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Dec 5, 2023
There’s little to no growth in tax cuts for middle and poor earners. It’s sad something so obvious requires stating, but the obvious requires stating in modern times as...
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Dec 4, 2023
525 basis points worth of hikes, only for the dollar to be weaker than it was when this nonsensical fight began. Don’t say some of us didn’t warn you.
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Dec 2, 2023
If you’re reading this write-up you’re aware that Alabama beat Auburn in the annual Iron Bowl (college football’s best rivalry) on a last play, time running out,...
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Dec 1, 2023
Toys ‘R Us shut its doors in June of 2018. Thank goodness for progress. In the U.S., businesses that stagnate usually find themselves as Toys ‘R Us did. To succeed, you...
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Nov 30, 2023
At a retreat over the summer, one of the attendees was rather rich and rather famous in the technology space. Having made enormous sums of money in a variety of startups and...
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Nov 29, 2023
Viktor Belenko died on September 24th. Belenko defected from the former Soviet Union in 1976, and brought with him what then CIA director George H.W. Bush described as an...
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Nov 28, 2023
While the full story is likely yet to be told, one popular explanation for OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman’s removal from the labs’ CEO post is that among board members,...
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Nov 27, 2023
The paradoxical truth not grasped by most economists is that devaluation and/or "money printing" leads to the rapid disappearance of the currency being debased or "pri...
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Nov 25, 2023
While last week’s Formula 1 race in Las Vegas didn’t draw the crowds that organizers hoped, a slow weekend in Vegas is still defined by something well north of 90%...
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Nov 24, 2023
While there are 5,500 McDonald’s in China right now, the intent of the Chicago, IL-based fast-food giant is to increase that number to over 10,000 by 2028. The company's...
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Nov 23, 2023
You’d think that big pharmaceutical companies would look askance at the FDA. Why wouldn’t they? Development of pharmaceutical advances is very expensive, and the FDA is...
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Nov 22, 2023
When it comes to soaring living standards and progress of all kinds, oil’s role is massive. Imagine how staggeringly poor we would be absent all the mechanization and...
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Nov 21, 2023
New Coke was introduced on April 23, 1985. Rep. Mike Gallagher was born on March 3, 1984. That Gallagher entered the world thirteen months and three weeks before the launch of New...
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Nov 20, 2023
When money forms have a stable definition that producers respect, there’s no inflation.
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Nov 18, 2023
Recalling his days as a professor at CalTech, technologist and futurist Carver Mead reports on “confessions” he would attend with his colleagues. They wouldn’t talk...
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Nov 17, 2023
In the second half of the 19th century, Singer Sewing Machine Company co-founder Edward Cabot Clark used some of the proceeds from his fortune to purchase several blocks of land...
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Nov 16, 2023
The rich pay the most taxes, by far. That’s not a partisan statement as much as it’s a logical and empirical reality.
Considering the logic first, the rich earn much more...
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Nov 15, 2023
“Only in Washington” is so trite, yet sad truth can be found in what’s so trite. Always looking in the rearview mirror, bank regulators at the Fed are calling for...
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Nov 14, 2023
It’s always worth stressing that “billionaire” as a descriptor of “hedge fund investor” is common precisely because the billionaires in the space are so...
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Nov 13, 2023
The shiny answer is hiding in plain sight while being vivified by many trillions worth of currency trading daily.
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Nov 11, 2023
Unlike humans, horses can’t have twins. This was relayed to me twelve years ago by prominent horse breeders. One of their mares was “in foal,” only for the owners...
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Nov 10, 2023
As is well known now, former President Trump is presently on trial in New York. The accusations are that he fraudulently inflated the value of his assets in order to secure better...
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Nov 9, 2023
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway reported earnings last weekend, including a 40 percent increase in operating earnings. Wise minds can and will debate the good or bad of the...
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Nov 8, 2023
Imagine trying to demonize Christmas. The Grinch did and failed. It’s hard to put an ugly face on what is glorious. Despite this truth, the FTC continues to try and demonize...
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Nov 7, 2023
In their 2022 book Superabundance, Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley observed that “for every increment of population growth, global resources have grown by a factor of eight.”...
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Nov 6, 2023
Relentlessly falling prices are the surest sign of growth.
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Nov 4, 2023
At some point Michael Bloomberg was unemployed. He first lost a job in finance, then he became "unemployed" again even though he was working. How? Upon losing his job, Bloomberg...
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Nov 3, 2023
Few things are more fundamental to economic understanding than the basic truth that government has no resources. While wise minds can debate the good or bad of a lot or a little of...
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Nov 3, 2023
The banks that were ailing in 2008 shouldn’t have been bailed out. Anyone who wants a healthy banking sector would agree with the previous statement. If you love banks, you...
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Nov 2, 2023
“Texas is a wonderful, welcoming place for business.” Those are the words of J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. Dimon’s compliment is more than rhetorical as...
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Nov 2, 2023
John Stuart Mill observed long ago that profits are the remuneration of abstinence. So basic and so crucially true. Contra the droolings of economists and their enablers in the...
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Nov 1, 2023
As is very well known, in 2023 Taylor Swift embarked on a concert tour that filled stadiums across the U.S. Fascinating about the tour is that while she played multiple nights in...
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Nov 1, 2023
In 1980, there were over 4,000 Fotomats around the United States. Time was when you had pictures to develop, you took your film to a physical location. Fotomat was frequently the...
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Oct 31, 2023
To read Ashlee Vance, Jimmy Soni and Walter Isaacson, the three individuals who’ve written extensively about Elon Musk in the last ten years, is to happen on a theme that...
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Oct 30, 2023
Markets won't correct due to a lack of central planning, but they might if there's an expectation of it.
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Oct 28, 2023
In 2013, the excellent documentary Twenty Feet from Stardom was released. It’s a highly interesting look at the music industry’s extraordinarily talented back-up singers....
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Oct 27, 2023
If you’re producing you’re demanding. Repeat the previous truth over and over again. If you’re producing you’re demanding even if you’re the picture...
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Oct 26, 2023
It’s popular today to say that “big business” is in bed with China or the “Chi-Coms.” Well, yes. Businesses are generally big because they’ve not...
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Oct 25, 2023
If you’re reading this opinion piece, you’re likely on a computer of some kind (yes, a smartphone is a computer) with internet access. Since you are, and if you have the...
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Oct 24, 2023
Conservatives who should know better have been spilling much ink of late lamenting declining test scores. What has them up in arms should have them bullish. The great venture...
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Oct 23, 2023
Wrapping its thoughtless actions in “national security” sanctimony, the Biden administration will weaken a U.S. always and everywhere made stronger by imports.
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Oct 21, 2023
In the first book of his two-volume account of Ronald Reagan and his times (Title: The Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order), conservative historian Steven Hayward...
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Oct 20, 2023
In a Dunkin Donuts last week, the line was long. And moving slowly.
The internal desire was to express frustration with the employees and their slow pace, but to what end? Was...
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Oct 19, 2023
“We hire the best people in the industry, so they make more money than their counterparts do at our competition.” Those are the words of Arthur Blank, co-founder of The...
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Oct 18, 2023
“Do you honestly think you’re going to replace this?” The latter was a question posed by the president of the Toronto Star to Kimbal Musk back in the early days of...
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Oct 17, 2023
There is no riskier trade in all of investing than a short sale. It’s also one of the most valuable forms of investing to the overall health of the economy and markets. More on...
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Oct 16, 2023
Lame-brained as government statistics are, the responses to them are even dumber.
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Oct 16, 2023
The more time spent in office, the greater one's ability to grow the funding directed by that office.
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Oct 14, 2023
“He makes such a difference.” Those are the words of Bishop O’Connell (based in Arlington, VA) high school quarterback Jonathan Nguyen. He’s talking about...
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Oct 13, 2023
George Will tells a story about Newt Gingrich that rates occasional re-telling for those who follow securities markets: it was 1994 and Mexico’s debt troubles had revealed...
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Oct 12, 2023
About his columns of late, the great Holman Jenkins recently explained that he’s “mostly sat out the inflation discussion.” Where it becomes puzzling is in...
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Oct 11, 2023
Market share is hard won. Since it is, those who have it are unlikely to purposely give it up.
The above statement of the obvious is a good jumping off point with energy top of mind....
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Oct 10, 2023
Jobs are created the fastest where they’re destroyed the fastest. Basic stuff. Americans work in incredibly dynamic fashion precisely because they work in a country where the...
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Oct 9, 2023
How much do Americans not have so that the world can count a “sure thing” in its portfolio?
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Oct 7, 2023
In response to Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s recent ouster from his perch as House Speaker, Pangaea Policy founder Terry Haines described it as a market negative. In his words,...
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Oct 6, 2023
Back when Silicon Valley giant Cisco Systems was much less than a unicorn, Valley eminence Don Valentine purchased 33 percent of the then-unknown company for $2.5 million. Stop and...
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Oct 5, 2023
Sen. Josh Hawley is a really bright person who aims to dumb his abundant smarts down. His call for caps on credit card debt will be used to make the previous case here, though not...
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Oct 4, 2023
It’s popular to say that there’s “no money in the Social Security lock box” or that Social Security will “run out of money” by 2035, 2036, or name...
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Oct 4, 2023
That we like our representatives is a very real, very big government problem.
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Oct 3, 2023
While a government shutdown was averted last weekend, thus saving the economy from nothing, avoidance didn’t happen in time to save economists from themselves. Talking to the...
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Oct 3, 2023
When Henry Ford incorporated his eponymous car company, he promised to create an automobile for “the great multitude.” Before Ford, cars were rarer than incredibly rare...
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Oct 2, 2023
Businesses never, ever, run out of money.
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Sep 30, 2023
David Solomon was interviewed last week by FedEx founder Fred Smith at the American Energy Security Summit. Up front, Solomon expressed gratitude that Smith, one of the great...
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Sep 29, 2023
Cordell Hull most famously served FDR as secretary of state, but was most valuable then and after for his clarity about what advances peaceful foreign policy. Hull was clear that...
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Sep 29, 2023
In his brilliant 2021 book The Cloud Revolution, Mark Mills noted that more books are published and sold today than ever. The bet here is that most readers know why: AmazonAMZN.
It...
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Sep 28, 2023
China’s Evergrande has been staring bankruptcy in the face since 2021. More recently, media members have fingered Country Garden as yet another large China property company...
