Since 1991, globalization has been touted as the solution to all the world’s problems, that will pull emerging markets out of poverty while making rich countries more efficient and competitive. Yet in the last few years, public opinion has soured on it; whenever new measures of globalization are proposed, voters oppose them vehemently. There are […]

On June 10, Switzerland will vote on a new system of “Vollgeld” that would abandon fractional reserve banking and centralize money creation in the central bank. It appears to be an improvement on the current system, making bank runs almost impossible and reducing leverage, but its opponents are correctly saying that by centralizing all money […]

Senator Marco Rubio wants to tee up yet another set of tax cuts, not oriented towards economic growth, that will further widen the U.S. budget deficit. Argentina is about to borrow $30 billion from the IMF, since it is unable to get close to balancing a budget, based on spending that is 60% higher as […]

The 200th birthday of Karl Marx on May 5 passed with several indications, in both Europe and China that his appeal is not dead, and indeed showing considerable signs of revival. China has significantly reversed its move away from Marxism, whereas elements in the EU High Command seem to be recognizing that a centralized Marxist […]

While we are in a brief period of decent global growth, the underlying productivity trends in rich countries are disquieting. What’s more, it now seems likely that, except in the United States, we will not escape the zero-interest rate lunacy before the next downturn. Even more disquieting is a re-acceleration of global population growth, so […]

Most EU countries are rich and highly productive, with specialized industries other countries would die for. Yet the bloc’s economic track record has been mediocre in the past decade and looks likely to become considerably worse. In its 2021-27 Budget, the European Commission plans to tweak its “cohesion funds” away from Eastern Europe and towards […]

Larry Kudlow, the President’s new chairman of the National Economic Council, is a well known proponent of the idea of “King Dollar.” That concept states, basically, that the U.S. should aim for a strong dollar, even though it produces large trade deficits, because it allows the country to buy more foreign goods and services and […]

Opponents of President Trump’s proposed tariffs obscure one important feature of them: they provide revenue for the Federal budget. President William McKinley financed the naval squadron that Admiral George Dewey sailed into Manila Bay to capture the Philippines entirely without an income tax. Looking at our budget today, he would be horrified by the trillion-dollar […]

For several years, the stocks of the FAANGs (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) have been the way to make money. Over the five years to December 31, 2017, the FAANG stocks returned 41.6% annualized, compared with 18.6% for the S&P 500 Index, to trade at almost 70 times historic earnings by that point. Yet all […]

Richard Clarida, heavily tipped to be the new Fed Vice-Chairman, has propounded an interest rate theory of the “new neutral.” This states that the Federal Funds rate at full employment, when policy is neither loose nor tight, should revolve around an interest rate of 2% instead of the previous 4% — in other words zero […]