Year: 2024

The Bear’s Lair: A Kamala Krash is long overdue

The last week’s market turbulence may or may not persist and should not directly be blamed on Kamala Harris’ selection as Democrat candidate for the Presidency and her modest bounce in the polls. Instead, the focus should be on the last two decades’ economic policies, for which Harris, while not responsible, is generally an enthusiast. […]

The Bear’s Lair: “The End of History” led to dystopia

Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 book “The End of History” propounded a Utopian vision in which the fall of Communism had left liberal democracy as the universal global ideology, ending conflict and producing an era of universal prosperity. Thirty years later, we can see the reality more clearly: the intellectual mainsprings of Communism never fell, “liberal democracy” […]

The Bear’s Lair: An Economic Agenda for J.D. Vance

The selection of J.D. Vance as Republican Vice-Presidential candidate to Donald Trump raises the question of what economic agenda a successful Trump/Vance ticket might implement. The two have different backgrounds and intellectual histories, yet there are themes common to both men that suggest an economically sound agenda as set out below might play to both […]

The Bear’s Lair: Britain becomes the guinea pig for disaster

The new Keir Starmer Labour government’s energy secretary Ed Miliband, former leader of the party (2010-15) has overruled his officials to ban offshore North Sea energy drilling, sued to stop a coal mine project to which the Tories had given the go-ahead, announced the resumption of new onshore solar and wind projects and promised greater […]

The Bear’s Lair: 235 years of crass stupidity

France’s cuisine is probably civilization’s finest creation, and its art, music and fashion aren’t bad, either. Yet the French people fall for every leftist scam that is pulled on them, notably in the second round of elections last week, and are far too prone to revere intellectuals who would best be placed in solitary confinement. […]

The Bear’s Lair: The battle against cheap labor

For 200 years, leftist political economists and low-wage sweatshops have lobbied governments to put in taxes and regulations that lower wage rates, supposedly to “create jobs.” Such interference with the market, by making labor artificially cheap prevents the “creative destruction” that alone produces productivity gains and better living standards. The policy mix that produces high […]

The Bear’s Lair: Resuscitating Toryism

If polls are correct, the British “Conservative” party will suffer a huge defeat on July 4, with Labour winning a large majority and Nigel Farage’s Reform party eating a big share of the previous Tory vote, albeit winning few seats in Parliament. Given the “Conservative” party’s abominable performance in the previous 14 years of government […]

The Bear’s Lair: How Supreme Courts should work

The United States Supreme Court’s season ends in the next few weeks with a slew of decisions, after a year in which it has been subjected to increasingly vitriolic criticism by a left that feels neglected. In Britain, the “Supreme Court” set up by Tony Blair has been a fount of leftist Establishment wokery and […]

The Bear’s Lair: The long-term cost of dopey government

Benjamin Disraeli’s 1868 nationalization of the British tech sector does not get a mention in Robert Blake’s 800-page biography, yet it has had deeply damaging repercussions for Britain’s well-being over the 150-plus years since it happened. That illustrates our most important hidden problem: government’s regulatory meddling, utterly without regard to economic principles, may well produce […]

The Bear’s Lair: Heaven and Hell in Latin America

The election win of Claudia Scheinbaum in Mexico dooms that country to at least six more years of violent Marxist wokery. Yet in a few countries elsewhere in Latin America, the universal gloom of socialism is lifting – Xavier Milei’s government in Argentina and Nayib Bukele’s in El Salvador both offer hope for the future […]