder Ed Crane visited the Soviet Union in 1981, he was already a critic of arms-race brinksmanship with the U.S.’s foremost enemy. Instinct told him a...
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Nov 29, 2022
Imagine Chuck Schumer and Kevin McCarthy deciding for businesses how many semiconductor chips they can import annually. The outcry from Right AND Left would be massive, and with good...
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Nov 28, 2022
What economists, politicians and pundits imagine inflation to be quite simply isn’t.
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Nov 23, 2022
The foot, second, and tablespoon can’t alter reality as much as they reflect it as constant measures of length, time and weight. Hopefully what’s been written so far is a...
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Nov 22, 2022
In the 1990s, the late Sen. Patrick Moynihan sought to abolish the CIA. While he knew his pursuit of its shuttering by legislative means was wholly quixotic, Moynihan felt the...
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Nov 21, 2022
What the Fed does really doesn’t matter.
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Nov 19, 2022
The economics discussion would have a great deal more clarity if it were broadly understood that underlying all lending and borrowing is the movement of actual goods and services....
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Nov 18, 2022
In the broadly owned but mostly unread The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith properly focuses on stationary versus ascendant economies. What’s stationary is an investor...
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Nov 17, 2022
On November 30, 1974 I attended my first college football game. It was Notre Dame vs. USC at the Los Angeles Coliseum. Notre Dame was up 24-6 early, only for USC to storm back and...
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Nov 16, 2022
On the matter of public policy, it’s always wise to look beyond its visible effects. In particular, what’s not happening as a consequence of what on the surface perhaps...
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Nov 15, 2022
Up front, the minimum wage should be less than zero. Some say it should be zero, but as Oklahoma State professor Per Bylund once explained it to me, individuals should have the right...
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Nov 14, 2022
He was only able to "ruin" a franchise insofar as the richest and smartest of 1999 didn't see the NFL and Redskins as worth saving.
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Nov 12, 2022
Legal Analyst Seth Berenzweig & Real Clear Politics and author John Tamny discuss
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Nov 10, 2022
There’s a perhaps apocryphal anecdote that’s been spreading around for years that Target, based on the buying habits of its female customers, often knows before they do...
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Nov 9, 2022
Last week Shanghai Disney was locked down, so was a FoxConn plant producing Apple iPhone 14s, and on and on. Viruses aren’t ideological. They just spread.
Tragic as the...
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Nov 8, 2022
At risk of being called a “name dropper,” I’ll name drop Arthur Laffer. I’m lucky enough to call him a friend, and whenever I see him I always remind him that...
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Nov 7, 2022
There are likely a few fools out there who believe what is both logically and empirically ridiculous.
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Nov 5, 2022
Legal Analyst Seth Berenzweig & Real Clear Politics and author John Tamny discuss Elon's Musk now taking control of Twitter
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Nov 4, 2022
He’s not paying enough attention to them. Who’s not? A recent front page Washington Post story lamented that as Elon Musk “inserts himself into volatile...
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Nov 1, 2022
Imagine if the Mayors of Beverly Hills (CA), Lake Forest (IL), and Mercer Island (WA) were to decree a maximum apartment rent in each locale of $1,000. Would anyone doubt that there...
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Oct 31, 2022
Markets have always happened on the "money" that is most constant as a measure. This looms as a problem for Bitcoin now, and always.
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Oct 31, 2022
Legal analyst Seth Berenzweig and John Tamny, Vice President of FreedomWorks, editor of RealClearMarkets, and author of When Politicians Panicked.
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Oct 27, 2022
In 2008 Nigel Lawson published An Appeal To Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming. The Tory radical who served as Margaret Thatcher’s Chancellor of the Exchequer was promptly...
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Oct 26, 2022
The pundit class routinely laments an American “divide.” Most often the latter is Democrat vs. Republican, but throughout time we’ve also seen labor vs. capital,...
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Oct 25, 2022
Markets always and everywhere have their say. Much as political types imagine they can use force or the money of others to alter reality, market signals overpower their conceit. This...
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Oct 24, 2022
If Republicans aren't cutting taxes, they're distracted. Sadly, they've handed the Dems the tools to distract them.
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Oct 20, 2022
It’s always been a mystery why those fearful of low-wage overseas workers don’t clamor for more immigration. Don’t they see the obvious?
When individuals reach the...
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Oct 18, 2022
How easily we forget. What do we forget? It’s that the future of commerce is the living definition of uncertain.
If you doubt this, consider Amazon’s market...
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Oct 17, 2022
Falling prices imply rising prices elsewhere, while rising prices imply falling prices.
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Oct 14, 2022
Legal analyst Seth Berenzweig and John Tamny, Vice President of FreedomWorks, editor of RealClearMarkets, and author of When Politicians Panicked.
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Oct 13, 2022
In the early 1920s radios were the pricey, must-have gadgets of the day. And as all transformative market goods are, they started out expensive only for RCA (the Apple of its time)...
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Oct 11, 2022
Richard Tren is a program manager and policy writer at the Searle Freedom Trust. He’s seen a lot of the world, as have his grandparents. They first saw China in the 1980s. The...
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Oct 10, 2022
It’s likely no longer relevant given British Prime Minister Liz Truss’s unfortunate U-turn on proposed tax cuts, but at the very least the episode provides readers with a...
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Oct 7, 2022
In 2021 the Illinois-based Woodstock Institute supported that state’s 36% rate cap on many forms of consumer credit, including small dollar loans, claiming the cap would shut...
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Oct 6, 2022
In 1992, economist and Washington Times columnist Richard Rahn was in the former Soviet Union. He was there in an advisory role as Russia emerged from decades of brutal,...
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Oct 5, 2022
Back in the early 2000s, a reporter followed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos around with an eye on better understanding the indefatigable entrepreneur. In following Bezos, the reporter...
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Oct 4, 2022
In his speeches, George Gilder regularly makes a crucial point about creativity. The latter is, among other things, what economic planners can’t account for. There’s...
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Oct 3, 2022
Logic rejects such a view, as does history.
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Oct 1, 2022
David Thayer is a prominent investor in Philadelphia who formerly served in the military. It’s something he noticed while serving in the military that will be the subject of...
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Sep 30, 2022
In his wonderful book American Happiness and Its Discontents, George Will wrote that Founding Father John Adams began each day with a tankard of beer. The anecdote read as...
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Sep 29, 2022
Do you ever wonder why there’s generally always an “UberUBER” when you need one? Don’t worry, the post-lockdown exception to this rule will be discussed at...
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Sep 28, 2022
When Ronald Reagan ran for president with an economic plan heavily accented by tax cuts, he was ridiculed. By both sides. It was accepted wisdom among Democrats and Republicans that...