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Sep 28, 2023
In the 1980s retail behemoth Sears had the chance to purchase Home Depot for several hundred million. It passed. As is so often the case with the near-term dominant, an abundant...
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Sep 27, 2023
The original Ford Model T cost around $850, but within a few years the price had dropped all the way to $250. Was it deflation? Not at all. The dollar had a stable definition then....
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Sep 26, 2023
Members of the commentariat (credentialed and without) continue to promote the fiction that a lack of consumption slows economic growth. They’re confused. When we don’t...
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Sep 25, 2023
It's a waste of words to say the Fed can't forecast the future, so why do serious people imagine the Fed can centrally plan it?
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Sep 23, 2023
When Ed Crane co-founded the Cato Institute in the 1970s, he had no illusions about a libertarian wave overtaking the U.S. in the 80s. Crane recognized that change takes time, and he...
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Sep 22, 2023
As readers likely remember, a Chinese spy balloon was shot down over South Carolina earlier this year. The incident was surely an embarrassment for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP),...
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Sep 21, 2023
When businesses fail, economic opportunities reveal themselves. Basic stuff. The bankruptcy is the recovery. Think about it.
It’s too easily forgotten that when businesses go...
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Sep 20, 2023
“My people don’t drive Cadillacs.” Those five words are what kept Ross Perot from nearly becoming the world’s richest man. Already a billionaire by the 1990s,...
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Sep 20, 2023
“If you don’t change, you are a dead duck.” Those are the words of Arthur Blank, co-founder with Bernie Marcus of The Home Depot. When Marcus and Blank started Home...
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Sep 19, 2023
In professional and college football, they call them coaching or “family trees.” A successful football coach can spawn all manner of proteges spread around the college...
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Sep 18, 2023
Recessions are paradoxically a sign of recovery on the way.
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Sep 16, 2023
Quick, what television shows do the Big Three (or four?) networks air on Friday and Saturday nights? Tick tock, tick tock. Other than being aware that ABC and Fox televise college...
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Sep 15, 2023
At the end of last week Apple shed over $200 billion in market value. Its decline rendered it the worst performing member of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
Why the...
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Sep 14, 2023
The freer the society, the more wealth unequal it is. This is basic stuff, and it’s stuff that redounds to the genius of freedom.
A city, state, or country...
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Sep 13, 2023
Have you ever heard of the Trabant? Assuming you’ve heard of the defunct East German automaker, it’s a safe bet you’ve never driven a Trabant. You haven’t...
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Sep 12, 2023
In a recent opinion piece for Barron’s, Paul Sheard (former Vice Chairman of S&P Global) purported to list myths about budget deficits that “deserve straightening...
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Sep 11, 2023
Central bankers would logically be last to the scene of any inflation crime.
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Sep 9, 2023
In a recent piece for the Washington Post, Ramesh Ponnuru wrote that “the public is not going to accept restrictive coronavirus mitigation measures again, regardless of...
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Sep 8, 2023
Headlines can be so telling, and in being telling, can be so wrong. A front-page Washington Post headline from Monday said it all: “Federal deficit likely to double,” and...
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Sep 7, 2023
Retirement plan “providers who have taken on the legal duty of a fiduciary should have an analogous duty, to learn whether participants are misusing their menu.” Those...
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Sep 6, 2023
Whistleblowers are broadly described as noble individuals beset by scoundrels. The basis for the latter is that these employees are said to shed light on nefarious activities of the...
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Sep 5, 2023
Historians to this day promote the fiction that when the Arab members of OPEC placed an oil embargo on the U.S., their actions kept oil from reaching the United States. Actually,...
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Sep 4, 2023
We need more who lack PhDs to correct the fallacy-stalked who have them.
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Sep 2, 2023
“In reality all economic activity outside the stationary state is speculation.” – Ludwig von Mises, Human Action
A constant refrain over the last several...
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Sep 1, 2023
The left-leaning imagine against all reason that businesses are out to exploit workers with low wages. The right-leaning disagree with the left rhetorically, all the while making the...
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Aug 31, 2023
At risk of aging and incriminating myself, as I child I would routinely fill up water balloons with friends in order to throw them at passersby. The making of water balloons was a...
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Aug 30, 2023
According to Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell, “The Chinese economy has hit a rough patch.” On their face, comments like these always rate a raised eyebrow: I...
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Aug 29, 2023
In his memoirs about the remarkable rise of The Home Depot, the great Bernie Marcus oh-so-thankfully went against the grain of seemingly all modern thought in writing that "bankers...
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Aug 28, 2023
Reasoning that insults absurd.
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Aug 26, 2023
We’re on the verge of being able to unlearn a great deal that we presently know. The latter will be a consequence of the rise of AI that has so many (including AI’s...
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Aug 25, 2023
According to economists and their media enablers, the Russian economy is booming and prices rising. The growth and its attendant 'inflation' is said to be a combination of soaring...
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Aug 24, 2023
According to Rep. Mike Gallagher in a recent opinion piece, TikTok “is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.” Where it becomes a tad ironic is that in the same...
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Aug 23, 2023
Writing about home mortgages issued between 2006-08 in his 2019 memoir What It Takes, Blackstone Group co-founder Stephen Schwarzman recalled that something north of 90% of them...
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Aug 23, 2023
It was seemingly around 2012 that Uber’s national (and international) notoriety began to soar. How soon we forget what an amazing advance app-summoned rides...
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Aug 22, 2023
It’s no revelation that banks didn’t create credit cards first, that Hollywood studios didn’t create either Blockbuster or the company that erased it (Netflix), nor...
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Aug 21, 2023
So-called Fed “tightness” wouldn’t mean anything even if it meant something.
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Aug 19, 2023
My wife works in restaurants. I mention this because she knows chefs whose kids used to be embarrassed that their fathers were chefs. Now they’re not. This is the fruits of...
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Aug 18, 2023
The late Jude Wanniski once observed about Spain that its headline rate of unemployment had little to do with actual unemployment. Wanniski’s point was that the 20% official...
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Aug 17, 2023
In the technology sector, poorly-run businesses don’t last long. They fail quickly only for their assets to be acquired by better stewards. The paradoxical truth is that the...
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Aug 15, 2023
Senator Schumer thinks orange juice costs too much, while Senator McConnell thinks chocolate milk has become too pricey. Jerome Powell fears the cost of eggs.
All of the above is...
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Aug 14, 2023
If you're productive, capital will find you.
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Aug 12, 2023
Harvard’s Raj Chetty has a habit of mistaking causation. Not too long ago he astounded the easily-astounded David Brooks with research that “found that poor children who...
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Aug 11, 2023
David Brooks is looking inward again. Which means he’s beating himself up for being special.
In his latest self-flagellation at the New York Times, Brooks suggests that a...
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Aug 10, 2023
Are Cuban cigars still the best? If you ask actual aficionados the previous question, you’ll more and more hear No.
Those in the know say a mere box of Cubans is increasingly...
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Aug 9, 2023
Some things just jump out at you. And for jumping out at you, demand to be written about.
Two weeks ago the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page story about a business...
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Aug 8, 2023
There’s an old adage about banking that’s seemingly as old as banking, and it goes like this: for a well-run bank any capital requirement (no matter how small) is way too...
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Aug 7, 2023
To believe economists on the matter of 'inflation,' there is such thing as a free lunch.
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Aug 5, 2023
Basketball phenom Victor Wembanyama is black. Hopefully the latter isn’t too provocative.
Ok, so imagine if the San Antonio Spurs had passed on Wembanyama as the #1 pick in...
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Aug 4, 2023
The customers of Uber are rated by the drivers who transport them. Rude, unruly customers are fired. Stop and think about that. It’s not just Uber’s way of protecting its...
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Aug 3, 2023
During the lockdowns related to the coronavirus, tens of millions of Americans lost their jobs, while millions of U.S. businesses were horribly impaired. Around the world, the New...
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Aug 2, 2023
“Money invested in the S&P 500 in 1990 is worth four times more than if it had been invested in any other wealthy country’s stock market.” Those are the words...
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Aug 1, 2023
On the subject of government spending, economists could analyze the world much better if they were intimate with a basic truth: no act of saving ever subtracts from demand. What we...
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Jul 31, 2023
The Fed is a bit of a myth.
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Jul 29, 2023
They called the week of the game. They said that the USC Trojans “couldn’t play any coloreds, that the races couldn’t compete at the same time.” Those are the...
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Jul 28, 2023
Time is precious. Time is money. Insert your cliché here. Humans and time are easily the two biggest inputs to economic progress, and nothing else comes close. Remember that...
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Jul 27, 2023
On the matter of global warming, President Biden’s climate envoy John Kerry recently asserted that the theory (global warming) is about to collide with reality. In other words,...
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Jul 26, 2023
It’s not said enough that wealth creation isn’t war. In reality, wealth creation is the most peaceful act the world has ever known simply because we produce in order to...
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Jul 25, 2023
“I loved what we did. We changed the lives of millions and millions of people in a positive way.” Those were the words of the late, great Angelo Mozilo. Yes, you read...
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Jul 24, 2023
Inflation is a currency phenomenon that can be reflected in prices, not a price phenomenon.
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Jul 22, 2023
Alabama football coach Nick Saban preaches that it all begins with recruiting. Lesser talents bring the team down. In Saban’s own words, “mediocre people don’t like...
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Jul 21, 2023
How to become rich? Paraphrasing the great Christopher Buckley, if you Google the question your computer will explode so numerous are the ways.
Ok, let’s narrow the question...
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Jul 20, 2023
In the 1970s my father, mother, sister and I moved from Boston to Los Angeles. Our mode of transportation was a Ford Country Squire station wagon that, if it had seatbelts, were not...
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Jul 19, 2023
According to the “wise” and the gullible, the U.S. is enduring a “credit crunch” right now. Isn’t it obvious? Interest rates are higher. Statement of...
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Jul 18, 2023
Michael Bloomberg spent something north of $500 million on his 2020 presidential candidacy, only for the multi-billionaire to quickly drop out $500 million poorer. Bloomberg was...
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Jul 17, 2023
Financial conditions are a reflection of reality, not the discredited theories of central bankers.
