Tag Archives: Featured

Review of Walter Scheidel, Escape from Rome: The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019) The Roman Empire is often presented as the fabric of Western civilization. The languages, laws, religion, mores, and implements of the Western political imaginary come in large part, in one way or another, from Rome. The Roman Empire has been rebooted time and again by invaders and latecomers, from the Ostrogoths to...

Dominion Voting Systems is suing MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell for $1.3 billion. This comes in the wake of other Dominion lawsuits against Trump advisors Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. All are accused of lying about Dominion’s supposed complicity in using the company’s vote-counting software to favor presidential candidate Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. The company claims Lindell’s accusations “have caused irreparable harm to Dominion’s good reputation...

Fear of the ultra-inflationary aspects of fiscal overdrive. This is the current message, but according to what basis? Bigger is better, therefore if the last one didn’t work then the much larger next one absolutely will. So long as you forget there was a last one and when that prior version had been announced it was also given the same benefit of the doubt. Most people don’t like looking to Japan mainly because it is too depressing; unless one is an Economist who...

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.21% to 1.1018 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, February 24(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: The sharp recovery in US shares yesterday that saw the S&P 500 snap a five-day slide failed to carry into Asia Pacific trading earlier today. All the markets fell save India and Singapore. Losses were led by a 3% drop in Hong Kong as the first increase in the stamp duty...

Just over four years ago, as Bitcoin was making its first big moves in both price and public perception, John Hussman of Hussman Investment Trust penned a lengthy as well as seminal report entitled, “Three Delusions: Paper Wealth, a Booming Economy, and Bitcoin.” The core themes set forth in his report (as in any well-reasoned, blunt analysis) are refreshingly evergreen in their ongoing applicability. Rather than re-invent an already functioning wheel, I’ve opted to...

Dieses Niveau hatte es letztmals Ende 2019 gegeben. Auch der US-Dollar hat in den letzten Wochen weiter Boden gut gemacht und nähert sich mittlerweile der 0,91er Marke an. Der Franken habe derzeit keinen leichten Stand bei den Anlegern, hiess es am Markt. Die Risikobereitschaft sei gestiegen, was nicht zuletzt an den geopolitischen Entspannungen liege. Sogenannt sichere Häfen wie der Schweizer Franken seien in diesem Umfeld weniger gefragt. Darüber hinaus sei in den...

The idea of socialism is still alive and well in 2021. Looking at the progressives on the fringes of the Democratic Party – the likes of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, one might think they are the real culprits keeping the idea alive. Yet, just looking at the 2020 Democratic Party presidential debates, we can see just how alive socialism truly is. Almost all candidates promised ‘free’ stuff and demanded centrally planned solutions to practically all...

Brazil’s stock market was rocked yesterday by politics. The country’s “populist” President, Jair Bolsonaro, said he was going to name an army general who had served with Bolsomito (a nickname given to him by supporters) during that country’s prior military dictatorship as CEO of state-owned oil giant Petróleo Brasileiro SA. Gen. Joaquim Silva e Luna is being installed, allegedly, to facilitate more direct control of the company by the federal government. With the...

Unfortunately, Joe Biden is your prime example of a standard Washington, D.C., politician. As such, as president he will just accept the status quo, defer to the national-security establishment, and do his best to make the welfare-warfare state function efficiently. That means that the U.S. policy of interventionism and regime change toward Cuba will continue to remain the same as it has been since Cuban revolutionaries ousted the U.S. dictator Fulgencio Batista in...

Off-piste in Klosters, canton Graubünden. © Keystone / Christian Beutler The head of the Switzerland Tourism organisation reckons the decision to open ski resorts in the country this winter has – so far – proven to be a good one. “There were no big [virus] outbreaks, no ski resort became a hotspot, there was no major reputational damage for Switzerland – none of these fears materialised,” said Martin Nydegger in an interview with the CH-Media group on Tuesday....