This column has written fairly frequently about the blight of regulation, but it is always difficult to find concrete examples, while proving economic damage requires considering the counterfactual where the regulation did not exist. However, in my researches for “Forging Modernity,” a study of Britain’s Industrial Revolution, I have come across a modest-sized regulation whose […]

“We have the means to impose the state of the world” said World Economic Forum chairman Klaus Schwab, sounding ever more like Ernst Stavro Blofeld, at the Davos forum this week. In that remark, he summed up precisely what is wrong with globalization – it leads inexorably to an unending global monopoly. Even the totalitarian […]

Pundits all over the media are proclaiming gloomily that we are in for a re-run of the 1970s. They are far too optimistic. If you look at the world with an unprejudiced eye, we currently have aggressive power blocs, rapidly escalating protectionism, overpriced stock and real estate markets and a huge mass of malinvestment from […]

The Financial Times last week gave an account of the new “pencil” tower at 111 West 57th Street that made me glad I am not a billionaire. For one thing, if by inordinate wealth I were compelled to purchase an apartment on the upper floors of that building, the weight of my book collection – […]

The well-respected political journalist Matthew Continetti has just published a book “The Right: The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism,” one of many such, which takes the meaning of “Conservatism” as varying from decade to decade, according to the winds of events and popular culture. This seems to me a silly way to go about […]

There are many factors that make rational economic decision-making difficult. One of them is that the media and educated opinion, mostly wholly ignorant of the laws of economics (or preferring to ignore them) often has violently misguided views on a subject, which it uses its intellectual power and marketplace megaphone to impose. William F. Buckley […]

The United States and the world as a whole have fallen into a difficult period in the last year, with war in Ukraine, rising inflation and almost certainly a coming recession as interest rates soar. Many blame President Joe Biden for this, but I thought it worth carrying out a thought experiment: what if Donald […]

The U.S. Consumer Price Index ticked up again this week, to 1.2% in the latest month (15.4% annualized) or 8.5% in the last 12 months, making the 10-year Treasury bond rate at 2.7% even more inadequate to restrain it. As the negative real rate of interest gets more severe, it pushes inflation up further, causing […]

When I moved from Britain to the United States in 1995, a significant motivator was my search for good government. The British government’s quality had sharply declined after the departure of Margaret Thatcher and seemed likely to get still worse after Tony Blair’s inevitable arrival. Conversely, the Bill Clinton/Newt Gingrich tandem was distinctly hopeful for […]

The Bank of Japan has indicated that it will buy Japan Government bonds in an indefinite amount at a yield of 0.25% — thus refusing to share in the belated tightening policies of other central banks. That is a policy worthy of Rudolf von Havenstein, President of the Reichsbank in the years leading up to […]