All bubbles burst eventually. Google has become a bigger political donor that Goldman Sachs. The tech sector is no longer the naïve capitalist entity that was startled by the Microsoft antitrust lawsuit in 1998. Venture capital money has flowed profusely into it for half a decade and valuations have reached to the sky. Some of […]

Bolivian President Evo Morales last weekend won re-election by a smashing margin. His eight-year rule has weakened Bolivian property rights, indulged in frequent nationalizations and demonized capitalism. Yet it has also produced Bolivia’s best growth rates in several decades, far better than the orthodox and admirable policies pursued in 1985-2003. Thus Morales’ policy of making […]

The IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook, in an unholy alliance with Larry Summers, claimed this week that a surge in publicly funded infrastructure spending would provide an increase in economic output with no downside risk. The truth is almost precisely the opposite: by indulging in ill-thought-out and boondoggle-filled public infrastructure spending, governments in rich countries […]

The latest estimate by the Congressional Budget Office of the federal deficit in the year to last Tuesday was $506 billion. The deficit is expected to improve marginally this year, then jump back above $500 billion next year and worsen steadily for the next decade and thereafter. Given that we are five years into an […]