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Jul 15, 2023
In a recent piece about Harvard’s admission practices, the excellent Allysia Finley wrote that they’re “all about money.” Unfortunately, Finley wrote the...
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Jul 14, 2023
If you could know one thing well in order prosper in the global economy, what would it be? Stop and think about this before answering.
The view here is that a good command of the...
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Jul 13, 2023
Back in 1982, and amid the proliferation of “Handbooks,” Jim Fisk and Robert Barron released The Official MBA Handbook. It was a tongue-in-cheek guide for MBAs eager to...
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Jul 12, 2023
Economic discussions would be far more worthwhile if those in the conversation got the basics. One of them is that governments don’t take in money, nor do they spend it.
When...
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Jul 11, 2023
In his 2023 book The Art Thief, author Michael Finkel makes the essential economic point that art consumes resources including time “without providing food, clothing or...
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Jul 10, 2023
Markets decide what currencies circulate, not Treasury departments or central banks.
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Jul 8, 2023
In 1993, media mogul Walter Annenberg donated $100 million to the Peddie School, a then not-so-prominent boarding school in New Jersey. Annenberg wanted to attend Princeton, New...
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Jul 7, 2023
It’s always interesting how juries in legal trials are shielded from outside information and news so that their views won’t be prejudiced. “Impartial” jurors...
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Jul 6, 2023
Some things you can’t take back, or unsay. Many years ago I told the wife of a friend that I really wanted to read Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. No problem there, but I...
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Jul 5, 2023
Have we already forgotten 2008? It was then that the political class mistakenly bailed out ailing banks and investment banks. Failure in any industry is healthy as poorly run assets...
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Jul 4, 2023
Last week popular hamburger chain Five Guys opened its first location in South Korea. News accounts indicate that South Koreans waited as long as twelve hours for their first taste...
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Jul 3, 2023
What's stable as a measure cannot be overproduced.
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Jul 1, 2023
While in college at Texas, I wrote an opinion piece for The Daily Texan titled “Affirmative Action Exacerbates Racism.” A fan of Thomas Sowell then and now, back then I...
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Jun 30, 2023
Former South Carolina governor and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley is the latest GOP presidential aspirant to take to the opinion pages. As the title of this write-up suggests, Haley...
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Jun 29, 2023
In 2011 VC firm Benchmark Capital paid $12 million for a 20 percent stake in Uber. In 2023, Uber can claim debts in the $10 billion range. Hopefully readers can see the connection...
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Jun 28, 2023
To witness the search for actual inflation (a decline in the monetary unit) among economists and pundits is like watching a hunt for green M&Ms in a bowl full of yellow ones....
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Jun 27, 2023
Apparently law firm partner is the new, big-time job. Or it’s the old, new big-time job. While senior partners at law firms have long migrated to better-paid senior roles at...
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Jun 26, 2023
There's no way to centrally plan the most important price in the world.
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Jun 24, 2023
As of 1978, there were roughly twelve “skyscrapers” in Shanghai, the New York City of China. As of 2006, there 6,780. To visit Shanghai in modern times (I was last there...
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Jun 23, 2023
Ludwig von Mises saw through Bernie Sanders before there was Bernie Sanders. Mises published Socialism in 1922, while the future Sen. Sanders didn’t wriggle into the world...
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Jun 22, 2023
At some point in the late 1990s a friend sent me a copy of William Manchester’s The Last Lion. A biography of Winston Churchill, it read like a fiction novel so remarkable was...
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Jun 21, 2023
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) writes that Visa and MasterCard “have gotten hoggish on the backs of hardworking Americans” thanks to swipe fees. Marshall is a free thinker in...
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Jun 20, 2023
There’s a popular saying along the lines that “you’ll never get rich off of W-2 income.” The idea there is that absent equity ownership of whatever endeavor...
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Jun 19, 2023
Markets, like GS, are relentlessly quantitative.
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Jun 17, 2023
The Fox News Channel created The Five in 2011. A hit seemingly from the beginning, in 2023 The Five can claim a bigger audience than any other Fox show.
Why the mention of the The...
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Jun 16, 2023
According to an expert-informed punditry, the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes are leading to “tighter credit.” Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell...
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Jun 15, 2023
It’s a safe bet that there have been more media mentions of Kastle Systems in 2023 than at any other time in the company’s fifty year history. Many readers likely know...
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Jun 14, 2023
With Social Security, there are always reasons given to scrap it. Which is the problem. And that’s not an endorsement of Social Security. Quite the opposite.
As evidenced by...
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Jun 13, 2023
In a recent column Peggy Noonan made the intriguing point that if Republican voters choose “Mr. Trump in 2024 it will mean it [the Republican Party] has changed its essential...
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Jun 12, 2023
Wealth is just another word for knowledge, and knowledge is created the hard way through lots of investment in “dry holes.”
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Jun 10, 2023
“Money wins.” Those were the words of the often very funny, but occasionally sanctimonious Wall Street Journal sports columnist, Jason Gay. Gay was commenting on the...
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Jun 9, 2023
“Under Biden, America has surrendered the oil economy. The Saudi king is now the world’s oil king again, and we are all worse for it.” Those are the words of Daniel...
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Jun 8, 2023
In 1934, Kirk Douglas (yes, that Kirk) hitchhiked with a friend up to St. Lawrence University. Douglas couldn’t afford the tuition given his family’s impoverished...
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Jun 7, 2023
The “vital few” drive all progress. Repeat it over and over again. It’s true in sports, entertainment, science, business, and anything else you can think of.
Please...
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Jun 6, 2023
Money has no purpose absent production first. Say it over and over again. Money is abundant in the United States not because the Fed decreed it so, but because productivity is a...
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Jun 5, 2023
Elevated to a spot where he could actually do serious economic damage.
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Jun 3, 2023
To read traditional newspapers or to visit online sources of opinion is to lately be inundated with commentary about HBO’s just concluded drama/comedy (?) Succession. Viewers...
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Jun 2, 2023
One supposes it was inevitable. After the agreement between Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy resulted in the most microscopic of spending reductions, economists emerged with models meant...
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Jun 1, 2023
Another week of debt-ceiling brinksmanship, and another week of abject terror from the pundit class. Experts claimed ahead of deal that seems to be sealed that a failure to come to...
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May 31, 2023
Between Austin and Huntsville, which Texas town attracts more investment? There’s really no mystery to this question, but it might surprise some readers that job destruction is...
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May 30, 2023
It was probably fifteen years ago that I was at lunch with Banknote Capital’s Jim Fitzgerald. We were finishing up when the conversation shifted to tax rates, at which point...
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May 29, 2023
Money in circulation is always and everywhere a consequence of production.
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May 27, 2023
Some readers may disagree, but to visit Amsterdam is to be struck by its seediness. The view here is that the latter is driven by the legality of marijuana possession and usage....
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May 26, 2023
In his excellent new book Life After Capitalism (review coming soon), George Gilder routinely states an essential truth: knowledge is wealth. The inputs to everything we have and...
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May 25, 2023
While growinng Wal-Mart into the world’s foremost retailer, Sam Walton was big on dropping into stores. He wanted his “associates” to see him, he wanted to learn...
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May 25, 2023
I first heard David Henderson speak at Cato University in 2003 at the Rancho Bernardo Inn. What he said about capitalism being compassionate stuck with me. And it still does....
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May 24, 2023
The debt-limit discussion would be far more reasonable if it were broadly understood that government has no resources. And by extension it has no credit. Please think about whom...
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May 23, 2023
It has “upended its vast logistics network to reduce how far packages travel across the U.S. in an effort to get products to customers faster and improve profitability.”...
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May 22, 2023
Economists think it's all about them, and their "policies." Actually, freedom quite simply works.
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May 20, 2023
If you’re reading this write-up, odds are you’ve seen the horrifying photos of adults with water up to their necks trying to transport crying babies across rivers to...
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May 19, 2023
The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable.” – Fredric Bastiat
How things change. Back when then-President Obama was going to such enormous...
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May 19, 2023
There’s a creeping victimhood within a U.S. conservative movement that has long decried the victim culture. This reveals itself most notably every time the Left...
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May 18, 2023
Imagine for a minute or two a world without oil. If so, life would be defined by unrelenting drudgery owing to the happy reality that machines powered by oil have long done so much...
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May 17, 2023
Markets sure are calm in light of the fact that the United States is said to be flirting with default on its debt. According to panicky economists, pundits and politicians, default...
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May 16, 2023
As Democrats and Republicans continue to feed their hungry flocks with debt-ceiling theatrics, pundits are doing their part for the performers by fanning the nonsensical flames. The...
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May 15, 2023
Prices are a misleading way to measure what is always and everywhere a currency devaluation phenomenon.
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May 13, 2023
Can you the reader change a tire on a car? Could you plant and harvest a wheat crop? If provided with the materials, could you knit a sweater? Tick tock, tick tock?
In my case the...
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May 12, 2023
In poor countries, work has generational qualities. The latter is the explanation for the grinding poverty. Adam Smith understood this well. Where there’s no change, or no...
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May 11, 2023
It’s increasingly unlikely that it will happen in this lifetime, but at some point in a better, more informed world words will have meaning. Presently they don’t. At...
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May 10, 2023
As readers are already aware, there’s always lots of speculation and panting by the deep-in-thought ahead of interest rate decisions by the Federal Reserve. But rather than...
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May 9, 2023
No one lends or borrows dollars. They lend or borrow what dollars can be exchanged for.
Please keep this in mind amid all the hyper-ventilating over potential default. Janet Yellen,...
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May 8, 2023
Why would you pursue reduced circulation of that which is non-inflationary by virtue of its stability.
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May 6, 2023
Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine was 12th century animalistic, sickeningly inhumane, and most important of all, mindless. Think about it. If plunder is...
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May 5, 2023
It was difficult not to chuckle last week when reading headlines about a projected 5.6% drop in future income for Americans who saw their education stunted during the...
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May 4, 2023
For mountain climbers, one imagines that Mt. Everest looms as the ultimate climb to validate one’s ability. For runners, it would be the Boston Marathon, for triathletes the...
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May 3, 2023
On April 13, CNN’s business site blasted out the headline “banking is sound.” Who uttered those words? No less than Lael Brainard, former Vice Chair of the Federal...
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May 2, 2023
In an excellent piece on increasingly empty newsrooms, the great Maureen Dowd of the New York Times bemoaned what’s no longer: the Bloody Mary’s at dawn at Tune In on...
