It has been a bad December for the stock markets, but pundits across the land are predicting a recovery in the new year from this terrible drop. Short-term market fluctuations are unpredictable, but the reality remains: owing to decades of funny money the market has got far ahead of its equilibrium value, which is now […]

President Trump’s economic policies are mostly very sensible, yet in two areas he has indulged in wishful thinking, proclaiming essentially that Santa Claus will bail out the United States. One is fiscal policy, where he has not restrained spending nor produced any plan beyond faster economic growth to solve the nation’s yawning budget deficit. The […]

Charles Mackay’s 1841 masterpiece asserted that the “madness of crowds” created “extraordinary popular delusions” that led to investment bubbles and crashes. Recent events suggest that when those crowds congregate in cities, rationality flies out of the window, and delusions infect the entire urban body politic. Rationalists, dwelling in leafy suburbs or deep in rural hideaways, […]

Retiring Senator Jeff Flake (R.-AZ), apparently concerned about President Donald Trump’s influence in all areas, wants legislation to make the Fed truly independent – of Congress as well as the President, presumably. However, independent central bankers like Ben Bernanke and Mark Carney have been responsible for most of the truly lousy monetary policy of the […]

This column has on a number of occasions been critical of President Donald Trump; his views on interest rates are especially unenlightened. Yet in two crucial areas, where corporate interests and the intelligentsia had spread a deep fog of deliberate lies to smother intelligent global discourse, Trump has acted as a mighty wind of clarity […]