President George W. Bush’s Tax Advisory Commission, due to issue a preliminary report November 1, was reported Wednesday to be considering capping the home mortgage interest deduction at $300,000 principal amount, capping corporate tax deductions for employee healthcare premiums at $11,000 and eliminating the Alternative Minimum Tax. These proposals and the furore they aroused bring […]

Since 2002, indeed to some extent since 1995, the U.S. economy has been managed on Kamikaze principles. Long term goals and traditional prudential controls have been sacrificed in order to keep the stock and housing bubbles inflated. In this traditionally tricky month of October, it appears that the kamikaze approach to economics may no longer […]

Gordon Hanson, presenting his new book “Why Does Immigration Divide America” at the Institute for International Economics Thursday, referred to a restrictionist policy on illegal immigrants as “politically impossible.” The Wall Street Journal Friday made the same reference in relation to Congress potentially shutting down Fannie Mae’s economy-threatening derivatives operation. Why are apparently plausible policies […]

It’s increasingly likely that an unpopular war and a teetering economy will bring Republican House and Senate losses in 2006, and throw the 2008 Presidential election wide open. Free market economists, frustrated by the George W. Bush administration, should thus be thinking about ideas to pitch to the potential Democrat Presidential contenders of 2008, who […]

By filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Wednesday Delta Airlines and Northwest Airlines should finally have made it clear to all that fixed-asset-rich businesses combine with a lax U.S. bankruptcy code to create a uniquely unpleasant money pit for investors, in which long term investor profitability is impossible. Corporate bankruptcy reform is essential for the survival […]

The $62.5 billion voted last week for relief of the sufferers from Hurricane Katrina throws light on an important budget truth. The games Congressional budget-busters have been playing since 1999 and the George W. Bush administration since 2001 are about to come to an unpleasant end. The Federal budget is becoming boxed in by reality.

The Efficient Market Hypothesis, propounded by Eugene Fama in 1965, postulated that stock markets are efficient and rational in discounting all available investment information. Not only has this theory in all but its weakest forms been repeatedly disproved by reality, but in the “funny money” period of the last decade its converse appears to have […]

In the 1960s through the 1980s, the former World War II Axis countries of Japan and Germany were the engines of world economic growth. Since 1990, both countries have endured lengthy recessions, their economic systems sneered at by U.S. commentators. Both countries face crucial elections in September amid signs of economic revival. Should we remove […]

The Consumer Price Index and weekly earnings figures published Tuesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed a disquieting trend: while consumer prices in the year to July 2005 increased by 3.2 percent, average weekly earnings increased by only 2.7 percent over the preceding year. In spite of solid economic growth, the average U.S. worker […]

The oil price rose Friday through $66 per barrel, up 60 percent since I wrote in June 2004 about the possibility of it hitting $80, and three times its historical average over the two decades 1982-2001. Yet the stock and bond markets over the last few weeks have shown only mild qualms, continuing their strong […]