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May 1, 2023
Advisers to the Florida governor would be wise to remind him that he’s actually smart about policy, and that he should lean into those smarts.
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Apr 29, 2023
"On the field of war what is at stake is the thing that matters most to any man - the saving of his own skin.” Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, p. 889
The quote from Tolstoy’s...
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Apr 27, 2023
When Apple floated its shares in 1980, it was the biggest IPO since Ford Motor Company. A little less than 17 years later Apple was flirting with bankruptcy. So bad were...
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Apr 26, 2023
It is reported by the U.N. that India is presently overtaking China as the world’s most populous country. Where it becomes interesting is in consideration of the growing...
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Apr 25, 2023
When Cato Institute co-founder Ed Crane was building the libertarian movement in the 1970s, he came across a lot of self-proclaimed conservatives. What’s notable about this is...
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Apr 24, 2023
If you're paying a lot to rent money, that's a sign that you're aggressively trying to lend the money you've rented.
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Apr 22, 2023
Why is the United States the richest, most opportunity-laden country on earth? There are so many answers to the previous question, but one that arguably doesn’t get enough air...
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Apr 21, 2023
Hampden-Sydney is a liberal arts college appropriately located in Hampden-Sydney, VA. Of its annual matriculates, a not insubstantial portion won’t be there four years...
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Apr 20, 2023
It will never happen, but it would certainly elevate commentary about the Federal Reserve to a reasonably sane level if its myriad critics and supporters would stop and imagine what...
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Apr 19, 2023
Why is it so difficult for poor people to borrow? Most readers are not unreasonably asking why such a silly question would rate asking.
That poor people can’t borrow is plainly...
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Apr 18, 2023
How soon Americans forget. Or it’s possible all-too-many Americans are too young to have forgotten just how backwards the former Soviet Union was. While endless lines for...
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Apr 17, 2023
Obsessing over a symptom of a problem, not the actual problem.
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Apr 15, 2023
Do you know what compost is? Neither do I. Or at least I didn’t until recently. All that changed thanks to the Wall Street Journal’s Chavie Lieber, I now know compost is...
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Apr 14, 2023
“In cancer studies, the primary investigator behind any one advance might rely on the specialized skills of a radiation oncologist, a disease-specific biologist, an...
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Apr 13, 2023
It’s in many ways a lamentable reality, but real it is that when investors are panicked they migrate into Treasuries. They do so not because government bonds are safe, but...
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Apr 12, 2023
When British writer Viv Groskop was living in Russia in the early 1990s, she was an object of immense curiosity. The Russians were intensely poor, which meant Groskop was seen as...
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Apr 11, 2023
“Markets are wise,” markets “are pregnant with information,” markets “are information personified,” “ignore market signals at your...
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Apr 10, 2023
There’s no one interest rate simply because there’s no one borrower.
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Apr 8, 2023
Earlier this week a prominent economist opined at Bloomberg that “even a recession might not tame inflation.” Most reading this are wondering why what’s...
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Apr 7, 2023
The price of a barrel of oil was around $25 when the 21st century began, and had been as low as $10 in 1998. In the 1980s, oil more than once dipped to $8/barrel. Stop and think...
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Apr 6, 2023
U.S. News & World Report retirement columnist Rodney Brooks recently penned a piece about what raising the retirement age might mean “for you.” No doubt the subject...
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Apr 5, 2023
There’s a saying about banking that the key to success is to never, ever lend money to those who need it. Translated, the loans banks make must perform. That’s the...
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Apr 4, 2023
“I will build a car for the great multitude.” Those were the words of Henry Ford. He didn’t invent the automobile, but he did make ownership of the automobile...
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Apr 3, 2023
The "vital few" drive equity rallies, not central banks.
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Mar 31, 2023
Well into the 2000s American Airlines was compensating customers to the tune of 500 airline miles per ticket booked on the airline’s website. How things change. And in a big...
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Mar 30, 2023
Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria writes that the dollar “gives Washington unrivaled economic and political muscle.” But that's like saying that rising usage of...
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Mar 29, 2023
The consumer welfare standard is a policy notion that’s achieved a lot notoriety of late. Not surprisingly. Due to errant Biden administration appointees like FTC Chair Lina...
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Mar 27, 2023
Wedded to a false view of inflation either due to policy confusion or baseless nostalgia, they’ve joined hands in the belief that the answer to inflation is putting people out work...
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Mar 25, 2023
It’s little known today, but a major driver of Henry Ford’s interest in machines was an aversion to work. And horses. Born into a farming family in Michigan, Ford’s...
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Mar 23, 2023
Remember in the ‘70s and ‘80s when grandstanding politicians attacked Soviet businesses bent on meeting the needs of American customers in order to spy on them? Neither...
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Mar 22, 2023
On May 2, 1895, the state legislature in New York enacted a law that said “No employee shall be required or permitted to work in a biscuit, bread or cake bakery or...
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Mar 21, 2023
Seemingly everyone in the commentariat has an opinion on what most hadn't heard or thought of 10 days ago (Silicon Valley Bank), and from there it’s as though everyone has a...
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Mar 20, 2023
Money is never easy, nor is it dumb as the present analysis suggests.
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Mar 18, 2023
Hindsight is obviously 20/20, which is why it’s kind of interesting how much this truth is seemingly lost on the pundit class with regard to Silicon Valley Bank (SVB)....
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Mar 17, 2023
John Paulsen made his name and immense fortune with a well-timed purchase of securities that would soar if mortgages declined. His billions hopefully remind readers that huge...
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Mar 16, 2023
“If Silicon Valley were a normal place, this past weekend might be remembered as the moment its libertarian instincts gave way to a profound appreciation for the healing power...
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Mar 15, 2023
Quick question: how many of you readers were “demanding” the internet in 1995? Or a GPS function on your mobile phone in 2005?
The speculation here is that in 1995 no one...
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Mar 14, 2023
Fires are always burning. Always. Even the naively referenced “great moderation” (1985-2007) was defined by a number of major market corrections and crashes (24% on...
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Mar 13, 2023
As central bankers vainly search for a purpose, real economic activity will happily continue without regard to their economic illiteracy.
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Mar 11, 2023
Oneonta, a town of 7,000 in Alabama, can lay claim to a TikTok account that has 117,000 followers. The driver of the town’s popularity on the wildly popular social media site...
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Mar 10, 2023
There are wildly divergent views of Kennedy family patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy, but few would seriously contend that he didn’t know business. He knew it well, as a family...
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Mar 9, 2023
As seemingly everyone who’s been following the political tragedy that was and is the coronavirus well knows, the Department of Energy now confirms with a low level of...
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Mar 8, 2023
In his weekly Wall Street Journal column from last week, the great Daniel Henninger commented that “For 10 years money was virtually free.” Henninger was talking about...
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Mar 7, 2023
Iran’s rial is in decline. As of last week it had fallen to 1/600,000th of a dollar. If we’re being realistic, it’s no longer even a currency. Figure that money...
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Mar 6, 2023
Resources go where they're treated well, and without regard to governmental decrees.
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Mar 3, 2023
How things have changed. Think payments. As Jimmy Soni notes in his excellent 2022 book The Founders (a history of PayPal), “In the late 1990s, only 10 percent of all...
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Mar 2, 2023
It was reported in the New York Times the week before last that the U.S. hedge funds at the top of the proverbial heap had reaped gains for their owners of over $22 billion in 2022....
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Mar 1, 2023
What is a “supply chain”? It’s not a tangible chain, and as such it’s not visible. In reality, a supply chain is a wildly sophisticated intellectual...
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Feb 28, 2023
Several years ago I was invited to attend a Hoover Institution retreat out in Palo Alto. At the gathering, Hoover scholars presented to a variety of economics writers, Left and...
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Feb 27, 2023
As the price of quarterbacks rises in the NFL, other positions are seeing their value declining in a relative sense.
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Feb 24, 2023
“To think I might have died without having read it.” Those were the words of the late, great William F. Buckley. He was referring to Moby Dick. Having read it after...
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Feb 23, 2023
“Put on your mask, Dude.” That was said to me in an office building amid peak lockdown. “Where’s your mask?” was a question angrily posed to me by a...
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Feb 22, 2023
In a Wall Street Journal piece explaining her decision to resign from the FTC, outgoing Commissioner Christine Wilson cited many reasons associated with Chairman Lina Khan, including...
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Feb 21, 2023
If you’re ever searching for the personification of sanctimonious, find yourself a “balanced budget” proponent. These individuals will tell you in haughty,...
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Feb 20, 2023
The Fed can't do what the experts think it can.
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Feb 18, 2023
After the Chinese spy balloon was shot out of the sky over South Carolina recently, videos of it went viral. Millions of views viral. On TikTok….
It was difficult to not...
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Feb 17, 2023
Back in the 1980s a music business anecdote that made the rounds was that arena rock band Van Halen had rather detailed requirements listed for each tour stop. This included a demand...
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Feb 16, 2023
“Asking for money is hard.” Those are the words of Will Guidara in his excellent new book, Unreasonable Hospitality.
Guidara was referencing the funds he and chef Daniel...
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Feb 15, 2023
“You f——d’ it up.” That’s what the late Harold Ramis, co-author of Animal House, said to the film’s director, John Landis. After seeing...
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Feb 14, 2023
Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Social Security and Medicare were and are impressively foolish ideas. That Americans desire comfortable retirement that includes...
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Feb 13, 2023
Sports instruct about life, and economics.
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Feb 11, 2023
Last week U.S. cargo airline Atlas Air took delivery of the last newly manufactured Boeing 747. This week, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told a conference comprised of the...
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Feb 9, 2023
Progress should be defined not by what we know, but by what we don’t need to know — or learn — anymore.
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Feb 8, 2023
As most of us are aware, Tom Brady retired from the NFL last week “for good.” The announcement was brief given Brady’s own admission that he’d already used up...
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Feb 7, 2023
“Is there such a thing as a private company in China? I’m not sure there is.” Those are the words of GOP Rep. Mike Gallagher, who is heading up a new House...
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Feb 6, 2023
A broad propensity to save is the surest sign of a lack of inflation.