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Sep 27, 2022
Washington Post columnist Christine Emba writes that “There’s rarely a good reason to cheer for a billionaire.” And members of the Left say conservatives are...
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Sep 26, 2022
This would be the first inflation in world history in which the currency rose against foreign measures, and also gold.
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Sep 24, 2022
Legal analyst Seth Berenzweig and John Tamny, Vice President of FreedomWorks, editor of RealClearMarkets, and author of When Politicians Panicked.
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Sep 23, 2022
In an opinion piece from earlier this week, I attempted to critique a recent report (“Rising Interest Rates Threaten Washington’s Solvency”) written by economist...
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Sep 22, 2022
If you clicked on this write-up, odds are you did because you knew Mike. Which in a very real sense is too bad. The view here is that everyone should know about the late, great Mike...
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Sep 21, 2022
Henry Hazlitt long ago observed that “economics” is stalked by fallacy. That’s no doubt true, which is why it’s easy to nod along to Washington Post columnist...
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Sep 20, 2022
Few know this, but when Elon Musk initially came to North America from South Africa, his first real work was in banking. Bank of Nova Scotia specifically.
Where it gets interesting...
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Sep 19, 2022
The only threat to U.S. solvency is the productivity of the American people. Nothing else matters.
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Sep 17, 2022
The light came on at roughly midnight, at which time Ms. Tutunjian “said a prayer of thanks and got up quickly.” Why was she getting up when most would be going to sleep?...
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Sep 16, 2022
The September 15, 2022 the NFL matchup between the Los Angeles Chargers and Kansas City Chiefs is being “televised” on Amazon Prime. Please stop and think about the...
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Sep 15, 2022
Wednesday’s Washington Post led with an above-the-fold headline on the right column that read “Inflation report thrashes stocks.” On its face, it’s useful for...
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Sep 12, 2022
Growth is the surest sign of reduced pressures related to so-called "labor supply."
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Sep 9, 2022
Government can't legislate lower prices, it can only decree scarcity.
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Sep 8, 2022
It’s too easily forgotten that human beings are the most crucial capital of all. Which means how they deploy their talents is of utmost importance.
This is something to keep in...
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Sep 7, 2022
It was 1988, and President Ronald Reagan was speaking at a summit in Moscow. In a style that few could emulate, Reagan told a joke. It went like this:
“An American man,...
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Sep 6, 2022
“I used to be poor, but then I stopped doing stupid things.” The previous statement is a real one. It was uttered to me long ago by a very well-to-do supporter of...
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Sep 5, 2022
Markets are moved by surprise, while markets themselves relentlessly correct artificiality.
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Sep 3, 2022
The memory is hazy as to the exact year, but seemingly ten or fifteen years ago an auto insurer offered a novel option for drivers: lower prices if the insurer could track the...
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Sep 1, 2022
The New York Times reports that the ShotMaster Pro can make eight espressos at a time, and 700 per hour. This robot sells for $50,000, which Times reporter Julia Moskin indicates is...
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Aug 31, 2022
When Nick Saban was head coach at Michigan State, he was intent on increasing spending for the school’s football facility, and goods/services for the players more broadly. One...
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Aug 30, 2022
“My efforts to prevent the closing of the gold window—working through Connolly, Volcker, and Shultz—do not seem to have succeeded. The gold window may have to be...
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Aug 29, 2022
Ending inflation is the not herculean task economists want you to think it is.
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Aug 27, 2022
Before Nick Saban settled on becoming a football coach, he had visions of owning a car dealership. As owner, Saban’s plan was to not have sales quotas. He felt, and feels,...
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Aug 25, 2022
The NFL is a copycat league, as are professional and collegiate sports leagues in general, and the surest evidence of this is the annual race to hire the assistants of successful...
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Aug 24, 2022
“I haven’t cried like this since Malik made the game-winning basket against Gonzaga.” Those are the words of St. John’s College high school (Washington, D.C.)...
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Aug 23, 2022
If you’re reading this, you’re likely on a computer. You could spend your whole life trying to create the computer you’re starting at right now, and you’d...
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Aug 22, 2022
Sometimes the obvious requires stating.
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Aug 18, 2022
At some point in every calendar year I re-read Cato Institute co-founder Ed Crane’s 1981 essay, “Fear and Loathing In the Soviet Union.” A recap of his visit to the...
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Aug 17, 2022
“Water poured into his house. Floods deluged his neighborhood. At least one of his neighbors drowned.” According to New York Times reporters Zia ur-Rehman, Christina...
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Aug 16, 2022
“I might look fine to you, but I feel crappy 70 percent of the time.” Those are the words of filmmaker Lisa Hepner. Hepner is the creator of The Human Trial, a...
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Aug 15, 2022
Modern Fed officials don’t even know what they don’t know to obscure with muttering.
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Aug 11, 2022
In August of 1998, the average gasoline price in the U.S. was a shade over a dollar. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, by August of 2008, the price of a gallon...
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Aug 10, 2022
We “will not walk away from our employees” in Russia. Those were the uplifting words of a Koch Industries spokesman in March, and as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine...
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Aug 9, 2022
Counterfactuals are always fun. Niall Ferguson has even written a book on them, and he’s surely not the only historian to do so.
In this case, let’s imagine for a moment...
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Aug 8, 2022
It’s not that there aren’t smart and realistically brilliant people in high positions of government. There certainly are. But the combined knowledge of the revolting masses is...
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Aug 6, 2022
The actual state where this took place escapes at this time, but it’s really not the point. What’s the point is that sometime in the not-too-distant past a study came out...
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Aug 4, 2022
In their new book America In Perspective, David Sokol and Adam Brandon report that in 1700, what eventually became the United States had a population of 250,000. By 1770 it was 2.1...
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Aug 3, 2022
At the dawn of the 20th century it was said that cars were rarer than millionaires. And millionaires were, of course, very rare.
Thinking about cars, how fortunate it was that at...
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Aug 2, 2022
“When you are poor, the sun finds you faster.” Those are the words of Juanita Cruz-Perez, a resident of San Antonio.
While she has an air conditioner in her home, New...
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Aug 1, 2022
Chinese growth redounds to us. Since it does, let’s hope they stop spying on an entity that knows nothing about prosperity.
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Jul 28, 2022
The question about whether America is in decline is arguably best answered by those who aren’t American. The reason for this is very simple: when all you know is the staggering...
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Jul 26, 2022
Memory says it was a New Yorker cartoon from decades ago which referenced a portion of the population that still believed in Santa Claus. Many readers have probably arrived at the...
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Jul 25, 2022
One expects Democrats to support government action in response to government error, but Republicans not so much. How sad.
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Jul 21, 2022
It’s an old saying, maybe an overused one, but early 20th century writer Randolph Bourne observed about war that it’s “the health of the state.” Well, of...
