Tag Archives: Featured

When I was at the university, I once objected to a classmate’s lazy use of “public goods.” He had used it to favor his policy position, as a shorthand synonym of what’s good for society—only a thinly veiled euphemism for what I want to happen. “Public goods are things that are nonrivalrous and nonexcludable,” I said, almost sputtering off a nearby economics textbook. “The ones you’re talking about are neither.” He rolled his eyes in boredom. “Yes, yes, but that’s not...

Overview: The Bank of Japan Governor Ueda hinted the world's third-largest economy may exit negative interest rates before the end of the year. This sparked the strongest gain in the yen in a couple of months and lifted the 10-year yield to nearly 0.70%. In an uncoordinated fashion, Chinese officials stepped their rhetoric and indicated that corporate orders to sell $50 mln or more will need authorization. This helped arrest the yuan's slide. The Australian dollar...

Despite what many elites believe, AI can do many things, but it cannot successfully plan an economy. It lacks the intelligence of an entrepreneur. Original Article: "AI Lacks the Entrepreneurial Intelligence to Plan an Economy" [embedded content] Tags: Featured,newsletter

While progressives blame climate change for the deadly Lahaina fire, government created the conditions for the blaze and then helped set it. Original Article: "Thanks to Government, Maui's Lahaina Fire Became a Deadly Conflagration" [embedded content] Tags: Featured,newsletter

Contrary to the government's line that "inflation hurts everyone," inflation really is a wealth transfer from those without political power to the politically connected. Original Article: "Inflation Is a Giant "Skim" on the American People" [embedded content] Tags: Featured,newsletter

The diverging economic performance between the US and Europe, Japan, and China on the other hand is stark. Yet, a greater divergence may be between widespread discussion of de-dollarization and its incredible strength in the foreign exchange market. The eight-week rally in the Dollar Index is the longest in nine years. According to SWIFT, which is not comprehensive but remains by far the largest platform, the dollar's role in international payments (46% in July) is...

In this week's episode, Mark looks at PPI—the Producer Price Index—which provides evidence of the costs for suppliers in various industries, macroeconomic instability, and the potential for economic recovery. Here, very low prices provide the potential for recovery; and rising prices can indicate both recovery in the economy, as well as inflationary pressures moving forward. The Covid Bubble and restrictions caused a 50% increase in producer prices, and since the...

Our country is beset by a large number of economic myths that distort public thinking on important problems and lead us to accept unsound and dangerous government policies. Here are ten of the most dangerous of these myths and an analysis of what is wrong with them. Myth #1 Deficits are the cause of inflation; deficits have nothing to do with inflation. In recent decades we always have had federal deficits. The invariable response of the party out of power, whichever...

How to Nurture Truth and Authenticity: A Metamodern Economic Reform Proposalby Justin CarmienManticore Press, 2022; 272 pp. Neither I nor Justin Carmien, the author of How to Nurture Truth and Authenticity, is an economist. Carmien’s book, however, is not a work of economics but a philosophical attempt to apply Heideggerian metaphysics to practical statesmanship and political economy. Nor is it an academic book: it is written with naïve yet deep insight, a result of...

The summit of the so-called BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) has closed with an invitation to join the group extended to the Emirates, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, and Ethiopia. The summit has generated a lot of headlines about the impact of this widespread group of nations, including speculation about the end of the U.S. dollar as a global reserve currency if this group is perceived as a threat to the United States or even the...