The United States economy has changed significantly since the September 11 attacks, in a thoroughly unpleasant direction. While Gross Domestic Product has risen by 4.6 percent (in real terms) from the third quarter of 2001, government consumption has risen by 8.2 percent, while private fixed asset investment has declined. As always, disaster has tended to […]

It is an aphorism among both free market economists and many of the social democrat variety — into which latter camp “The Economist” surely now falls — that heavy immigration is economically beneficial. Yet when examined more closely, the benefits are suspect at best, and may well on balance prove to be negative.

Second quarter earnings season, now complete, demonstrated one thing: U.S. management’s ingenuity in using creative accounting to produce a deceptive earnings picture is unabated. Of all the threats to the U.S. economic system, this is the direst.

Second quarter gross domestic product growth figures, released Thursday, made the permabulls of Wall Street bellow with joy. Yet why should they? — for most of the growth was in government.

Coming to the end of the second quarter earnings season, the naturally optimistic business media are caroling how second quarter earnings have “exceeded expectations.” Maybe so, but much accounting chicanery has been used to get them to do so, and the “expectations” had themselves been manipulated.

He got into a war without an obvious exit route, on the basis of evidence that was later held to be false. He instituted new Federal spending programs without worrying about how to pay for them until too late. And, after huge popularity for several years, he began to suffer a serious credibility gap.

The boom in U.S. federal governmment spending since 2001, that is clearly about to go into even higher gear with the Medicaid drugs entitlement and the extension of the Iraq conflict, is nothing short of disgraceful. It is being implemented by people who claim to believe in smaller government, who were voted for on that […]

Bullish analysts have been calling since last fall for an economic recovery and vigorous economic growth in the second half of 2003. We’re now in the second half. So where’s the growth?

As the prescription drugs bill heads into a conference between House and Senate, it is already clear that it will add hugely to the Federal deficit, worsen drugs coverage for many senior citizens already adequately covered, and further socialize U.S. medicine. So it’s worth asking: is there an economically superior way to cover medical costs?

All good things must come to an end, even the 20 year boom in the bond market.