Tag Archives: Featured

Greenwashing is a relatively new term to describe false and misleading claims that a product or business practice has environmental benefits. The point is that companies can advertise their efforts as “green” while continuing various profitable activities that environmentalists consider “harmful,” gaming the system and profiting off well-intentioned, sustainably minded consumers. The term was coined forty years ago by a student in response to a hotel that wanted...

In this week’s column, I’d like to raise two questions suggested by David Beito’s excellent book The New Deal’s War on the Bill of Rights, which I reviewed last week. First, how can it be that Franklin Roosevelt has acquired a reputation among leftist historians as a champion of liberty, with his internment of Japanese Americans during World War II regarded as an aberration, in the face of the manifold violations of civil liberties that occurred during his...

As the libertarian anarchocapitalist Javier Milei ascends to the Argentinian presidency, the parting of the ominous clouds of socialism has brought about the rising sun of libertarianism on the South American continent. The Argentine legislative system, consisting of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, is designed to bolster democratic governance and accountability. However, its inherent structure often leads to impasses, particularly with contentious reforms....

Overview: The dollar is bid going into the December jobs report. After selling off into the end of last year, it has recovered this week. The five-day moving average is crossing the 20-day moving average against several of the currency pairs, capturing the shift in momentum. The greenback's gains have as interest rates have jumped. The 10-year Treasury yield finished last year near 3.88% and is now near 4.04%. European benchmark rates have mostly risen 15-20 bp this...

The Fed's Federal Open Market Committee released the minutes to its December meeting yesterday, and the minutes further strengthen the view held by many Wall Street investors and observers that the Fed plans to implement rate cuts by the middle of 2024. Specifically, the most recent Fed survey of market participants "suggested that the first reduction in the policy rate would occur in June."  This contrasts only slightly with the FOMC members themselves, who, in...

The mainstream holds the Fed is busy planning a return to the glory days of zero interest rates, but ZIRP is on the downside of the S-Curve; it’s done, gone, history. Let’s summarize what the Federal Reserve accomplished since embarking on its massive interventions to control volatility, risk, bond yields, interest rates, the mortgage market, bank subsidies and liquidity, all of which can be summed up as the cost of credit-capital, that is, capital that is borrowed...

Price inflation statistics were a hot topic in 2023. Official measures, like the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index (PCE) and the Consumer Price Index (CPI), rose to levels not seen in over four decades. These measures were under commentators’ microscopes as recently as last week. The FRED Blog (run by the St. Louis Fed) briefly discussed how these two measures are constructed and how they differ. Paul Krugman compared the change in the “core” versions of...

While zoning laws do not explain all homelessness in this country, they help make housing less affordable, putting more people on the streets who no longer can pay for a place to live. Original Article: Zoning Laws: Wolves in Sheep's Clothing [embedded content] Tags: Featured,newsletter

The Bill of Rights turns 232 years old today. Adopted in 1791 as a consolation prize for the Anti-Federalists,  it has been the most important part of American legal history since the 18th century. Original Article: The Bill of Rights: The Only Good Part of the Constitution [embedded content] Tags: Featured,newsletter...

It seems U.S. government officials are entitled to blindfold and deceive the American people to avoid “intruding” on foreign leaders planning a military attack? This theory of democracy gets curiouser and curiouser. Original Article: Truth Is the Biggest Threat to Democracy in DC [embedded content] Tags:...