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Jul 20, 2022
“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world.” Albert Einstein is tied to the previous assertion. Was the quote apocryphal? If so, so what? It’s something...
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Jul 19, 2022
The next time you’re in traffic, stop and look at the cars surrounding you. If on a city street, also look at the cars passing you as they go in the opposite direction. In a...
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Jul 18, 2022
Neo-inflation hawks seems to be shunning partisanship right when they needn't.
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Jul 16, 2022
Recently ServiceNow’s Bill McDermott lamented what he deems a rising U.S. dollar, only for the technology CEO to claim that “No one’s going to outrun the currency...
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Jul 14, 2022
53 dead in San Antonio. Stop and think about that. Stop and think about how the 53 died. For most of us a mere 10 minutes without air conditioning is unbearable during the summer...
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Jul 12, 2022
It’s legal to ride a motorcycle, bungee jump, and big wave surf. Quick question: how many of you have done any of the three?
Though we’re free to actively pursue all...
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Jul 11, 2022
Real recessions lay the seeds of powerful economic expansion given the basic truth that the prudent go on buying sprees during downturns.
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Jul 7, 2022
“If you ever do that to me again, I’m going to kill you.” The late Pete Peterson uttered those somewhat tongue-in-cheek words to Stephen Schwarzman in 1985, not...
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Jul 5, 2022
Somewhere along the way it’s made its way into the minds of the commentariat that arresting inflation brings with it pain, job loss, bankruptcy, “recession,” and...
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Jul 4, 2022
Time is in many ways the most precious economic commodity of all, so is it any surprise that workers might be reluctant to give away theirs so cheaply?
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Jul 2, 2022
When Jerry Jones purchased the Dallas Cowboys in 1989, his investment bankers told him he was making a big mistake. Luxury boxes at Texas Stadium were empty in many instances, so...
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Jul 1, 2022
It’s almost a trite assertion so basic is it, but all big businesses start small. Perhaps more important, the small businesses in the U.S. that have grown large did so amid...
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Jun 29, 2022
What’s the economic impact of lifting $20 from the person next to you on a Manhattan subway, only for you to exit the train at the next stop in order to spend it? Unless...
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Jun 28, 2022
It’s too easily forgotten by the deep and not-so-deep in thought that production is all about the getting. Goods and services always flow. Everywhere. Without regard to...
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Jun 27, 2022
The 'experts' don't know what they're talking about.
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Jun 23, 2022
Mitch Mustain, Whitney Lewis, and Lance Pavlas. What do the names mean to you? Most likely nothing, though if you’re a college football fan they likely ring a bell. All three...
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Jun 21, 2022
Recently a judge or someone in power in California defined a bee as a fish. It was something like that, though if not exactly that, it realistically doesn’t matter. Markets...
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Jun 20, 2022
Scarcity as a driver of soaring value has to be one of the most overrated notions in economics.
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Jun 16, 2022
Back before Facebook was a public company, founder Mark Zuckerberg had a bit of a reputation with venture capitalists. He would show up to meetings in shorts, flip flops, and with...
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Jun 15, 2022
As most are aware, the various cryptocurrencies are in correction mode at present. Some of this is rooted in a reality discussed in this column a few weeks ago about why these...
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Jun 14, 2022
A recent story in the New York Times by Oscar Lopez and Alejandro Cegarra told of “one of the largest caravans seeking to reach the United States in recent years.”...
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Jun 13, 2022
“Much of the security of person and property in modern nations is the effect of manners and opinion rather than of law.” – John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political...
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Jun 10, 2022
A discussion of the billionaire's memoirs.
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Jun 9, 2022
Government spending is a tax. Let’s get what’s obvious out of the way. And this isn’t a comment about deficits versus surpluses. A focus on either is the stuff of...
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Jun 7, 2022
"Come in this place, you don’t know if you’re coming out. And if you do you might be missing an arm or eye or leg. Do something for...
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Jun 6, 2022
There's nothing worse than being obvious.
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Jun 4, 2022
“Despite strong levels of vaccination among older people, Covid killed them at vastly higher rates during this year’s Omicron wave than it did last year, preying on long...
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Jun 1, 2022
In his masterful two-book history about Ronald Reagan and his times, titled The Age of Reagan, Steven Hayward wrote of the dollar’s notable move upward on November 5, 1980, the...
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May 30, 2022
The wealth unequal are by their descriptor remarkable.
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May 27, 2022
Tesla founder Elon Musk plans to purchase Twitter. He has an “absolutist” approach to free speech and announced that he plans to vote Republican in upcoming elections. Does the...
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May 26, 2022
It’s been eclipsed by his subsequent entrepreneurial achievements, but Elon Musk has a banking background. Before he brought his talents to the U.S., he was going to school at...
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May 25, 2022
It’s a presidential tradition that serious, tier one candidates for the office speak at the Detroit Economics Club. Young people must wonder why since Detroit is almost never...
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May 24, 2022
“Decent housing is an effect of middle class values, not a cause.” – George Gilder, Wealth & Poverty, p. 93
“I even hated him more because I knew he could...
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May 24, 2022
Legal Analyst Seth Berenzweig and Real Clear Markets columnist John Tamny discuss inflation and the Fed
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May 23, 2022
A headline at Forbes.com last week indicated rising layoffs at Silicon Valley start-ups that are said to foretell a "quiet summer" for venture capitalists. On the same day, an A1...
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May 21, 2022
The market speculation that is Bitcoin has risen to prominence for a variety of reasons, but it’s not unreasonable to say that the dollar, euro, yen, pound, yuan (or name your...
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May 19, 2022
Upon return from a family vacation three summers ago, economist Ike Brannon remarked at a subsequent lunch about an individual at the resort who was almost literally covered in...
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May 18, 2022
While he was president the dollar fell 27 percent against the euro, and 25 percent against the British pound. Who was this president? It has to be Joe Biden, right? Figure that...
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May 17, 2022
Last week Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell warned of looming "pain" from the Fed's fight against inflation. Such an assertion, or observation, or excuse is foolish (and...
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May 16, 2022
A country that can direct $40 billion to Ukraine has the capacity to do a lot of stupid things.
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May 14, 2022
The dollar is the most important price in the world. Former Fed Vice Chairman Manuel Johnson asserts the latter in his book on monetary policy, though one gets the feeling he...
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May 12, 2022
In Michael Ovitz’s very excellent 2018 memoir (review here) Who Is Michael Ovitz, the entertainment legend provided fascinating insight into why CAA was much more than a talent...
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May 11, 2022
It’s too easily forgotten that when Ronald Reagan sought the Republican nomination for president in 1980, the view even in his own Party was that the tax cuts he desired were...
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May 10, 2022
In a recent weekend interview with the Wall Street Journal, Hoover Institution senior fellows John Cogan and Kevin Warsh concluded with the properly optimistic, and laudable...
