Tag Archives: Featured

Many economic pundits predict that the United States and much of the world is either in a recession or about to enter one, depending upon one’s definition of the term “recession.” This brief essay is not intended to be a comprehensive explanation of what causes such economic cycles but rather the proper way to end them as quickly as possible.Disequilibrium in the Stages of ProductionA recession is merely the name for economic dislocations. The stages of production...

EUR/CHF touches 50-week SMA and recoils RSI on daily chart indicates possibility of a pullback.  Symmetrical Triangle has formed on 4-hour chart with breakout likely.  EUR/CHF has rebounded from the 0.9254 December 2023 lows and rallied up to resistance from a key barrier in the form of the 50-week Simple Moving Average (SMA). The pair is probably still in a long-term downtrend despite recent strength. Euro to Swiss Franc: Weekly chart The price has respected the...

Last week President Biden delivered a dark and angry speech meant to convince the low percentage of Americans who still feel positive about his presidency that everything is fine and will only get better if he is re-elected for a second term.Unfortunately we have come a long way from the optimism of a Ronald Reagan, who won a second term partially on the popularity of his “Morning in America” campaign commercials. Reagan was far from a perfect president, but it was...

If one follows news relating to the economy, they surely have come across certain mainstream rhetoric in support of the Federal Reserve System. Everyone is familiar with the typical claims that the Federal Reserve strives for maximized employment and low inflation, and that the Fed is the regulator of the banking industry. But king of them all is of the supposed political neutrality of the Federal Reserve.The Federal Reserve itself touts its elevation above the petty...

Leftwing academics claim that blacks in America are oppressed. They call for reparations and affirmative action programs to help them. But these people are hypocrites and liars. How do we know this? When a black person doesn’t share their views, they act ruthlessly. Such people have to be eliminated. The ‘woke” left doesn’t care about blacks or anybody else who doesn’t parrot their views. Roland Fryer found this out the hard way.Who is Roland Fryer? He is a brilliant...

Overview: The US CPI has become one of the most important high-frequency economic reports for the capital markets. The dollar is going into the report narrowly mixed against the G10 currencies. Comments by BOJ Governor Ueda about the weakness in consumption of non-durable goods was seen by some as reducing the likelihood of a change in policy next week. The greenback is threatening to snap a five-day drop against the yen. Most of the G10 currencies are in narrow...

Over the last few years, digital currencies and gold have become decent barometers of speculative investor appetite. Such isn’t surprising given the evolution of the market into a “casino” following the pandemic, where retail traders have increased their speculative appetites. “Such is unsurprising, given that retail investors often fall victim to the psychological behavior of the “fear of missing out.” The chart below shows the “dumb money index” versus the S&P...

Switzerland’s central bank, the Swiss National Bank (SNB), lost $3.6 billion in 2023,  after a gigantic loss of $150 billion in 2022. But after booking these losses, and properly subtracting them from its capital, the SNB still had positive capital of over $70 billion. This gives it the quite respectable capital to total assets ratio of 7.9%. All of these numbers are after marking its investments to market, as is required by the SNB’s governing law, so the capital is...

One of the first laws of economics—in fact, the condition that makes economics possible and necessary—is scarcity. On page one of Basic Economics, Thomas Sowell wrote, “Without scarcity, there is no need to economize—and therefore no economics.”While defining scarcity and its critical role in economics, I like to ask my students in a Christian school a question to tease this out: Would scarcity have existed in the Garden of Eden?Apparently Bob Murphy has tackled just...

One would guess the folly of rent control regulations needn’t be explained any further. If rents are held in place by government edict, landlords have no incentive to maintain apartment units to attract renters, the housing stock ultimately deteriorates, and homelessness increases. But, as Bloomberg reports, “Tougher rent control, returning worldwide, destroys $75 billion in property value. Cash-strapped tenants cheer as they maintain a foothold in the city.”That was...