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Feb 3, 2023
When the invasion of Ukraine began last February, Russian people eager to avoid entrapment in a war that vandalized reason turned to dollars. Get it? Not only do dollars liquefy a...
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Feb 2, 2023
“WeChat is the most popular communications platform in the world for Chinese speakers.” Those are the words of Johns Hopkins professor Seth Kaplan. This is important...
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Feb 1, 2023
On March 23, 2021, the Predatory Loan Prevention Act became law in the state of Illinois. Billed as a way to protect needy borrowers from allegedly rapacious lenders, the law capped...
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Jan 31, 2023
Success in politics requires an impressive lack of self-awareness. Think about it. What political types must say on a daily basis, and what they must nod along to routinely...
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Jan 30, 2023
Central planning didn’t just fail in the 20th century, it did so murderously.
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Jan 28, 2023
“No need to worry, no need to fret. The thing for you may not have been invented yet.” – The Berenstain Bears.
The Berenstain Bears is a much-beloved...
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Jan 27, 2023
The quip “More money, more problems” is presumably as old as money is. Though money per comedian Eddie Murphy can afford those who have it the fancy car to drive around...
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Jan 26, 2023
Time will tell on the matter of Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX. The view expressed in my new book The Money Confusion is that with any new commercial sector, there’s always lots of...
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Jan 25, 2023
New York Times columnist Bret Stephens is 49. It’s good news that he’s relatively young simply because it means readers will get to enjoy his unique insights and...
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Jan 24, 2023
“Embarrassing,” “nihilistic,” “dysfunctional.” Those are just a few of the many pejoratives directed at congressional Republicans in recent weeks amid a rather...
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Jan 23, 2023
Repeat it over and over again that rising prices more often than not are NOT inflation.
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Jan 19, 2023
With threats of a U.S. ban growing, China-based TikTok is going out of its way to placate U.S. lawmakers. That TikTok has been reduced to this is sad commentary about politics in the...
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Jan 18, 2023
No one borrows money. It’s odd that something so obvious needs to be said over and over again, but no one borrows money. When we borrow we seek near-term access to resources....
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Jan 17, 2023
Steve Hanke and John Greenwood are professors at Johns Hopkins University. The highly prestigious school is based in Baltimore, and its location is mentioned simply because...
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Jan 16, 2023
The sizable debt itself is the signal that we don't have a debt crisis.
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Jan 12, 2023
“He who understands it, earns it; he who doesn’t, pays for it.” The previous words are said to be those of Albert Einstein commenting on the genius of...
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Jan 11, 2023
My great friend Bob Reingold always overpaid his employees. Reingold once told me that a good boss always approaches employees about raises as opposed to being...
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Jan 10, 2023
“Many of them are stupid and highly emotional, especially the men. Most have no historical depth. If they have little respect for institutions, it’s because they have no...
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Jan 9, 2023
The Fed only has a role in the inflation discussion insofar as inflation itself is wholly redefined.
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Jan 6, 2023
Business columnist Gene Marks is angry. He feels that venture capital firm Sequoia Capital did the other 99.99999% of us harm by investing in FTX. In his words, “super-smart...
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Jan 5, 2023
Young Americans need “a stiffening of the vertebrae,” according to prominent businessman Elbert Hubbard. Hubbard laments their “foolish inattention” and...
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Jan 4, 2023
Call it a statement of the obvious, but prices organize the market economy. As they go up and down, the movements exist as information for producers and providers of what we want...
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Jan 3, 2023
China allegedly faces dark days ahead. Why, you may ask? Because of freedom from coronavirus mandates.
Who fears too much freedom in China? American reporters and...
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Jan 2, 2023
We need Republicans to get back to first principles about what inflation truly is.
Dec 5, 2023There’s little to no growth in tax cuts for middle and poor earners. It’s sad something so obvious requires stating, but the obvious requires stating in modern times as...
Dec 4, 2023525 basis points worth of hikes, only for the dollar to be weaker than it was when this nonsensical fight began. Don’t say some of us didn’t warn you.
Dec 2, 2023If you’re reading this write-up you’re aware that Alabama beat Auburn in the annual Iron Bowl (college football’s best rivalry) on a last play, time running out,...
Dec 1, 2023Toys ‘R Us shut its doors in June of 2018. Thank goodness for progress. In the U.S., businesses that stagnate usually find themselves as Toys ‘R Us did. To succeed, you...
Nov 30, 2023At a retreat over the summer, one of the attendees was rather rich and rather famous in the technology space. Having made enormous sums of money in a variety of startups and...
Nov 29, 2023Viktor Belenko died on September 24th. Belenko defected from the former Soviet Union in 1976, and brought with him what then CIA director George H.W. Bush described as an...
Nov 28, 2023While the full story is likely yet to be told, one popular explanation for OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman’s removal from the labs’ CEO post is that among board members,...
Nov 27, 2023The paradoxical truth not grasped by most economists is that devaluation and/or "money printing" leads to the rapid disappearance of the currency being debased or "pri...
Nov 25, 2023While last week’s Formula 1 race in Las Vegas didn’t draw the crowds that organizers hoped, a slow weekend in Vegas is still defined by something well north of 90%...
Nov 24, 2023While there are 5,500 McDonald’s in China right now, the intent of the Chicago, IL-based fast-food giant is to increase that number to over 10,000 by 2028. The company's...
Nov 23, 2023You’d think that big pharmaceutical companies would look askance at the FDA. Why wouldn’t they? Development of pharmaceutical advances is very expensive, and the FDA is...
Nov 22, 2023When it comes to soaring living standards and progress of all kinds, oil’s role is massive. Imagine how staggeringly poor we would be absent all the mechanization and...
Nov 21, 2023New Coke was introduced on April 23, 1985. Rep. Mike Gallagher was born on March 3, 1984. That Gallagher entered the world thirteen months and three weeks before the launch of New...
Nov 20, 2023When money forms have a stable definition that producers respect, there’s no inflation.
Nov 18, 2023Recalling his days as a professor at CalTech, technologist and futurist Carver Mead reports on “confessions” he would attend with his colleagues. They wouldn’t talk...
Nov 17, 2023In the second half of the 19th century, Singer Sewing Machine Company co-founder Edward Cabot Clark used some of the proceeds from his fortune to purchase several blocks of land...
Nov 16, 2023The rich pay the most taxes, by far. That’s not a partisan statement as much as it’s a logical and empirical reality. Considering the logic first, the rich earn much more...
Nov 15, 2023“Only in Washington” is so trite, yet sad truth can be found in what’s so trite. Always looking in the rearview mirror, bank regulators at the Fed are calling for...
Nov 14, 2023It’s always worth stressing that “billionaire” as a descriptor of “hedge fund investor” is common precisely because the billionaires in the space are so...
Nov 13, 2023The shiny answer is hiding in plain sight while being vivified by many trillions worth of currency trading daily.
Nov 11, 2023Unlike humans, horses can’t have twins. This was relayed to me twelve years ago by prominent horse breeders. One of their mares was “in foal,” only for the owners...
Nov 10, 2023As is well known now, former President Trump is presently on trial in New York. The accusations are that he fraudulently inflated the value of his assets in order to secure better...
Nov 9, 2023Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway reported earnings last weekend, including a 40 percent increase in operating earnings. Wise minds can and will debate the good or bad of the...
Nov 8, 2023Imagine trying to demonize Christmas. The Grinch did and failed. It’s hard to put an ugly face on what is glorious. Despite this truth, the FTC continues to try and demonize...
Nov 7, 2023In their 2022 book Superabundance, Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley observed that “for every increment of population growth, global resources have grown by a factor of eight.”...
Nov 6, 2023Relentlessly falling prices are the surest sign of growth.
Nov 4, 2023At some point Michael Bloomberg was unemployed. He first lost a job in finance, then he became "unemployed" again even though he was working. How? Upon losing his job, Bloomberg...
Nov 3, 2023Few things are more fundamental to economic understanding than the basic truth that government has no resources. While wise minds can debate the good or bad of a lot or a little of...
Nov 3, 2023The banks that were ailing in 2008 shouldn’t have been bailed out. Anyone who wants a healthy banking sector would agree with the previous statement. If you love banks, you...
Nov 2, 2023“Texas is a wonderful, welcoming place for business.” Those are the words of J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. Dimon’s compliment is more than rhetorical as...
Nov 2, 2023John Stuart Mill observed long ago that profits are the remuneration of abstinence. So basic and so crucially true. Contra the droolings of economists and their enablers in the...
Nov 1, 2023As is very well known, in 2023 Taylor Swift embarked on a concert tour that filled stadiums across the U.S. Fascinating about the tour is that while she played multiple nights in...
Nov 1, 2023In 1980, there were over 4,000 Fotomats around the United States. Time was when you had pictures to develop, you took your film to a physical location. Fotomat was frequently the...
Oct 31, 2023To read Ashlee Vance, Jimmy Soni and Walter Isaacson, the three individuals who’ve written extensively about Elon Musk in the last ten years, is to happen on a theme that...
Oct 30, 2023Markets won't correct due to a lack of central planning, but they might if there's an expectation of it.
Oct 28, 2023In 2013, the excellent documentary Twenty Feet from Stardom was released. It’s a highly interesting look at the music industry’s extraordinarily talented back-up singers....
Oct 27, 2023If you’re producing you’re demanding. Repeat the previous truth over and over again. If you’re producing you’re demanding even if you’re the picture...
Oct 26, 2023It’s popular today to say that “big business” is in bed with China or the “Chi-Coms.” Well, yes. Businesses are generally big because they’ve not...
Oct 25, 2023If you’re reading this opinion piece, you’re likely on a computer of some kind (yes, a smartphone is a computer) with internet access. Since you are, and if you have the...
Oct 24, 2023Conservatives who should know better have been spilling much ink of late lamenting declining test scores. What has them up in arms should have them bullish. The great venture...
Oct 23, 2023Wrapping its thoughtless actions in “national security” sanctimony, the Biden administration will weaken a U.S. always and everywhere made stronger by imports.
Oct 21, 2023In the first book of his two-volume account of Ronald Reagan and his times (Title: The Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order), conservative historian Steven Hayward...
Oct 20, 2023In a Dunkin Donuts last week, the line was long. And moving slowly. The internal desire was to express frustration with the employees and their slow pace, but to what end? Was...