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May 9, 2022
Wise minds will look beyond a Fed that’s logically not the story right now, and that realistically never was.
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May 6, 2022
Two days before Prince William married Kate Middleton on April 29, 2011, John Berlau published an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal hailing Middleton as “The...
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May 4, 2022
It’s accepted wisdom that supply and demand sits at the center of all economic thought. Figure that prices are what organize a market economy, at which point it’s only...
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May 3, 2022
Were he around, Adam Smith would marvel. All this talk of a “strong,” “weak,” or as is often said lately, a “mighty” dollar. Wait, what? Money...
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May 2, 2022
Reasoned people will ignore what makes no sense, but that both Democrat and Republican partisans routinely focus on in order to score cheap political points that have nothing to do...
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May 2, 2022
Legal analyst Seth Berenzweig is joined by RealClear Markets and Forbes writer John Tamny
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Apr 28, 2022
“I spent my career as an academic studying great depressions. I can tell you from history that if we don’t act in a big way, you can expect another great depression, and...
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Apr 27, 2022
At its height as the world’s most prominent sports magazine, and realistically one of the world’s most prominent magazines regardless of genre, Sports Illustrated (SI)...
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Apr 26, 2022
It was 1999 at Goldman Sachs, and a senior person in its private bank was asked what he was recommending his very rich clients buy. He replied that they should purchase AOL, and hold...
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Apr 25, 2022
When it comes to economics and the high IQ types who populate the profession, what’s ridiculous is the faux science’s daily bread.
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Apr 23, 2022
In a piece published last month, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank lashed out at Koch Industries as a “recidivist corporate offender” that had earned a...
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Apr 21, 2022
The late J.R. Richard was a Major League Baseball phenomenon of the 1970s for the Houston Astros. If the radar guns were accurate, no one’s fastball traveled faster than...
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Apr 19, 2022
On March 23rd it was announced that buyers from “unfriendly countries” would provide rubles in return for Russian gas, instead of the traditional U.S. dollar. Eventually...
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Apr 18, 2022
Market forces will run circles around the central-planning fantasies of economists.
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Apr 14, 2022
“During those days he stood still for such disastrous fatuities as Franklin Roosevelt’s impetuous call for unconditional surrender, a rhetorical fillip which in the...
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Apr 12, 2022
The Power Law is the title of Sebastian Mallaby’s spectacular history of venture capital (review here). For those who haven’t read it, they would be wise to....
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Apr 11, 2022
When we want something, let’s put our wealth to work as opposed to running to Washington for help.
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Apr 7, 2022
Every so often Cato Institute co-founder Ed Crane reminisces about the early days of libertarianism, and in particular the make-up of the movement as gatherings began taking place....
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Apr 6, 2022
From when Elon Musk was very young he “plotted an escape from his surroundings and dreamed of a place that would allow his personality and dreams to flourish.” Those are...
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Apr 5, 2022
Political discourse would be much less nauseating if politicians weren’t so obnoxious as to talk incessantly about “creating jobs.” They can do no such thing.
On...
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Apr 4, 2022
Reality always intrudes on attempts to deceive.
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Apr 2, 2022
Legal analyst Seth Berenzweig is joined by RealClear Markets and Forbes writer John Tamny
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Mar 31, 2022
The economic discussion would be greatly improved if it were passably understood that what we call “the economy” isn’t some living, breathing machine that can be...
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Mar 30, 2022
About the great Fred Smith (founder and CEO of FedEx), there are more than a few stories that have followed him over the decades. Particularly as the star of what was formerly...
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Mar 29, 2022
“You have to be kidding me.” Those were the words uttered with obvious incredulity to Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, the original founders of Tesla Motors. They...
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Mar 28, 2022
President Nixon's hand was in no way forced.
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Mar 24, 2022
In a phone call with prominent investor Richard Strong about fourteen months ago, he asked me my thoughts on Elon Musk. While I didn’t have deep or detailed opinions on the...
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Mar 22, 2022
For those who remember the 1980s, it’s not unreasonable to speculate that they remember the great Robin Leach. He was one of the faces of the mis-named “Decade of...
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Mar 21, 2022
Leave it to economists to blame finance, as opposed to government, for inflation.
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Mar 17, 2022
The Berenstain Bears is a collection of “First Time Books” with a devoted following among young kids, along with parents who used to be young, and who used to be devoted...
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Mar 16, 2022
When and how did it happen? How did the definition of inflation become so deformed over the decades? It used to be easily and properly understood as a decline in the unit of account;...
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Mar 15, 2022
In the Spring of 2017, the Whole Foods located in Washington, D.C.’s Glover Park neighborhood shut down ahead of plans for major renovations. The problem was that the...
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Mar 14, 2022
It cannot be stressed enough how exceedingly bright the future is as billions of “hands” join the work force.
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Mar 11, 2022
In 2013 the Wall Street Journal’s Gregory Zuckerman published The Frackers (my review here), a rather laudatory account of the intrepid ways of America’s modern...
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Mar 10, 2022
In 1981, Cato Institute co-founder Ed Crane traveled to the Soviet Union with his fellow co-founder, industrialist Charles Koch. Crane subsequently wrote a long-form essay about his...
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Mar 9, 2022
“COVID Has Killed One of Every 100 Older Americans.” The previous headline made the front page of the New York Times in mid-December of 2021. In the subhead it was noted...
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Mar 8, 2022
In 1815, Great Britain could claim government debt that was 261% of GDP. Did inflation ensue? No. The pound was tied to gold.
In 1945, war spending had U.S. federal debt well north...
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Mar 7, 2022
Government “doing something” is almost by definition government acting incompetently.
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Mar 3, 2022
In his endlessly excellent 1981 book The Economy In Mind, the late, great Warren Brookes told the story of an economist clearing customs at JFK Airport in the malaise-ridden, late...
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Mar 1, 2022
The U.S. dollar and other credible global currencies bring new meaning to fungible, as does finance itself.
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Mar 1, 2022
"I can't think of a single, major innovation coming from experts in the last thirty, forty years. Think about it, isn't that stunning?" – Vinod Khosla
Back in the 1980s when an...
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Feb 28, 2022
Gold came to define money not by magic, but due to market forces.
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Feb 25, 2022
“Putin changed when I was president. Early on, Russia was broke and he wanted help, and I thought he was going to promote a civil society that enabled people to have a big say...
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Feb 24, 2022
“All progress depends on the unreasonable man.” – George Bernard Shaw
Back when future Hall of Fame coach Bill Belichick was a former head coach after a largely...
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Feb 23, 2022
No business ever runs out of money. This is true even of businesses that routinely lose money. As evidenced by the high failure rate in Silicon Valley, the oil patch, and in the...
