Inside This Week's Bull Bear Report CFNAI Index Suggests Economy Is Slowing How We Are Trading It Research Report - CAPE-5, A Better Measure Youtube - Before The Bell Market Statistics Stock Screens Portfolio Trades This Week February Weakness And The Outlook For March Last week, we discussed that continued bullish exuberance and high levels of complacency can quickly turn into volatility. Over the previous week, the market fell sharply following...
Read More »Tariff Increases vs. Tax Cuts
News feeds are stuffed full of reports and opinions about President Trump’s tariff increases on Mexico, Canada, China, and the EU. Then the add-on story is about the tax cut legislation—extending President Trump’s tax cuts to the coming years.The media is spinning the story as a political hot potato: can tariff increases make up for the future revenue losses from extending the income tax reductions from President Trump’s first term?This is a false scenario, and a...
Read More »Egalitarian Interventionists: Why Politicians Love “Equality”
It is difficult to find a seemingly more unobjectionable term that “equality” is the modern West and America. Equality is often understood to be an unqualified good and part of the American creed: “all men are created equal.”The main reasons politicians love “equality” are because it is supposedly unquestionable in its obvious justice, slippery in definition, and unachievable. Consider the shifting definitions. “Equality” can mean equality before the law or rule of...
Read More »Trump’s Slush Fund
In his February 3 Executive Order, President Trump directed his minions to begin planning for establishment of a “Sovereign Wealth Fund” that he originally touted in a speech to the Economic Club of New York last September. The fund would be on the order of $2 trillion, investing in things like manufacturing hubs, defense, and medical research. The order states:It is the policy of the United States to maximize the stewardship of our national wealth for the sole...
Read More »Radical Reconstruction and State Omnipotence
In his book Omnipotent Government, Ludwig von Mises traces the shift in Europe from individualism to state omnipotence, highlighting the disastrous effects of empowering government to run every aspect of social and economic life:Men now seem eager to vest all powers in governments, i.e., in the apparatus of social compulsion and coercion. They aim at totalitarianism, that is, conditions in which all human affairs are managed by governments. They hail every step...
Read More »Swiss soldiers in Ukraine, army and secret service chiefs resign and Trump’s plans for Gaza
Here are three stories from Switzerland this week. --- swissinfo.ch is the international branch of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SBC). Its role is to report on Switzerland and to provide a Swiss perspective on international events. For more articles, interviews and videos visit swissinfo.ch or subscribe to our YouTube channel: Website: http://www.swissinfo.ch Channel: http://www.youtube.com/swissinfovideos Subscribe:...
Read More »Jean-Baptiste Say: Neglected Champion of Laissez-Faire
Beyond some rudimentary facts, very little is available in English about the life of J.B. Say. He was born in Lyons, France, to middle-class Huguenot parents, and spent most of his early years in Geneva and London. As a young man, he returned to France in the employ of a life insurance company, and soon became an influential member of a group of strongly pro-free- market intellectuals. Indeed, Say was the first editor of La Decade Philosophique , a journal...
Read More »The Fort Knox Gold Was Stolen From the American People
What is the Mises Institute? The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order....
Read More »Now What?
Sorry for the disruption of the regular commentary. Still, the monthly will be posted tomorrow. There is a key divide in the market. One camp sees the US tariff threats as bluster and a negotiating tactic. The other camp, which I find myself in, thinks something more serious is happening. The US voted against Europe and with Russian and Iran at the UN for the first time in 45 years on European issues. Martin Wolf, the erstwhile economic editor at the Financial...
Read More »Now What?
Sorry for the disruption of the regular commentary. Still, the monthly will be posted tomorrow. There is a key divide in the market. One camp sees the US tariff threats as bluster and a negotiating tactic. The other camp, which I find myself in, thinks something more serious is happening. The US voted against Europe and with Russian and Iran at the UN for the first time in 45 years on European issues. Martin Wolf, the erstwhile economic editor at the Financial...
Read More »