Oct 19, 2023“We hire the best people in the industry, so they make more money than their counterparts do at our competition.” Those are the words of Arthur Blank, co-founder of The...
Oct 18, 2023“Do you honestly think you’re going to replace this?” The latter was a question posed by the president of the Toronto Star to Kimbal Musk back in the early days of...
Oct 17, 2023There is no riskier trade in all of investing than a short sale. It’s also one of the most valuable forms of investing to the overall health of the economy and markets. More on...
Oct 16, 2023Lame-brained as government statistics are, the responses to them are even dumber.
Oct 16, 2023The more time spent in office, the greater one's ability to grow the funding directed by that office. 
Oct 14, 2023“He makes such a difference.” Those are the words of Bishop O’Connell (based in Arlington, VA) high school quarterback Jonathan Nguyen. He’s talking about...
Oct 12, 2023About his columns of late, the great Holman Jenkins recently explained that he’s “mostly sat out the inflation discussion.” Where it becomes puzzling is in...
Oct 11, 2023Market share is hard won. Since it is, those who have it are unlikely to purposely give it up. The above statement of the obvious is a good jumping off point with energy top of mind....
Oct 10, 2023Jobs are created the fastest where they’re destroyed the fastest. Basic stuff. Americans work in incredibly dynamic fashion precisely because they work in a country where the...
Oct 9, 2023How much do Americans not have so that the world can count a “sure thing” in its portfolio?
Oct 7, 2023In response to Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s recent ouster from his perch as House Speaker, Pangaea Policy founder Terry Haines described it as a market negative. In his words,...
Oct 6, 2023Back when Silicon Valley giant Cisco Systems was much less than a unicorn, Valley eminence Don Valentine purchased 33 percent of the then-unknown company for $2.5 million. Stop and...
Oct 5, 2023Sen. Josh Hawley is a really bright person who aims to dumb his abundant smarts down. His call for caps on credit card debt will be used to make the previous case here, though not...
Oct 4, 2023It’s popular to say that there’s “no money in the Social Security lock box” or that Social Security will “run out of money” by 2035, 2036, or name...
Oct 4, 2023That we like our representatives is a very real, very big government problem.
Oct 3, 2023While a government shutdown was averted last weekend, thus saving the economy from nothing, avoidance didn’t happen in time to save economists from themselves. Talking to the...
Oct 3, 2023When Henry Ford incorporated his eponymous car company, he promised to create an automobile for “the great multitude.” Before Ford, cars were rarer than incredibly rare...
Oct 2, 2023Businesses never, ever, run out of money.
Sep 30, 2023David Solomon was interviewed last week by FedEx founder Fred Smith at the American Energy Security Summit. Up front, Solomon expressed gratitude that Smith, one of the great...
Sep 29, 2023Cordell Hull most famously served FDR as secretary of state, but was most valuable then and after for his clarity about what advances peaceful foreign policy. Hull was clear that...
Sep 29, 2023In his brilliant 2021 book The Cloud Revolution, Mark Mills noted that more books are published and sold today than ever. The bet here is that most readers know why: AmazonAMZN. It...
Sep 28, 2023China’s Evergrande has been staring bankruptcy in the face since 2021. More recently, media members have fingered Country Garden as yet another large China property company...
Sep 28, 2023In the 1980s retail behemoth Sears had the chance to purchase Home Depot for several hundred million. It passed. As is so often the case with the near-term dominant, an abundant...
Sep 27, 2023The original Ford Model T cost around $850, but within a few years the price had dropped all the way to $250. Was it deflation? Not at all. The dollar had a stable definition then....
Sep 26, 2023Members of the commentariat (credentialed and without) continue to promote the fiction that a lack of consumption slows economic growth. They’re confused. When we don’t...
Sep 25, 2023It's a waste of words to say the Fed can't forecast the future, so why do serious people imagine the Fed can centrally plan it?
Sep 23, 2023When Ed Crane co-founded the Cato Institute in the 1970s, he had no illusions about a libertarian wave overtaking the U.S. in the 80s. Crane recognized that change takes time, and he...
Sep 22, 2023As readers likely remember, a Chinese spy balloon was shot down over South Carolina earlier this year. The incident was surely an embarrassment for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP),...
Sep 21, 2023When businesses fail, economic opportunities reveal themselves. Basic stuff. The bankruptcy is the recovery. Think about it. It’s too easily forgotten that when businesses go...
Sep 20, 2023“My people don’t drive Cadillacs.” Those five words are what kept Ross Perot from nearly becoming the world’s richest man. Already a billionaire by the 1990s,...
Sep 20, 2023“If you don’t change, you are a dead duck.” Those are the words of Arthur Blank, co-founder with Bernie Marcus of The Home Depot. When Marcus and Blank started Home...
Sep 19, 2023In professional and college football, they call them coaching or “family trees.” A successful football coach can spawn all manner of proteges spread around the college...
Sep 18, 2023Recessions are paradoxically a sign of recovery on the way.
Sep 16, 2023Quick, what television shows do the Big Three (or four?) networks air on Friday and Saturday nights? Tick tock, tick tock. Other than being aware that ABC and Fox televise college...
Sep 15, 2023At the end of last week Apple shed over $200 billion in market value. Its decline rendered it the worst performing member of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Why the...
Sep 14, 2023The freer the society, the more wealth unequal it is. This is basic stuff, and it’s stuff that redounds to the genius of freedom. A city, state, or country...
Sep 13, 2023Have you ever heard of the Trabant? Assuming you’ve heard of the defunct East German automaker, it’s a safe bet you’ve never driven a Trabant. You haven’t...
Sep 12, 2023In a recent opinion piece for Barron’s, Paul Sheard (former Vice Chairman of S&P Global) purported to list myths about budget deficits that “deserve straightening...
Sep 11, 2023Central bankers would logically be last to the scene of any inflation crime.
Sep 9, 2023In a recent piece for the Washington Post, Ramesh Ponnuru wrote that “the public is not going to accept restrictive coronavirus mitigation measures again, regardless of...
Sep 8, 2023Headlines can be so telling, and in being telling, can be so wrong. A front-page Washington Post headline from Monday said it all: “Federal deficit likely to double,” and...
Sep 7, 2023Retirement plan “providers who have taken on the legal duty of a fiduciary should have an analogous duty, to learn whether participants are misusing their menu.” Those...
Sep 6, 2023Whistleblowers are broadly described as noble individuals beset by scoundrels. The basis for the latter is that these employees are said to shed light on nefarious activities of the...
Sep 5, 2023Historians to this day promote the fiction that when the Arab members of OPEC placed an oil embargo on the U.S., their actions kept oil from reaching the United States. Actually,...
Sep 4, 2023We need more who lack PhDs to correct the fallacy-stalked who have them.
Sep 2, 2023“In reality all economic activity outside the stationary state is speculation.” – Ludwig von Mises, Human Action A constant refrain over the last several...
Sep 1, 2023The left-leaning imagine against all reason that businesses are out to exploit workers with low wages. The right-leaning disagree with the left rhetorically, all the while making the...
Aug 31, 2023At risk of aging and incriminating myself, as I child I would routinely fill up water balloons with friends in order to throw them at passersby. The making of water balloons was a...
Aug 30, 2023According to Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell, “The Chinese economy has hit a rough patch.” On their face, comments like these always rate a raised eyebrow: I...
Aug 29, 2023In his memoirs about the remarkable rise of The Home Depot, the great Bernie Marcus oh-so-thankfully went against the grain of seemingly all modern thought in writing that "bankers...
Aug 28, 2023Reasoning that insults absurd.
Aug 26, 2023We’re on the verge of being able to unlearn a great deal that we presently know. The latter will be a consequence of the rise of AI that has so many (including AI’s...
Aug 25, 2023According to economists and their media enablers, the Russian economy is booming and prices rising. The growth and its attendant 'inflation' is said to be a combination of soaring...
Aug 24, 2023According to Rep. Mike Gallagher in a recent opinion piece, TikTok “is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.” Where it becomes a tad ironic is that in the same...
Aug 23, 2023Writing about home mortgages issued between 2006-08 in his 2019 memoir What It Takes, Blackstone Group co-founder Stephen Schwarzman recalled that something north of 90% of them...
Aug 23, 2023It was seemingly around 2012 that Uber’s national (and international) notoriety began to soar. How soon we forget what an amazing advance app-summoned rides...
Aug 22, 2023It’s no revelation that banks didn’t create credit cards first, that Hollywood studios didn’t create either Blockbuster or the company that erased it (Netflix), nor...
Aug 21, 2023So-called Fed “tightness” wouldn’t mean anything even if it meant something.
Aug 19, 2023My wife works in restaurants. I mention this because she knows chefs whose kids used to be embarrassed that their fathers were chefs. Now they’re not. This is the fruits of...
Aug 17, 2023In the technology sector, poorly-run businesses don’t last long. They fail quickly only for their assets to be acquired by better stewards. The paradoxical truth is that the...
Aug 15, 2023Senator Schumer thinks orange juice costs too much, while Senator McConnell thinks chocolate milk has become too pricey. Jerome Powell fears the cost of eggs. All of the above is...
Aug 14, 2023If you're productive, capital will find you.
Aug 12, 2023Harvard’s Raj Chetty has a habit of mistaking causation. Not too long ago he astounded the easily-astounded David Brooks with research that “found that poor children who...
Aug 11, 2023David Brooks is looking inward again. Which means he’s beating himself up for being special. In his latest self-flagellation at the New York Times, Brooks suggests that a...
Aug 10, 2023Are Cuban cigars still the best? If you ask actual aficionados the previous question, you’ll more and more hear No. Those in the know say a mere box of Cubans is increasingly...
Aug 9, 2023Some things just jump out at you. And for jumping out at you, demand to be written about. Two weeks ago the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page story about a business...
Aug 8, 2023There’s an old adage about banking that’s seemingly as old as banking, and it goes like this: for a well-run bank any capital requirement (no matter how small) is way too...
Aug 7, 2023To believe economists on the matter of 'inflation,' there is such thing as a free lunch.
Aug 5, 2023Basketball phenom Victor Wembanyama is black. Hopefully the latter isn’t too provocative. Ok, so imagine if the San Antonio Spurs had passed on Wembanyama as the #1 pick in...
Aug 4, 2023The customers of Uber are rated by the drivers who transport them. Rude, unruly customers are fired. Stop and think about that. It’s not just Uber’s way of protecting its...