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Feb 22, 2022
Last week President Biden asserted in rather eye-opening fashion that he "grew up in a family where the price at the pump was felt in the kitchen.” Except that President Biden...
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Feb 21, 2022
It’s not if the inflation problem will be solved, but which political party will wake up to what is good economic policy, and by extension brilliant politics.
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Feb 18, 2022
Up front, there are many people who knew P.J. O’Rourke much better than I did. Based on that, it’s arguable that a tribute by me isn’t merited. My response is that...
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Feb 17, 2022
“It is a fact that man can’t fly.” That’s what a Washington Post editorial confidently asserted in the early days of the 20th century. Please imagine the...
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Feb 15, 2022
It’s one of those myths that just won’t die. Those interested in the economy are well aware of it, but most often are unaware that it's a myth. It’s the one about...
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Feb 14, 2022
The future is opaque precisely because the improbable invariably defines it.
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Feb 11, 2022
It’s accepted wisdom among the mildly sentient that prices are the way that a market economy organizes itself. Without the price mechanism, producers are blinded on the matter...
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Feb 10, 2022
It’s perhaps easily forgotten that Bill Belichick’s record during his first head coaching stint with the Cleveland Browns was 36-44, and among other things, included a...
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Feb 8, 2022
“Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate.” That’s what Treasury secretary Andrew Mellon is said to have told President...
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Feb 7, 2022
The Federal Reserve prizes consensus above all else, which raises the question why Left and Right are so afraid of opposing viewpoints at the central bank.
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Feb 4, 2022
A close friend who has few peers when it comes to belief in limited government has a problem: he’s not sure what news channel – if any – to watch. While the views...
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Feb 3, 2022
Detroit has hosted the Super Bowl twice. Once in 1982, and once in 2000. Each time there was the routine commentary about how free-spending attendees would lift the Motor...
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Feb 1, 2022
“My little book proposal was met with almost no excitement until I became, for a couple of weeks, the headline in the story.” Those are the words of the very excellent...
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Jan 31, 2022
In a world of globalized capital in search of a wide range of returns, central bank fiddling brings new meaning to meaningless.
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Jan 27, 2022
I once asked actor Jay Karnes (FX’s The Shield, among others) if he had any designs on directing. He looked at me sarcastically, only to say he would much prefer to have a...
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Jan 26, 2022
A free-ranging talk about his new book, American Happiness and Its Discontents.
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Jan 25, 2022
Every so often it’s useful to remember for readers the dismissive line from John Maynard Keynes about his numerous disciples in the economics profession. Asked admiringly about...
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Jan 24, 2022
Growth spasms that will end the cruel currency devaluations that are as old as money is.
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Jan 24, 2022
Government intervention can never grow an economy.
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Jan 20, 2022
In his 2014 memoir, One Lucky Bastard (review: here), the late Roger Moore wrote of his first introduction in 1939 to the then obscure television. Rest assured it wasn’t...
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Jan 18, 2022
In his recently released book The Cloud Revolution, Mark Mills relayed to readers the remarkable fact that “it is one thousand times cheaper to light up a room today than it...
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Jan 17, 2022
The U.S. dollar and other credible global currencies bring new meaning to fungible, as does finance itself.
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Jan 13, 2022
P.J. O’Rourke long ago quipped that what really ended the Cold War was Bulgarian blue jeans. One bets he was being somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but the brilliant satirist had a...
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Jan 11, 2022
Some would say it’s the education system’s failings, but the view here is that confusion is a bullish signal of prosperity. Staggering amounts of it enable the kind of...
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Jan 10, 2022
Historians will marvel at how taken economic types were by an entity so irrelevant to actual credit access.
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Jan 4, 2022
"They should have their passports stamped right away." That's what Cato Institute co-founder Ed Crane once remarked about Cuban refugees who had navigated shark-infested waters to...
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Jan 3, 2022
By its very name, government spending is an economic somnolent.
Dec 7, 2022On March 23, 2021 Illinois legislators imposed an interest rate ceiling of 36 percent on all non-bank and non-credit union loans under $40,000. The stated intent was to reduce the...
Dec 6, 2022As the valuation of Amazon has risen, so has investment in the company’s most crucial assets: the people who arrive for work each day. Since Amazon must answer to shareholders...
Dec 5, 2022What U.S. News perhaps doesn’t realize, and that Yale and Harvard are loathe to admit.
Dec 3, 2022As is well-known now, the shortsighted powers-that-be in college football are soon to announce a 12-team college football playoff. The only hold up to the agreement up until now has...
Dec 1, 2022It’s a known quantity in the world of startups that your failure is your credit. Please re-read the previous sentence. While failure in most walks of life hangs over those who...
Nov 30, 2022When Cato Institute co-founder Ed Crane visited the Soviet Union in 1981, he was already a critic of arms-race brinksmanship with the U.S.’s foremost enemy. Instinct told him a...
Nov 29, 2022Imagine Chuck Schumer and Kevin McCarthy deciding for businesses how many semiconductor chips they can import annually. The outcry from Right AND Left would be massive, and with good...
Nov 23, 2022The foot, second, and tablespoon can’t alter reality as much as they reflect it as constant measures of length, time and weight. Hopefully what’s been written so far is a...
Nov 22, 2022In the 1990s, the late Sen. Patrick Moynihan sought to abolish the CIA. While he knew his pursuit of its shuttering by legislative means was wholly quixotic, Moynihan felt the...
Nov 21, 2022What the Fed does really doesn’t matter.
Nov 19, 2022The economics discussion would have a great deal more clarity if it were broadly understood that underlying all lending and borrowing is the movement of actual goods and services....
Nov 18, 2022In the broadly owned but mostly unread The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith properly focuses on stationary versus ascendant economies. What’s stationary is an investor...
Nov 15, 2022Up front, the minimum wage should be less than zero. Some say it should be zero, but as Oklahoma State professor Per Bylund once explained it to me, individuals should have the right...
Nov 14, 2022He was only able to "ruin" a franchise insofar as the richest and smartest of 1999 didn't see the NFL and Redskins as worth saving.
Nov 12, 2022Legal Analyst Seth Berenzweig & Real Clear Politics and author John Tamny discuss
Nov 10, 2022There’s a perhaps apocryphal anecdote that’s been spreading around for years that Target, based on the buying habits of its female customers, often knows before they do...
Nov 9, 2022Last week Shanghai Disney was locked down, so was a FoxConn plant producing Apple iPhone 14s, and on and on. Viruses aren’t ideological. They just spread. Tragic as the...
Nov 8, 2022At risk of being called a “name dropper,” I’ll name drop Arthur Laffer. I’m lucky enough to call him a friend, and whenever I see him I always remind him that...
Nov 7, 2022There are likely a few fools out there who believe what is both logically and empirically ridiculous.
