Friday , March 29 2024
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Tag Archives: newsletter

Janet Is Yellin’ Nonsense. Stagflation Is around the Corner

The canary in the coal mine, is the consumer in our current economic period. We can still hear it, but it is growing weaker.We clearly hear Janet Yellen telling us in a March interview that rapidly increasing credit card use by consumers is normative. Is it normative to use credit card debt to offset “transitory” inflation?America has used credit to promote a recovery. Household debt rose to 17.5 trillion in the 4th quarter 2023. Debit and Credit card balances...

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Marx, Class Conflict, and the Ideological Fallacy

Our present cultural landscape is filled with the language of class conflict, ideology, bias (conscious or unconscious), and the politicization of everything. While there are many contributors to this, we can largely thank (or blame) Karl Marx and his theory of class consciousness and class conflict. While not necessarily following Marx in his economics, these concepts have captured the imagination of many, especially in the modern Western world.The claim is rather...

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Heightened Speculation of a BOJ Move Tomorrow did not Stop the Nikkei from Rallying or Yen from Slipping

Overview: The US dollar is trading with a mostly softer bias against the G10 currencies. The notable exceptions are the Japanese yen and Swiss franc. Ironically, speculation of a Bank of Japan rate hike appears to have increased, while there is a risk that the Swiss National Bank cuts rates this week. The Norwegian krone is the strongest of the major currencies. The central bank meets later this week but is widely expected to stand pat. The continued rise in oil...

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Week Ahead: Central Banks

There has been a dramatic adjustment to US rates. The two-year yield was near 4.40% before the US employment report on March 8 and it reached near 4.73% before the weekend. The 25 bp surge is the largest weekly increase since last May. For the first time in four months, the Fed funds futures strip is no longer has at least three rate cuts discounted. The interest rate adjustment underpinned the dollar, which rose against all the G10 currencies last week.  Like the...

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Failing to Make the Case for Race-Based Reparations

Reconsidering Reparations by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Oxford University Press, 2022; pp. 261Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, who teaches philosophy at Georgetown University, has a very different view of justice from libertarians. We believe that justice is based on the libertarian rights of self-ownership and Lockean appropriation, expressed in laws that apply to everyone and do not discriminate between different races or classes of people.Táíwò, by contrast, is a proponent of what...

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The Twilight of the Antifederalists

New York was the toughest nut for the Federalists to crack. For here was one state where not only was the population overwhelmingly opposed to the Constitution, but the opposition was also in firm and determined control of the state government and the state political machinery. Here was a powerful governor, George Clinton, who would not, like Hancock and Randolph in the other critical states, yield to a sellout under pressure. Clinton had been a highly popular...

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Swiss Franc at risk as inflation diverges from SNB forecasts

Swiss Franc is vulnerable as inflation data continues to undershoot official forecasts.  The SNB expected inflation to average 1.9% in 2024 in its December forecast, but it currently sits at 1.2%.  The latest Producer and Import Prices showed the tenth month of deflation in a row.  The Swiss Franc (CHF) trades flat at the end of the trading week – off by barely a few hundredths of a percent in its most traded pairs. The overal fundamental...

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From Athens to Vienna: Understanding a System of Ethics

The Political Thought of David Hume: The Origins of Liberalism and the Modern Political Imaginationby Aaron Alexander ZubiaNotre Dame 2024; 366 pp.The central thesis of Aaron Zubia’s very scholarly book will be of interest to students of Ludwig von Mises. Zubia argues that the thought of David Hume underlies contemporary liberalism. He intends “liberalism” broadly, so that it encompasses not only twentieth-century liberalism, but classical liberalism as well....

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Will Oklahoma’s Legislature Embrace Sound Money? Maybe

On February 5, 2024, Oklahoma Representative Cody Maynard introduced House Bill 3027, which would eliminate all capital gains taxes on gold and silver and expand legal tender to include not only gold and silver coins issued by the US government, but other specie that an Oklahoma court rules to be within state authority to make or designate as legal tender. While the bill has yet to be debated and passed in the Oklahoma House, this could be a realistic step toward...

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Sebag and Natural Money

Natural orders are things that emerge on their own or reflect the true nature of how something is or was meant to be. Two of my favorite books, both of which dramatically changed my outlook on the world, are A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century (by biologists Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein) and Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life (by economics professor Paul Seabright). Even though they deal with different subject matters, what unites...

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