The United States and the world as a whole have fallen into a difficult period in the last year, with war in Ukraine, rising inflation and almost certainly a coming recession as interest rates soar. Many blame President Joe Biden for this, but I thought it worth carrying out a thought experiment: what if Donald […]

The U.S. Consumer Price Index ticked up again this week, to 1.2% in the latest month (15.4% annualized) or 8.5% in the last 12 months, making the 10-year Treasury bond rate at 2.7% even more inadequate to restrain it. As the negative real rate of interest gets more severe, it pushes inflation up further, causing […]

When I moved from Britain to the United States in 1995, a significant motivator was my search for good government. The British government’s quality had sharply declined after the departure of Margaret Thatcher and seemed likely to get still worse after Tony Blair’s inevitable arrival. Conversely, the Bill Clinton/Newt Gingrich tandem was distinctly hopeful for […]

The Bank of Japan has indicated that it will buy Japan Government bonds in an indefinite amount at a yield of 0.25% — thus refusing to share in the belated tightening policies of other central banks. That is a policy worthy of Rudolf von Havenstein, President of the Reichsbank in the years leading up to […]