…Calmly observing the changing world

More often than not, the Federal Reserve presents a united front in as many of their statements as possible.  So we should take notice when – like now – there is a high profile departure from the consensus opinion. “Monetary policy is a useful tool, but it cannot solve every problem faced by the United [...]

Modern economics’s ongoing failure in Japan is an especially intriguing spectacle to behold.  The country has an enormous debt – more than it could ever hope to pay off, and all efforts to revive the Japanese economy by the intellectual class have failed to do anything besides creating more debt. You might expect that after [...]

If your weather hasn’t cast a pall over June as it has here in the Pacific Northwest, the news and the economy surely have.  The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico highlights governmental incompetence, the G20 lacks unified economic policy, some place called Kyrgyzstan is a complete basket case, and currencies and markets gyrate [...]

Across the country today (note to media: April 15th is not called the “Ides of April”), so-called Tea Parties were held to protest – well, to protest against a lot of things.  I was on site at the rally in Salem, Oregon.  If you’re a little lacking in your Tea Party knowledge (or if you’ve [...]

The threats to a republic are many, and the idealized federal republic may be more mythical than real – but it is at the very least, an excellent goal. The republic seeks to tread carefully in that slimmest of passageways between the tyranny of the majority and the tyranny of a minority. It thus eschews [...]

Six weeks ago, President Obama prominently chastised the court for a recent ruling while the judges bristled in their seats (Alito, visibly), being constrained by decorum during the State of the Union.  Last week, Chief Justice Roberts openly wondered, “Why we are there”, and referred to the State of the Union as a “political pep [...]

When we are children, we conceive of banks as places to safely deposit money. If, by chance, you grew up watching It’s A Wonderful Life every Christmas, you probably have the idea that money deposited in banks is loaned out into your community: If modern banking truly worked this way, you would understand that when [...]

Marxist czars are ascending to heights of power over the American economy. Bankrupt corporations stay in business by borrowing money at near-zero interest rates from the equally bankrupt government. The invisible hand of the market has been replaced by the translucent hand of the Federal Reserve as they no longer conceal their “ongoing market activities”. [...]

Sometimes writers and entertainers struggle to come up with content that illustrates the hidden absurdities in the news by drawing comparisons to fictional scenarios which are obviously absurd. However, it seems that more and more, the real news is so bizarre, and so difficult to believe on its own, that no fictional parody is required. [...]

It seems that if you are an economist, you can contort your mind into believing that spending causes wealth. Once you have accomplished this task, everything else seems to flow fairly easily. Pretty soon, you start to believe that governments should increase spending during recessions to boost the economy, and maybe eventually that we can [...]