As the world recoils in dismay and disgust at Russian aggression and grieves for the horrific suffering of the Ukrainian people, many Americans are just beginning to grasp the economic ramifications of this violence. After the devastation of two world … Continue reading
Inflation – defined herein as a widespread increase in the prices of widely purchased consumer goods – has gotten worse since I commented on it last spring. According to the official Consumer Price Index (CPI), inflation is currently running at … Continue reading
Two years ago, I wrote about the pending global population implosion. Demographers predict that 90 countries will lose population between now and the year 2100. Shrinking populations have portentous implications, including major shifts in geopolitical power and the possible financial collapse … Continue reading
A few months ago, I wrote about President Biden’s anti-fossil fuel policies. Among other steps designed to restrict domestic production of oil and natural gas, the president canceled completion of the Keystone XL pipeline, banned drilling for oil in the … Continue reading
From an economic point of view, some of the ideas being proposed by current policymakers in Washington, particularly the president’s Council of Economic Advisers and top officials at the Federal Reserve, cause this economist to scratch his head in wonderment. … Continue reading
I have written about “Washington’s Bi-Partisan Fiscal Folly” for years, caused by chronic over-spending. Regardless of which party holds the upper hand in Washington, the federal budget deficit persists. In the first two full fiscal years of the Trump presidency … Continue reading
In October 2013, I recounted the apparently miraculous way in which I located the one person in the world I was searching for – my seventh and eighth grade English teacher, Mr. Ted Walters, whose contribution to my intellectual development … Continue reading
In watching President Joe Biden’s initiatives to curb Americans’ access to oil and natural gas, I thought of the late Yogi Berra’s famous quip, “It’s déjà vu all over again.” Twelve years ago, during the first half-year of the Obama … Continue reading
What is noteworthy about the depressing title to this article is its source. In a case of uncommon candor, President Biden’s economic team has announced that once the artificially high stimulus-juiced measurements of GDP of the next two years subside, … Continue reading
To most people, “inflation” signifies widespread rising prices. Economists have long argued, as a matter of technical accuracy, that “inflation” denotes an increasing money supply. Frankly, though, most people don’t care what happens to the supply of money, but they … Continue reading
Having proposed trillions of dollars of additional federal spending, President Joe Biden and allies have launched a belated and somewhat desperate search for additional tax revenues. The economic reality is that there simply isn’t enough wealth available in the private … Continue reading
For years, I have been sounding the alarm about chronic federal deficit spending—practiced by both Republicans and Democrats—steering our country into a fiscal abyss. I feel like a broken record as I periodically chronicle the folly of it all. The … Continue reading
Hedge funds are in the news again. (I wrote about the Melvin Capital hedge fund blow-up a couple of months ago.) A firm named Archegos Capital Management “blew up” (to use the common vivid metaphor), vaporizing tens of billions of … Continue reading
The investment world was convulsed last week when at least one hedge fund (Melvin Capital) lost billions of dollars. The sudden, massive losses happened when a tidal wave of independent individual investors, spearheaded by posts on reddit.com, triggered a short … Continue reading
Americans are known to have big hearts. When disaster strikes, Americans unselfishly and heroically extend a helping hand. That certainly has been the case in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Nobody wants to see those who have lost income through … Continue reading
With all the attention commanded by the presidential campaign, election, and aftermath, plus the ongoing COVID-19 story, many other issues have faded into the background. Though escaping the headlines, some of these other issues will be with us for a … Continue reading
In my previous column, I described the “paradox of prosperity”—the strange tendency of many people who have benefited from economic advances to denounce and vilify the source of their prosperity, a sort of “bite-the-hand-that-feeds-you” phenomenon. One example of this syndrome … Continue reading
In Friedrich Hayek’s 1954 book Capitalism and the Historians, the late French philosopher and political economist Bertrand de Jouvenel noted a baffling historical trend: “Strangely enough, the fall from favor of the money-maker coincides with an increase in his social … Continue reading
Hong Kong police arrested billionaire publisher Jimmy Lai on August 10, releasing him two days later. His “crime” was to express opposition to the mainland Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) aggression against Hong Kong – both in person and through the … Continue reading
A recent opinion piece in The New York Times, “Tax the Rich and Their Heirs … more fairly,” was both reassuring and refreshing. It was reassuring to know that policy debates about relatively prosaic public policy issues continue to be … Continue reading
