Since 2008, economic policies throughout the rich world have boiled down to one word: stimulus. Interest rates in most countries have been held down well below the level of inflation, while spending programs have pushed national budgets far out of balance. As in Europe calls rise for further doses of “fiscal stimulus” in spite of […]

The $2 billion (or maybe $5 billion) loss by JP Morgan Chase went unnoticed for several months, because JP Morgan Chase was relying on the Value-at-Risk risk management metric, which as we pointed out in “Alchemists of Loss” is hopelessly flawed. However there is a cultural question here: large conservative banks thirty years ago would […]

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Wednesday announced their revised estimate for first quarter labor productivity growth; it was minus 0.9%. When you look around the world, declining productivity growth is a tendency everywhere. There is a simple explanation; the anti-market distortions imposed on the global economy by mistaken policy are producing their effect in […]

Bloomberg Businessweek May 29 had a fascinating article propounding a “Big Mac” labor value theory, and using it to suggest that all restrictions to international migration were economically damaging. I have disagreed strongly with that conclusion from time to time in this column beginning in 2004, but yet found the basic data evidence compelling. I […]