Nov 5, 2022Legal Analyst Seth Berenzweig & Real Clear Politics and author John Tamny discuss Elon's Musk now taking control of Twitter
Nov 4, 2022He’s not paying enough attention to them. Who’s not? A recent front page Washington Post story lamented that as Elon Musk “inserts himself into volatile...
Nov 1, 2022Imagine if the Mayors of Beverly Hills (CA), Lake Forest (IL), and Mercer Island (WA) were to decree a maximum apartment rent in each locale of $1,000. Would anyone doubt that there...
Oct 31, 2022Markets have always happened on the "money" that is most constant as a measure. This looms as a problem for Bitcoin now, and always.
Oct 27, 2022In 2008 Nigel Lawson published An Appeal To Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming. The Tory radical who served as Margaret Thatcher’s Chancellor of the Exchequer was promptly...
Oct 26, 2022The pundit class routinely laments an American “divide.” Most often the latter is Democrat vs. Republican, but throughout time we’ve also seen labor vs. capital,...
Oct 25, 2022Markets always and everywhere have their say. Much as political types imagine they can use force or the money of others to alter reality, market signals overpower their conceit. This...
Oct 24, 2022If Republicans aren't cutting taxes, they're distracted. Sadly, they've handed the Dems the tools to distract them.
Oct 20, 2022It’s always been a mystery why those fearful of low-wage overseas workers don’t clamor for more immigration. Don’t they see the obvious? When individuals reach the...
Oct 18, 2022How easily we forget. What do we forget? It’s that the future of commerce is the living definition of uncertain. If you doubt this, consider Amazon’s market...
Oct 14, 2022Legal analyst Seth Berenzweig and John Tamny, Vice President of FreedomWorks, editor of RealClearMarkets, and author of When Politicians Panicked.
Oct 13, 2022In the early 1920s radios were the pricey, must-have gadgets of the day. And as all transformative market goods are, they started out expensive only for RCA (the Apple of its time)...
Oct 11, 2022Richard Tren is a program manager and policy writer at the Searle Freedom Trust. He’s seen a lot of the world, as have his grandparents. They first saw China in the 1980s. The...
Oct 10, 2022It’s likely no longer relevant given British Prime Minister Liz Truss’s unfortunate U-turn on proposed tax cuts, but at the very least the episode provides readers with a...
Oct 7, 2022In 2021 the Illinois-based Woodstock Institute supported that state’s 36% rate cap on many forms of consumer credit, including small dollar loans, claiming the cap would shut...
Oct 4, 2022In his speeches, George Gilder regularly makes a crucial point about creativity. The latter is, among other things, what economic planners can’t account for. There’s...
Oct 1, 2022David Thayer is a prominent investor in Philadelphia who formerly served in the military. It’s something he noticed while serving in the military that will be the subject of...
Sep 30, 2022In his wonderful book American Happiness and Its Discontents, George Will wrote that Founding Father John Adams began each day with a tankard of beer. The anecdote read as...
Sep 29, 2022Do you ever wonder why there’s generally always an “UberUBER” when you need one? Don’t worry, the post-lockdown exception to this rule will be discussed at...
Sep 28, 2022When Ronald Reagan ran for president with an economic plan heavily accented by tax cuts, he was ridiculed. By both sides. It was accepted wisdom among Democrats and Republicans that...
Sep 27, 2022Washington Post columnist Christine Emba writes that “There’s rarely a good reason to cheer for a billionaire.” And members of the Left say conservatives are...
Sep 24, 2022Legal analyst Seth Berenzweig and John Tamny, Vice President of FreedomWorks, editor of RealClearMarkets, and author of When Politicians Panicked.
Sep 23, 2022In an opinion piece from earlier this week, I attempted to critique a recent report (“Rising Interest Rates Threaten Washington’s Solvency”) written by economist...
Sep 22, 2022If you clicked on this write-up, odds are you did because you knew Mike. Which in a very real sense is too bad. The view here is that everyone should know about the late, great Mike...
Sep 21, 2022Henry Hazlitt long ago observed that “economics” is stalked by fallacy. That’s no doubt true, which is why it’s easy to nod along to Washington Post columnist...
Sep 20, 2022Few know this, but when Elon Musk initially came to North America from South Africa, his first real work was in banking. Bank of Nova Scotia specifically. Where it gets interesting...
Sep 19, 2022The only threat to U.S. solvency is the productivity of the American people. Nothing else matters.
Sep 17, 2022The light came on at roughly midnight, at which time Ms. Tutunjian “said a prayer of thanks and got up quickly.” Why was she getting up when most would be going to sleep?...
Sep 16, 2022The September 15, 2022 the NFL matchup between the Los Angeles Chargers and Kansas City Chiefs is being “televised” on Amazon Prime. Please stop and think about the...
Sep 15, 2022Wednesday’s Washington Post led with an above-the-fold headline on the right column that read “Inflation report thrashes stocks.” On its face, it’s useful for...
Sep 12, 2022Growth is the surest sign of reduced pressures related to so-called "labor supply."
Sep 9, 2022Government can't legislate lower prices, it can only decree scarcity.
Sep 8, 2022It’s too easily forgotten that human beings are the most crucial capital of all. Which means how they deploy their talents is of utmost importance. This is something to keep in...
Sep 7, 2022It was 1988, and President Ronald Reagan was speaking at a summit in Moscow. In a style that few could emulate, Reagan told a joke. It went like this: “An American man,...
Sep 5, 2022Markets are moved by surprise, while markets themselves relentlessly correct artificiality.
Sep 3, 2022The memory is hazy as to the exact year, but seemingly ten or fifteen years ago an auto insurer offered a novel option for drivers: lower prices if the insurer could track the...
Sep 1, 2022The New York Times reports that the ShotMaster Pro can make eight espressos at a time, and 700 per hour. This robot sells for $50,000, which Times reporter Julia Moskin indicates is...
Aug 30, 2022“My efforts to prevent the closing of the gold window—working through Connolly, Volcker, and Shultz—do not seem to have succeeded. The gold window may have to be...
Aug 29, 2022Ending inflation is the not herculean task economists want you to think it is.
Aug 27, 2022Before Nick Saban settled on becoming a football coach, he had visions of owning a car dealership. As owner, Saban’s plan was to not have sales quotas. He felt, and feels,...
Aug 24, 2022“I haven’t cried like this since Malik made the game-winning basket against Gonzaga.” Those are the words of St. John’s College high school (Washington, D.C.)...
Aug 23, 2022If you’re reading this, you’re likely on a computer. You could spend your whole life trying to create the computer you’re starting at right now, and you’d...
Aug 18, 2022At some point in every calendar year I re-read Cato Institute co-founder Ed Crane’s 1981 essay, “Fear and Loathing In the Soviet Union.” A recap of his visit to the...
