The Bureau of Labor Statistic (BLS) released new jobs data on Friday. According to the report, seasonally adjusted total nonfarm jobs rose 339,000 jobs in May, well above forecasts. The unemployment rate rose slightly from 3.4 percent to 3.7 percent (month over...
Monetary
If America Loses Its Reserve Currency Status, You’ll Still Be Okay
by Ryan McMaken | Apr 27, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles
Earlier this month, Larry Kudlow insisted that it is "it's incumbent on the U.S. government, no matter who's in power, to maintain the reserve currency status of the dollar." Kudlow laments that a toppling of the dollar from that perch "seems to be the direction we're...
New Florida Bill Would Ban Central Bank Digital Currencies
by Michael Maharrey | Apr 3, 2023 | Featured Articles
A bill introduced in the Florida House would ban the use of central bank digital currency (CBDC) in the state. Rep. Wyman Duggan (R) brought House Bill 7049 (H7049) to the House Commerce Committee on March 28, and the committee voted along party lines to officially...
An Asset Backed Currency Could Be Our Monetary Fix
by Zack Sorenson | Mar 30, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles
According to the St. Louis Fed, there are three functions of money. First, as a store of value. Second, as a unit of account. Finally, as a medium of exchange. The enumeration of these functions represents an attempt to present money and the banking system as...
Big Tech, As Brought To You By the Federal Reserve
by Norman Singleton | Mar 27, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles
New York Times Technology writer David Streitfeld recently examined the role the Federal Reserve’s easy money policies played in the rise and, if not fall then at least slippage, of many technology companies. Immediately after the bursting of the housing bubble (which...
Real Estate Markets Are Addicted to Easy Money
by Ryan McMaken | Mar 8, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles
On Friday, residential real estate brokerage firm Redfin released new data on home prices, showing that prices fell 0.6 percent in February, year over year. According to Redfin's numbers, this was the first time that home prices actually fell since 2012. The...
Cheap Money Didn’t Fix the Economy (Shocker!)
by David Stockman | Mar 7, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles
Some big, round-numbered interest rate thresholds have been passed in recent days including 4.0% on the 10-year UST, 5.0% on the 2-year UST and 7.0% on the 30-year mortgage. These all come at the end of extended round trips, of course, so the question at hand is how...
Raising the Debt Ceiling Is An Anti-Social Policy
by Daniel Lacalle | Feb 22, 2023 | Featured Articles
Every time the United States reaches its debt limit, we read that it is important to reach an agreement to lift it. The narrative is that the debt ceiling must be raised, or the US economy will suffer a severe contraction. There is even an episode of a TV series,...
The Early Bird Stops the Central Bank’s Digital Currency Designs
by Connor O'Keeffe | Feb 6, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles
Whether you like it or not, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are coming. That’s the message in a recent tech column in the Wall Street Journal. A similar tone can be found coming from organizations like the World Economic Forum, the International Monetary Fund,...
Bubbles R-Us
by David Stockman | Feb 2, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles
The Wall Street Journal today brings word that a professor Efraim Benmelech of the finance department at Northwestern University thinks the Fed is hurting housing and the consumer too much. Opined he, ...those higher interest rates are making mortgages more expensive...
Elizabeth Warren is Wrong to Call Crypto ‘the Preferred Tool for Terrorists’
by Jennifer Schulp Jack Solowey and Nicholas Anthony | Jan 31, 2023 | Featured Articles
Last week, the Justice Department announced criminal charges against Anatoly Legkodymov for violating anti‐money laundering laws while operating Bitzlato, an off‐shore crypto exchange alleged to have processed over $700 million in illicit funds over several years....
The Idea of Making a ‘Trillion Dollar Coin’ Is Still Dumb
by Ryan McMaken | Jan 24, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles
Here we go again. Every few years in Congress there is a purely political battle over the debt ceiling. We're supposed to be horrified and worried that the U.S. might default on some of its debt. Some commentators will insist the U.S. has never defaulted, and that...
Living in the World Hamilton Designed
by Dave Benner | Jan 19, 2023 | Featured Articles
Today [January 11] in 1757, it is generally believed Alexander Hamilton was born. As John Adams put it, he was “the bastard brat of a Scottish peddler.” Born out of wedlock on the British isle of Nevis, Hamilton would become one of the most influential political...
David Stockman’s Explainer to the 2023 Economy
by David Stockman | Jan 12, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles
You can count on the knuckleheads at Bloomberg to start off the year with still another dead-wrong proposition. That is, more nonsense about the “strong” labor market—-one so strong that it is purportedly even defying the mighty Fed. The latest US employment report is...
Blog
The Non-Existent Difference Between National Socialism and Democratic Socialism
Summary: National Socialism and Democratic Socialism both advocate institutionalized violence by the state against peaceful people only differing in rhetoric. The most popular self described Democratic Socialists in America today are Senator Bernie Sanders and...
A Response to My Memorial Day Critics
My article against Memorial Day drew a lot of ire and attention. This should not have been surprising; I was making a controversial statement. What did surprise me, however, was that many critics were self-described libertarians or former libertarians. There were many...
Ignoring Political Gossip & Sticking to Principle
https://youtu.be/ZwWHjYVY4tg In the private sector, firms must attract voluntary customers or they fail; and if they fail, investors lose their money, and managers and employees lose their jobs. The possibility of failure, therefore, is a powerful incentive to find...
The Myth of “Hyper-Rugged-Isolationist-Individualism”
Myth #1: Libertarians believe that each individual is an isolated, hermetically sealed atom, acting in a vacuum without influencing each other. This is a common charge, but a highly puzzling one. In a lifetime of reading libertarian and classical-liberal...
The Lesson From Germany and Korea
Institutions are, of course, in some sense the products of culture. But, because they formalize a set of norms, institutions are often the things that keep a culture honest, determining how far it is conducive to good behaviour rather than bad. To illustrate the...
Occupational Licensing Increases Prices and Deprives People of Options
When you shop online, vendors usually give you a bunch of different ways to sort your options. Take Amazon: One popular sorting option – especially for customers with low income – is “Price: Low to High.” You’ve probably used it yourself many times. This...
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