Aug 3, 2023During the lockdowns related to the coronavirus, tens of millions of Americans lost their jobs, while millions of U.S. businesses were horribly impaired. Around the world, the New...
Aug 2, 2023“Money invested in the S&P 500 in 1990 is worth four times more than if it had been invested in any other wealthy country’s stock market.” Those are the words...
Aug 1, 2023On the subject of government spending, economists could analyze the world much better if they were intimate with a basic truth: no act of saving ever subtracts from demand. What we...
Jul 31, 2023The Fed is a bit of a myth.
Jul 29, 2023They called the week of the game. They said that the USC Trojans “couldn’t play any coloreds, that the races couldn’t compete at the same time.” Those are the...
Jul 28, 2023Time is precious. Time is money. Insert your cliché here. Humans and time are easily the two biggest inputs to economic progress, and nothing else comes close. Remember that...
Jul 27, 2023On the matter of global warming, President Biden’s climate envoy John Kerry recently asserted that the theory (global warming) is about to collide with reality. In other words,...
Jul 25, 2023“I loved what we did. We changed the lives of millions and millions of people in a positive way.” Those were the words of the late, great Angelo Mozilo. Yes, you read...
Jul 24, 2023Inflation is a currency phenomenon that can be reflected in prices, not a price phenomenon.
Jul 22, 2023Alabama football coach Nick Saban preaches that it all begins with recruiting. Lesser talents bring the team down. In Saban’s own words, “mediocre people don’t like...
Jul 21, 2023How to become rich? Paraphrasing the great Christopher Buckley, if you Google the question your computer will explode so numerous are the ways. Ok, let’s narrow the question...
Jul 19, 2023According to the “wise” and the gullible, the U.S. is enduring a “credit crunch” right now. Isn’t it obvious? Interest rates are higher. Statement of...
Jul 18, 2023Michael Bloomberg spent something north of $500 million on his 2020 presidential candidacy, only for the multi-billionaire to quickly drop out $500 million poorer. Bloomberg was...
Jul 17, 2023Financial conditions are a reflection of reality, not the discredited theories of central bankers.
Jul 15, 2023In a recent piece about Harvard’s admission practices, the excellent Allysia Finley wrote that they’re “all about money.” Unfortunately, Finley wrote the...
Jul 14, 2023If you could know one thing well in order prosper in the global economy, what would it be? Stop and think about this before answering. The view here is that a good command of the...
Jul 12, 2023Economic discussions would be far more worthwhile if those in the conversation got the basics. One of them is that governments don’t take in money, nor do they spend it. When...
Jul 10, 2023Markets decide what currencies circulate, not Treasury departments or central banks.
Jul 8, 2023In 1993, media mogul Walter Annenberg donated $100 million to the Peddie School, a then not-so-prominent boarding school in New Jersey. Annenberg wanted to attend Princeton, New...
Jul 7, 2023It’s always interesting how juries in legal trials are shielded from outside information and news so that their views won’t be prejudiced. “Impartial” jurors...
Jul 6, 2023Some things you can’t take back, or unsay. Many years ago I told the wife of a friend that I really wanted to read Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. No problem there, but I...
Jul 5, 2023Have we already forgotten 2008? It was then that the political class mistakenly bailed out ailing banks and investment banks. Failure in any industry is healthy as poorly run assets...
Jul 4, 2023Last week popular hamburger chain Five Guys opened its first location in South Korea. News accounts indicate that South Koreans waited as long as twelve hours for their first taste...
Jul 3, 2023What's stable as a measure cannot be overproduced.
Jul 1, 2023While in college at Texas, I wrote an opinion piece for The Daily Texan titled “Affirmative Action Exacerbates Racism.” A fan of Thomas Sowell then and now, back then I...
Jun 30, 2023Former South Carolina governor and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley is the latest GOP presidential aspirant to take to the opinion pages. As the title of this write-up suggests, Haley...
Jun 29, 2023In 2011 VC firm Benchmark Capital paid $12 million for a 20 percent stake in Uber. In 2023, Uber can claim debts in the $10 billion range. Hopefully readers can see the connection...
Jun 28, 2023To witness the search for actual inflation (a decline in the monetary unit) among economists and pundits is like watching a hunt for green M&Ms in a bowl full of yellow ones....
Jun 27, 2023Apparently law firm partner is the new, big-time job. Or it’s the old, new big-time job. While senior partners at law firms have long migrated to better-paid senior roles at...
Jun 24, 2023As of 1978, there were roughly twelve “skyscrapers” in Shanghai, the New York City of China. As of 2006, there 6,780. To visit Shanghai in modern times (I was last there...
Jun 23, 2023Ludwig von Mises saw through Bernie Sanders before there was Bernie Sanders. Mises published Socialism in 1922, while the future Sen. Sanders didn’t wriggle into the world...
Jun 22, 2023At some point in the late 1990s a friend sent me a copy of William Manchester’s The Last Lion. A biography of Winston Churchill, it read like a fiction novel so remarkable was...
Jun 21, 2023Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) writes that Visa and MasterCard “have gotten hoggish on the backs of hardworking Americans” thanks to swipe fees. Marshall is a free thinker in...
Jun 20, 2023There’s a popular saying along the lines that “you’ll never get rich off of W-2 income.” The idea there is that absent equity ownership of whatever endeavor...
Jun 19, 2023Markets, like GS, are relentlessly quantitative.
Jun 17, 2023The Fox News Channel created The Five in 2011. A hit seemingly from the beginning, in 2023 The Five can claim a bigger audience than any other Fox show. Why the mention of the The...
Jun 16, 2023According to an expert-informed punditry, the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes are leading to “tighter credit.” Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell...
Jun 15, 2023It’s a safe bet that there have been more media mentions of Kastle Systems in 2023 than at any other time in the company’s fifty year history. Many readers likely know...
Jun 14, 2023With Social Security, there are always reasons given to scrap it. Which is the problem. And that’s not an endorsement of Social Security. Quite the opposite. As evidenced by...
Jun 13, 2023In a recent column Peggy Noonan made the intriguing point that if Republican voters choose “Mr. Trump in 2024 it will mean it [the Republican Party] has changed its essential...
Jun 12, 2023Wealth is just another word for knowledge, and knowledge is created the hard way through lots of investment in “dry holes.”
Jun 10, 2023“Money wins.” Those were the words of the often very funny, but occasionally sanctimonious Wall Street Journal sports columnist, Jason Gay. Gay was commenting on the...
Jun 9, 2023“Under Biden, America has surrendered the oil economy. The Saudi king is now the world’s oil king again, and we are all worse for it.” Those are the words of Daniel...
Jun 8, 2023In 1934, Kirk Douglas (yes, that Kirk) hitchhiked with a friend up to St. Lawrence University. Douglas couldn’t afford the tuition given his family’s impoverished...
Jun 7, 2023The “vital few” drive all progress. Repeat it over and over again. It’s true in sports, entertainment, science, business, and anything else you can think of. Please...
Jun 6, 2023Money has no purpose absent production first. Say it over and over again. Money is abundant in the United States not because the Fed decreed it so, but because productivity is a...
Jun 5, 2023Elevated to a spot where he could actually do serious economic damage.
Jun 3, 2023To read traditional newspapers or to visit online sources of opinion is to lately be inundated with commentary about HBO’s just concluded drama/comedy (?) Succession. Viewers...
Jun 2, 2023One supposes it was inevitable. After the agreement between Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy resulted in the most microscopic of spending reductions, economists emerged with models meant...
Jun 1, 2023Another week of debt-ceiling brinksmanship, and another week of abject terror from the pundit class. Experts claimed ahead of deal that seems to be sealed that a failure to come to...
May 31, 2023Between Austin and Huntsville, which Texas town attracts more investment? There’s really no mystery to this question, but it might surprise some readers that job destruction is...
May 30, 2023It was probably fifteen years ago that I was at lunch with Banknote Capital’s Jim Fitzgerald. We were finishing up when the conversation shifted to tax rates, at which point...
May 29, 2023Money in circulation is always and everywhere a consequence of production.
May 27, 2023Some readers may disagree, but to visit Amsterdam is to be struck by its seediness. The view here is that the latter is driven by the legality of marijuana possession and usage....
May 26, 2023In his excellent new book Life After Capitalism (review coming soon), George Gilder routinely states an essential truth: knowledge is wealth. The inputs to everything we have and...
May 25, 2023While growinng Wal-Mart into the world’s foremost retailer, Sam Walton was big on dropping into stores. He wanted his “associates” to see him, he wanted to learn...
May 25, 2023I first heard David Henderson speak at Cato University in 2003 at the Rancho Bernardo Inn. What he said about capitalism being compassionate stuck with me. And it still does....
May 24, 2023The debt-limit discussion would be far more reasonable if it were broadly understood that government has no resources. And by extension it has no credit. Please think about whom...
May 23, 2023It has “upended its vast logistics network to reduce how far packages travel across the U.S. in an effort to get products to customers faster and improve profitability.”...
May 22, 2023Economists think it's all about them, and their "policies." Actually, freedom quite simply works.
May 20, 2023If you’re reading this write-up, odds are you’ve seen the horrifying photos of adults with water up to their necks trying to transport crying babies across rivers to...
May 19, 2023The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable.” – Fredric Bastiat How things change. Back when then-President Obama was going to such enormous...
May 19, 2023There’s a creeping victimhood within a U.S. conservative movement that has long decried the victim culture. This reveals itself most notably every time the Left...
May 18, 2023Imagine for a minute or two a world without oil. If so, life would be defined by unrelenting drudgery owing to the happy reality that machines powered by oil have long done so much...
May 17, 2023Markets sure are calm in light of the fact that the United States is said to be flirting with default on its debt. According to panicky economists, pundits and politicians, default...
May 16, 2023As Democrats and Republicans continue to feed their hungry flocks with debt-ceiling theatrics, pundits are doing their part for the performers by fanning the nonsensical flames. The...
May 15, 2023Prices are a misleading way to measure what is always and everywhere a currency devaluation phenomenon.
May 13, 2023Can you the reader change a tire on a car? Could you plant and harvest a wheat crop? If provided with the materials, could you knit a sweater? Tick tock, tick tock? In my case the...