Aug 17, 2022“Water poured into his house. Floods deluged his neighborhood. At least one of his neighbors drowned.” According to New York Times reporters Zia ur-Rehman, Christina...
Aug 16, 2022“I might look fine to you, but I feel crappy 70 percent of the time.” Those are the words of filmmaker Lisa Hepner. Hepner is the creator of The Human Trial, a...
Aug 15, 2022Modern Fed officials don’t even know what they don’t know to obscure with muttering.
Aug 11, 2022In August of 1998, the average gasoline price in the U.S. was a shade over a dollar. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, by August of 2008, the price of a gallon...
Aug 10, 2022We “will not walk away from our employees” in Russia. Those were the uplifting words of a Koch Industries spokesman in March, and as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine...
Aug 9, 2022Counterfactuals are always fun. Niall Ferguson has even written a book on them, and he’s surely not the only historian to do so. In this case, let’s imagine for a moment...
Aug 8, 2022It’s not that there aren’t smart and realistically brilliant people in high positions of government. There certainly are. But the combined knowledge of the revolting masses is...
Aug 6, 2022You're Not Poor Because You Don't Know David Brooks, You're Poor Because You Don't Know David BrooksThe actual state where this took place escapes at this time, but it’s really not the point. What’s the point is that sometime in the not-too-distant past a study came out...
Aug 2, 2022“When you are poor, the sun finds you faster.” Those are the words of Juanita Cruz-Perez, a resident of San Antonio. While she has an air conditioner in her home, New...
Aug 1, 2022Chinese growth redounds to us. Since it does, let’s hope they stop spying on an entity that knows nothing about prosperity.
Jul 26, 2022Memory says it was a New Yorker cartoon from decades ago which referenced a portion of the population that still believed in Santa Claus. Many readers have probably arrived at the...
Jul 20, 2022“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world.” Albert Einstein is tied to the previous assertion. Was the quote apocryphal? If so, so what? It’s something...
Jul 19, 2022The next time you’re in traffic, stop and look at the cars surrounding you. If on a city street, also look at the cars passing you as they go in the opposite direction. In a...
Jul 18, 2022Neo-inflation hawks seems to be shunning partisanship right when they needn't.
Jul 16, 2022Recently ServiceNow’s Bill McDermott lamented what he deems a rising U.S. dollar, only for the technology CEO to claim that “No one’s going to outrun the currency...
Jul 14, 202253 dead in San Antonio. Stop and think about that. Stop and think about how the 53 died. For most of us a mere 10 minutes without air conditioning is unbearable during the summer...
Jul 12, 2022It’s legal to ride a motorcycle, bungee jump, and big wave surf. Quick question: how many of you have done any of the three? Though we’re free to actively pursue all...
Jul 11, 2022Real recessions lay the seeds of powerful economic expansion given the basic truth that the prudent go on buying sprees during downturns.
Jul 4, 2022Time is in many ways the most precious economic commodity of all, so is it any surprise that workers might be reluctant to give away theirs so cheaply?
Jul 2, 2022When Jerry Jones purchased the Dallas Cowboys in 1989, his investment bankers told him he was making a big mistake. Luxury boxes at Texas Stadium were empty in many instances, so...
Jul 1, 2022It’s almost a trite assertion so basic is it, but all big businesses start small. Perhaps more important, the small businesses in the U.S. that have grown large did so amid...
Jun 28, 2022It’s too easily forgotten by the deep and not-so-deep in thought that production is all about the getting. Goods and services always flow. Everywhere. Without regard to...
Jun 27, 2022The 'experts' don't know what they're talking about.
Jun 21, 2022Recently a judge or someone in power in California defined a bee as a fish. It was something like that, though if not exactly that, it realistically doesn’t matter. Markets...
Jun 20, 2022Scarcity as a driver of soaring value has to be one of the most overrated notions in economics.
Jun 16, 2022Back before Facebook was a public company, founder Mark Zuckerberg had a bit of a reputation with venture capitalists. He would show up to meetings in shorts, flip flops, and with...
Jun 14, 2022A recent story in the New York Times by Oscar Lopez and Alejandro Cegarra told of “one of the largest caravans seeking to reach the United States in recent years.”...
Jun 13, 2022“Much of the security of person and property in modern nations is the effect of manners and opinion rather than of law.” – John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political...
Jun 10, 2022A discussion of the billionaire's memoirs. 
Jun 9, 2022Government spending is a tax. Let’s get what’s obvious out of the way. And this isn’t a comment about deficits versus surpluses. A focus on either is the stuff of...
Jun 7, 2022"Come in this place, you don’t know if you’re coming out. And if you do you might be missing an arm or eye or leg. Do something for...
Jun 6, 2022There's nothing worse than being obvious.
Jun 4, 2022“Despite strong levels of vaccination among older people, Covid killed them at vastly higher rates during this year’s Omicron wave than it did last year, preying on long...
Jun 1, 2022In his masterful two-book history about Ronald Reagan and his times, titled The Age of Reagan, Steven Hayward wrote of the dollar’s notable move upward on November 5, 1980, the...
May 30, 2022The wealth unequal are by their descriptor remarkable.
May 27, 2022Tesla founder Elon Musk plans to purchase Twitter. He has an “absolutist” approach to free speech and announced that he plans to vote Republican in upcoming elections. Does the...
May 25, 2022It’s a presidential tradition that serious, tier one candidates for the office speak at the Detroit Economics Club. Young people must wonder why since Detroit is almost never...
May 24, 2022“Decent housing is an effect of middle class values, not a cause.” – George Gilder, Wealth & Poverty, p. 93 “I even hated him more because I knew he could...
May 24, 2022Legal Analyst Seth Berenzweig and Real Clear Markets columnist John Tamny discuss inflation and the Fed
May 23, 2022A headline at Forbes.com last week indicated rising layoffs at Silicon Valley start-ups that are said to foretell a "quiet summer" for venture capitalists. On the same day, an A1...
May 21, 2022The market speculation that is Bitcoin has risen to prominence for a variety of reasons, but it’s not unreasonable to say that the dollar, euro, yen, pound, yuan (or name your...
May 18, 2022While he was president the dollar fell 27 percent against the euro, and 25 percent against the British pound. Who was this president? It has to be Joe Biden, right? Figure that...
May 17, 2022Last week Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell warned of looming "pain" from the Fed's fight against inflation. Such an assertion, or observation, or excuse is foolish (and...
May 16, 2022A country that can direct $40 billion to Ukraine has the capacity to do a lot of stupid things.
May 14, 2022The dollar is the most important price in the world. Former Fed Vice Chairman Manuel Johnson asserts the latter in his book on monetary policy, though one gets the feeling he...
