The Martin Hutchinson Place
Moving into a new year, we naturally look for interesting anniversaries, from which lessons can be drawn. In 2023, there are no centenaries, bicentenaries or tercentenaries of interest, while I have written extensively recently about the 1970s, in which 1973 of the “Arab Oil Crisis” is the crucial year. However, 2023 is also the 150th […]
When you add constraints to a complex mathematical or engineering system, at first it does not change much. Then it begins to perform less well, but only gradually until suddenly, with the addition of an additional constraint that may itself be unimportant, the system collapses and either fails to produce a solution or produces one […]
The core imperative for the move to fiat money and then to permanent “stimulus” policies was the urge by central banks to play Santa Claus. By lowering interest rates, they raise asset prices and make everyone feel richer. This is dangerous; it produces asset bubbles, kills productivity and increases inequality, making everybody but the very […]
Iconoclasm, whether in 8th century Byzantium or as the Reformation in 16th century Europe, was a response to a religious order that had become dogmatic, corrupt and detached from the real needs of its flock. It was more than mere reform, because it involved breaking the sacred objects of the establishment’s veneration. Economically, socially and […]
For the last decade, cash flow has seemed irrelevant. Interest rates have been close to zero and well below the inflation rate, so that loss-making companies and projects with cost or time overruns could easily raise additional capital. Now, with inflation at 7-8%, interest rates are still negative in real terms. However, whatever the level […]
Imagine being a citizen of the Western Roman Empire early in the reign of the Emperor Honorius (ruled 395 to 423). You would know that the Emperor was not very good, and that the Empire was fighting off the barbarians only through the efforts of General Stilcho (c.359-408). Yet you would look back for better […]
Former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh has published an editorial in the Wall Street Journal expressing support for a digital dollar, lest the United States lose competitive ground to China. Since Warsh is a possible Fed chairman should Republicans gain the Presidency in 2024, his support for a digital dollar is truly alarming, given the civil […]
The collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto-currency exchange FTX, resulting in the loss of at least $1 billion of customer money, will be used to demand more regulation of the crypto-currency business. Yet its growth, collapse and the murky web of corrupt connections surrounding it were a product of the decade of “funny money” that has […]
As we move through the 2020s, the 2010s, the decade between the financial crisis and the COVID outbreak, come into perspective. In terms of monetary, fiscal and regulatory policy in the United States and throughout the rich world, it was extreme, worse than the 1970s in its disregard for free-market first principles. The main difference […]
Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenage climate change activist, was not invited to attend the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference, and therefore denounced it, explaining that her true objective was not to battle climate change but to undermine the rotten racist Western capitalist system. Thereby she showed herself in her true colors, which are the […]