May 12, 2023In poor countries, work has generational qualities. The latter is the explanation for the grinding poverty. Adam Smith understood this well. Where there’s no change, or no...
May 10, 2023As readers are already aware, there’s always lots of speculation and panting by the deep-in-thought ahead of interest rate decisions by the Federal Reserve. But rather than...
May 9, 2023No one lends or borrows dollars. They lend or borrow what dollars can be exchanged for. Please keep this in mind amid all the hyper-ventilating over potential default. Janet Yellen,...
May 6, 2023Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine was 12th century animalistic, sickeningly inhumane, and most important of all, mindless. Think about it. If plunder is...
May 3, 2023On April 13, CNN’s business site blasted out the headline “banking is sound.” Who uttered those words? No less than Lael Brainard, former Vice Chair of the Federal...
May 2, 2023In an excellent piece on increasingly empty newsrooms, the great Maureen Dowd of the New York Times bemoaned what’s no longer: the Bloody Mary’s at dawn at Tune In on...
May 1, 2023Advisers to the Florida governor would be wise to remind him that he’s actually smart about policy, and that he should lean into those smarts.
Apr 29, 2023"On the field of war what is at stake is the thing that matters most to any man - the saving of his own skin.” Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, p. 889 The quote from Tolstoy’s...
Apr 27, 2023When Apple floated its shares in 1980, it was the biggest IPO since Ford Motor Company. A little less than 17 years later Apple was flirting with bankruptcy. So bad were...
Apr 26, 2023It is reported by the U.N. that India is presently overtaking China as the world’s most populous country. Where it becomes interesting is in consideration of the growing...
Apr 25, 2023When Cato Institute co-founder Ed Crane was building the libertarian movement in the 1970s, he came across a lot of self-proclaimed conservatives. What’s notable about this is...
Apr 22, 2023Why is the United States the richest, most opportunity-laden country on earth? There are so many answers to the previous question, but one that arguably doesn’t get enough air...
Apr 21, 2023Hampden-Sydney is a liberal arts college appropriately located in Hampden-Sydney, VA. Of its annual matriculates, a not insubstantial portion won’t be there four years...
Apr 20, 2023It will never happen, but it would certainly elevate commentary about the Federal Reserve to a reasonably sane level if its myriad critics and supporters would stop and imagine what...
Apr 18, 2023How soon Americans forget. Or it’s possible all-too-many Americans are too young to have forgotten just how backwards the former Soviet Union was. While endless lines for...
Apr 17, 2023Obsessing over a symptom of a problem, not the actual problem.
Apr 15, 2023Do you know what compost is? Neither do I. Or at least I didn’t until recently. All that changed thanks to the Wall Street Journal’s Chavie Lieber, I now know compost is...
Apr 12, 2023When British writer Viv Groskop was living in Russia in the early 1990s, she was an object of immense curiosity. The Russians were intensely poor, which meant Groskop was seen as...
Apr 11, 2023“Markets are wise,” markets “are pregnant with information,” markets “are information personified,” “ignore market signals at your...
Apr 8, 2023Earlier this week a prominent economist opined at Bloomberg that “even a recession might not tame inflation.” Most reading this are wondering why what’s...
Apr 7, 2023The price of a barrel of oil was around $25 when the 21st century began, and had been as low as $10 in 1998. In the 1980s, oil more than once dipped to $8/barrel. Stop and think...
Apr 6, 2023U.S. News & World Report retirement columnist Rodney Brooks recently penned a piece about what raising the retirement age might mean “for you.” No doubt the subject...
Apr 4, 2023“I will build a car for the great multitude.” Those were the words of Henry Ford. He didn’t invent the automobile, but he did make ownership of the automobile...
Apr 3, 2023The "vital few" drive equity rallies, not central banks.
Mar 31, 2023Well into the 2000s American Airlines was compensating customers to the tune of 500 airline miles per ticket booked on the airline’s website. How things change. And in a big...
Mar 30, 2023Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria writes that the dollar “gives Washington unrivaled economic and political muscle.” But that's like saying that rising usage of...
Mar 29, 2023The consumer welfare standard is a policy notion that’s achieved a lot notoriety of late. Not surprisingly. Due to errant Biden administration appointees like FTC Chair Lina...
Mar 27, 2023Wedded to a false view of inflation either due to policy confusion or baseless nostalgia, they’ve joined hands in the belief that the answer to inflation is putting people out work...
Mar 25, 2023It’s little known today, but a major driver of Henry Ford’s interest in machines was an aversion to work. And horses. Born into a farming family in Michigan, Ford’s...
Mar 23, 2023Remember in the ‘70s and ‘80s when grandstanding politicians attacked Soviet businesses bent on meeting the needs of American customers in order to spy on them? Neither...
Mar 21, 2023Seemingly everyone in the commentariat has an opinion on what most hadn't heard or thought of 10 days ago (Silicon Valley Bank), and from there it’s as though everyone has a...
Mar 20, 2023Money is never easy, nor is it dumb as the present analysis suggests.
Mar 17, 2023John Paulsen made his name and immense fortune with a well-timed purchase of securities that would soar if mortgages declined. His billions hopefully remind readers that huge...
Mar 16, 2023“If Silicon Valley were a normal place, this past weekend might be remembered as the moment its libertarian instincts gave way to a profound appreciation for the healing power...
Mar 15, 2023Quick question: how many of you readers were “demanding” the internet in 1995? Or a GPS function on your mobile phone in 2005? The speculation here is that in 1995 no one...
Mar 14, 2023Fires are always burning. Always. Even the naively referenced “great moderation” (1985-2007) was defined by a number of major market corrections and crashes (24% on...
Mar 10, 2023There are wildly divergent views of Kennedy family patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy, but few would seriously contend that he didn’t know business. He knew it well, as a family...
Mar 9, 2023As seemingly everyone who’s been following the political tragedy that was and is the coronavirus well knows, the Department of Energy now confirms with a low level of...
Mar 8, 2023In his weekly Wall Street Journal column from last week, the great Daniel Henninger commented that “For 10 years money was virtually free.” Henninger was talking about...
Mar 3, 2023How things have changed. Think payments. As Jimmy Soni notes in his excellent 2022 book The Founders (a history of PayPal), “In the late 1990s, only 10 percent of all...
Mar 2, 2023It was reported in the New York Times the week before last that the U.S. hedge funds at the top of the proverbial heap had reaped gains for their owners of over $22 billion in 2022....
Mar 1, 2023What is a “supply chain”? It’s not a tangible chain, and as such it’s not visible. In reality, a supply chain is a wildly sophisticated intellectual...
Feb 24, 2023“To think I might have died without having read it.” Those were the words of the late, great William F. Buckley. He was referring to Moby Dick. Having read it after...
Feb 23, 2023“Put on your mask, Dude.” That was said to me in an office building amid peak lockdown. “Where’s your mask?” was a question angrily posed to me by a...
Feb 22, 2023In a Wall Street Journal piece explaining her decision to resign from the FTC, outgoing Commissioner Christine Wilson cited many reasons associated with Chairman Lina Khan, including...
Feb 20, 2023The Fed can't do what the experts think it can.
Feb 18, 2023After the Chinese spy balloon was shot out of the sky over South Carolina recently, videos of it went viral. Millions of views viral. On TikTok…. It was difficult to not...
Feb 15, 2023“You f——d’ it up.” That’s what the late Harold Ramis, co-author of Animal House, said to the film’s director, John Landis. After seeing...
Feb 14, 2023Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Social Security and Medicare were and are impressively foolish ideas. That Americans desire comfortable retirement that includes...
Feb 13, 2023Sports instruct about life, and economics.
Feb 11, 2023Last week U.S. cargo airline Atlas Air took delivery of the last newly manufactured Boeing 747. This week, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told a conference comprised of the...
Feb 8, 2023As most of us are aware, Tom Brady retired from the NFL last week “for good.” The announcement was brief given Brady’s own admission that he’d already used up...
Feb 3, 2023When the invasion of Ukraine began last February, Russian people eager to avoid entrapment in a war that vandalized reason turned to dollars. Get it? Not only do dollars liquefy a...
Feb 2, 2023“WeChat is the most popular communications platform in the world for Chinese speakers.” Those are the words of Johns Hopkins professor Seth Kaplan. This is important...
Jan 31, 2023Success in politics requires an impressive lack of self-awareness. Think about it. What political types must say on a daily basis, and what they must nod along to routinely...
Jan 30, 2023Central planning didn’t just fail in the 20th century, it did so murderously.
Jan 28, 2023“No need to worry, no need to fret. The thing for you may not have been invented yet.” – The Berenstain Bears. The Berenstain Bears is a much-beloved...
Jan 27, 2023The quip “More money, more problems” is presumably as old as money is. Though money per comedian Eddie Murphy can afford those who have it the fancy car to drive around...
Jan 26, 2023Time will tell on the matter of Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX. The view expressed in my new book The Money Confusion is that with any new commercial sector, there’s always lots of...
Jan 25, 2023New York Times columnist Bret Stephens is 49. It’s good news that he’s relatively young simply because it means readers will get to enjoy his unique insights and...
Jan 24, 2023“Embarrassing,” “nihilistic,” “dysfunctional.” Those are just a few of the many pejoratives directed at congressional Republicans in recent weeks amid a rather...
Jan 19, 2023With threats of a U.S. ban growing, China-based TikTok is going out of its way to placate U.S. lawmakers. That TikTok has been reduced to this is sad commentary about politics in the...
Jan 17, 2023Steve Hanke and John Greenwood are professors at Johns Hopkins University. The highly prestigious school is based in Baltimore, and its location is mentioned simply because...
Jan 9, 2023The Fed only has a role in the inflation discussion insofar as inflation itself is wholly redefined.
Jan 6, 2023Business columnist Gene Marks is angry. He feels that venture capital firm Sequoia Capital did the other 99.99999% of us harm by investing in FTX. In his words, “super-smart...
Jan 5, 2023Young Americans need “a stiffening of the vertebrae,” according to prominent businessman Elbert Hubbard. Hubbard laments their “foolish inattention” and...
Jan 3, 2023China allegedly faces dark days ahead. Why, you may ask? Because of freedom from coronavirus mandates. Who fears too much freedom in China? American reporters and...
Jan 2, 2023We need Republicans to get back to first principles about what inflation truly is.