May 11, 2022It’s too easily forgotten that when Ronald Reagan sought the Republican nomination for president in 1980, the view even in his own Party was that the tax cuts he desired were...
May 10, 2022In a recent weekend interview with the Wall Street Journal, Hoover Institution senior fellows John Cogan and Kevin Warsh concluded with the properly optimistic, and laudable...
May 9, 2022Wise minds will look beyond a Fed that’s logically not the story right now, and that realistically never was.
May 4, 2022It’s accepted wisdom that supply and demand sits at the center of all economic thought. Figure that prices are what organize a market economy, at which point it’s only...
May 2, 2022Reasoned people will ignore what makes no sense, but that both Democrat and Republican partisans routinely focus on in order to score cheap political points that have nothing to do...
Apr 27, 2022At its height as the world’s most prominent sports magazine, and realistically one of the world’s most prominent magazines regardless of genre, Sports Illustrated (SI)...
Apr 26, 2022It was 1999 at Goldman Sachs, and a senior person in its private bank was asked what he was recommending his very rich clients buy. He replied that they should purchase AOL, and hold...
Apr 25, 2022When it comes to economics and the high IQ types who populate the profession, what’s ridiculous is the faux science’s daily bread.
Apr 23, 2022In a piece published last month, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank lashed out at Koch Industries as a “recidivist corporate offender” that had earned a...
Apr 19, 2022On March 23rd it was announced that buyers from “unfriendly countries” would provide rubles in return for Russian gas, instead of the traditional U.S. dollar. Eventually...
Apr 12, 2022The Power Law is the title of Sebastian Mallaby’s spectacular history of venture capital (review here). For those who haven’t read it, they would be wise to....
Apr 11, 2022When we want something, let’s put our wealth to work as opposed to running to Washington for help.
Apr 6, 2022From when Elon Musk was very young he “plotted an escape from his surroundings and dreamed of a place that would allow his personality and dreams to flourish.” Those are...
Apr 5, 2022Political discourse would be much less nauseating if politicians weren’t so obnoxious as to talk incessantly about “creating jobs.” They can do no such thing. On...
Apr 4, 2022Reality always intrudes on attempts to deceive.
Apr 2, 2022Legal analyst Seth Berenzweig is joined by RealClear Markets and Forbes writer John Tamny
Mar 30, 2022About the great Fred Smith (founder and CEO of FedEx), there are more than a few stories that have followed him over the decades. Particularly as the star of what was formerly...
Mar 29, 2022“You have to be kidding me.” Those were the words uttered with obvious incredulity to Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, the original founders of Tesla Motors. They...
Mar 22, 2022For those who remember the 1980s, it’s not unreasonable to speculate that they remember the great Robin Leach. He was one of the faces of the mis-named “Decade of...
Mar 21, 2022Leave it to economists to blame finance, as opposed to government, for inflation.
Mar 16, 2022When and how did it happen? How did the definition of inflation become so deformed over the decades? It used to be easily and properly understood as a decline in the unit of account;...
Mar 15, 2022In the Spring of 2017, the Whole Foods located in Washington, D.C.’s Glover Park neighborhood shut down ahead of plans for major renovations. The problem was that the...
Mar 14, 2022It cannot be stressed enough how exceedingly bright the future is as billions of “hands” join the work force.
Mar 11, 2022In 2013 the Wall Street Journal’s Gregory Zuckerman published The Frackers (my review here), a rather laudatory account of the intrepid ways of America’s modern...
Mar 7, 2022Government “doing something” is almost by definition government acting incompetently.
Mar 1, 2022"I can't think of a single, major innovation coming from experts in the last thirty, forty years. Think about it, isn't that stunning?" – Vinod Khosla Back in the 1980s when an...
Feb 25, 2022“Putin changed when I was president. Early on, Russia was broke and he wanted help, and I thought he was going to promote a civil society that enabled people to have a big say...
Feb 23, 2022No business ever runs out of money. This is true even of businesses that routinely lose money. As evidenced by the high failure rate in Silicon Valley, the oil patch, and in the...
Feb 22, 2022Last week President Biden asserted in rather eye-opening fashion that he "grew up in a family where the price at the pump was felt in the kitchen.” Except that President Biden...
Feb 18, 2022Up front, there are many people who knew P.J. O’Rourke much better than I did. Based on that, it’s arguable that a tribute by me isn’t merited. My response is that...
Feb 15, 2022It’s one of those myths that just won’t die. Those interested in the economy are well aware of it, but most often are unaware that it's a myth. It’s the one about...
Feb 14, 2022The future is opaque precisely because the improbable invariably defines it.
Feb 11, 2022It’s accepted wisdom among the mildly sentient that prices are the way that a market economy organizes itself. Without the price mechanism, producers are blinded on the matter...
Feb 8, 2022“Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate.” That’s what Treasury secretary Andrew Mellon is said to have told President...
Feb 7, 2022The Federal Reserve prizes consensus above all else, which raises the question why Left and Right are so afraid of opposing viewpoints at the central bank.
Feb 4, 2022A close friend who has few peers when it comes to belief in limited government has a problem: he’s not sure what news channel – if any – to watch. While the views...
Feb 1, 2022“My little book proposal was met with almost no excitement until I became, for a couple of weeks, the headline in the story.” Those are the words of the very excellent...
Jan 31, 2022In a world of globalized capital in search of a wide range of returns, central bank fiddling brings new meaning to meaningless.
Jan 26, 2022A free-ranging talk about his new book, American Happiness and Its Discontents. 
Jan 25, 2022Every so often it’s useful to remember for readers the dismissive line from John Maynard Keynes about his numerous disciples in the economics profession. Asked admiringly about...
Jan 24, 2022Growth spasms that will end the cruel currency devaluations that are as old as money is.
Jan 24, 2022Government intervention can never grow an economy.
Jan 20, 2022In his 2014 memoir, One Lucky Bastard (review: here), the late Roger Moore wrote of his first introduction in 1939 to the then obscure television. Rest assured it wasn’t...
Jan 18, 2022In his recently released book The Cloud Revolution, Mark Mills relayed to readers the remarkable fact that “it is one thousand times cheaper to light up a room today than it...
Jan 17, 2022The U.S. dollar and other credible global currencies bring new meaning to fungible, as does finance itself.
Jan 11, 2022Some would say it’s the education system’s failings, but the view here is that confusion is a bullish signal of prosperity. Staggering amounts of it enable the kind of...
Jan 10, 2022Historians will marvel at how taken economic types were by an entity so irrelevant to actual credit access.
Jan 4, 2022"They should have their passports stamped right away." That's what Cato Institute co-founder Ed Crane once remarked about Cuban refugees who had navigated shark-infested waters to...
Jan 3, 2022By its very name, government spending is an economic somnolent.