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Biden’s Myth of ‘Price Gouging’

Biden’s Myth of ‘Price Gouging’

by | Mar 12, 2024 | ,

In recent times, accusations of "price gouging" have become prevalent, often targeting producers utilizing strategies like dynamic pricing and “shrinkflation.” Such accusations, echoed by political figures including President Joe Biden, overlook the intricate dynamics of supply and demand in a market economy. Dynamic pricing, a hallmark of modern market economies, reflects the dynamic interplay of supply and demand in real-time, ensuring the most efficient allocation of resources. For, unlike static pricing, which remains fixed regardless of changing market conditions, dynamic pricing...

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Best of the Best, Worst of the Worst

Best of the Best, Worst of the Worst

by | Mar 4, 2024 | ,

The past few weeks have seen a predictable reaction to the release of (yet another) survey of “experts” regarding the proper ranking of United States presidents. Apart from the inherent problems any such attempted ranking poses, problems my colleague Hunter DeRensis aptly outlined in a previous article, is the utter awfulness these surveys regularly churn out: FDR (#2), Truman (#6), Obama (#7) and Joe Biden (#14)… Seriously? Boasting that their respondents included “current and recent members of the Presidents & Executive Politics Section of the American Political Science Association” as...

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And the Winner Is…Not You

And the Winner Is…Not You

by | Feb 22, 2024 | ,

Of all the government or quasi-government institutions, there is perhaps none as openly opaque in its operations and unaccountable for its failures as the Federal Reserve. For, unlike its top rivals for this most dubious of distinctions, like the CIA, NSA, or DOD, which do their law bending and money wasting largely of sight and out of mind, the nation’s money supply is so ubiquitous, so ever-present in the lives of the ordinary person that its activities must of necessity take place before the public eye. Hence, the gradual development of Fed Speak; that is, the art of speaking so...

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The China Lobby Now (Where is it?)

The China Lobby Now (Where is it?)

by | Feb 13, 2024 |

*Author’s note: while the term “China Lobby” has historically been associated with the coalition of interest groups, primarily in the business community, that grew up around support for the Republic of China in the 1920s and 1930s and which came to be closely allied with anti-communists in the United States following the defeat of Chiang Kai-shek by Mao and the communists, this article is concerned with those groups who, by contrast, favored closer ties to the succeeding People’s Republic of China. While the intensive, if often opaque, lobbying efforts of the Taiwanese government’s...

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Rate Cuts Are Coming, Ready or Not

Rate Cuts Are Coming, Ready or Not

by | Feb 5, 2024 | ,

According to the Fed’s “preferred” inflation measure, the Personal Consumption Expenditures Index (PCE)—you know, the one that excepts those extraneous things you never buy, things like food and gas—well, according to recent PCE readings the Fed has been doing a terrific job, justifying the formal shifting of its interest rate outlook. That is, while not promising to cut rates it is in effect laying the necessary groundwork, providing itself the flexibility to do so if, in its words, “the risks to achieving its employment and inflation goals [continue] moving into better balance.” For...

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Taiwan’s Election, TSMC, and the Folly of Decoupling

Taiwan’s Election, TSMC, and the Folly of Decoupling

by | Jan 17, 2024 | ,

With Taiwan’s presidential election now concluded, and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate William Lai Ching-te having won a plurality due to the failure of the major opposition parties (the KMT and TPP) to combine behind one candidate, tensions in East Asia are likely to increase. As reported by Aljazeera, in the weeks preceding the election Beijing had (again) “denounced Lai as a dangerous separatist,” and said he represented a “threat to peace in the region if he won.” The Chinese government's comments are neither surprising nor propitious; Lai has been a staunch advocate of...

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Imperialists Will Always Double Down

Imperialists Will Always Double Down

by | Jan 10, 2024 | ,

While one could choose many appropriate representatives of the quotidian inanity of U.S. foreign policy—the deleterious consequences of which somehow never do anything to dent the authors’ respective career prospects—one could find many equal to but none better than former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, statist intellectual, and imperialist meddler, Michael McFaul. As to be expected, he has the usual, impeccable hawkish credentials, his time and publications paid for by, among others, the Hoover Institute, Brookings Institute, and Center for Strategic and International Studies (brought to you...

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Taiwan’s Forthcoming Election Is Not An Independence Referendum

Taiwan’s Forthcoming Election Is Not An Independence Referendum

by | Dec 21, 2023 | ,

Talk the last few weeks in the corporate press about Taiwan is that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has the coming January presidential election in the bag. They are probably right. The opposition parties, the Kuomintang (KMT) and smaller Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), recently failed to coalesce behind a single candidate, so the DPP’s William Lai is almost certain to win. A self-described “practical worker for Taiwan independence,” Lai, the current vice president to the exiting Tsai Ing-wen, has chosen former envoy to the United States Hsiao Bi-khim as his running mate, completing the...

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