The Keynesian U.S. commentariat, which includes quite a high percentage of nominal Republicans, has been proclaiming a “contradiction” between the needs of economic policy. The need to cut government spending to reduce the deficit is supposedly balanced by ill-effects from declines in government employment – even the Wall Street Journal’s economics blog claimed that the […]

Benn Steil’s excellent new study “The Battle of Bretton Woods” (Princeton, 2013) focuses on the 1944 global monetary conference as a struggle between its two principal protagonists, the U.S. Treasury’s Harry Dexter White, and Britain’s celebrity economist, Maynard Lord Keynes. Even Steil, an American who has considerable sympathy with Keynes, is quite clear that he […]

Britain lost its AAA credit rating from Moody’s last week, amidst much wailing from the government and cries of triumph from the opposition that had been largely responsible for the country’s declining creditworthiness. However, since the United States lost its AAA from Standard and Poor’s in 2011, with no visible adverse effects on its bond […]

Warren Buffett’s political pronouncements are intellectually vacuous hot air. Yet I suspect he retains excellent investor’s instincts about the future trajectory of the U.S. economy. So when he manifestly overpays in a $28 billion acquisition of the food producer H.J. Heinz, we should listen, and ponder what the deal tells us about where we are […]

There’s no question that the U.S. economy of 1970 was less than rigorous in its use of management and workforce. The regulated commercial banking sector had a very easy life; the famous “borrow at 3%, lend at 6%, be on the golf course by 3 pm” quip was pretty close to reality except in the […]

The City of Detroit is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, with a team of auditors expected to report this month, after which Michigan Governor Rick Snyder may appoint an emergency financial manager. The reasons for Detroit’s decline are no secret: excessive taxes and spending led to an exodus of population, which was exacerbated by […]

We were told this week that Myanmar had paid off its $6 billion debt arrears to the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the Paris Club of official creditors, with the help of $3 billion in debt forgiveness from Japan. This has already released $1 billion in new money from the Asian Development Bank […]

U.S. lovers of high taxes frequently refer nostalgically to the glories of the Eisenhower years, when the top rate of tax was 91%, claiming their prosperity proves there to be no negative supply-side effects from high income tax rates. But if you look at the data more closely, the U.S. economy of the Eisenhower years […]

President Obama’s intransigence on economic matters is increasingly clear, so compromise seems unlikely and a succession of tax increases and wasteful spending programs seems inevitable. Meanwhile Ben Bernanke’s Fed enables this dangerous course by massive “quantitative easing.” Assuming Bernanke is succeeded by a like-minded colleague (more on that below) we will thus suffer this economically […]

Richard Nixon, whose centenary was marked last week (born January 9, 1913), is generally regarded as a very flawed President. In terms of domestic economic policy, it’s tough to argue with this; we are still paying the price of the big-government regulatory excrescences introduced under his tenure. Internationally his record is much better; it can […]