The Federal government’s rental evictions moratorium has now been extended until March 31, and there is every prospect it will be extended further. This yet again weakens the property rights of landlords, eroded steadily since World War II. With shareholders also attacked by the ESG movement and interest rates going negative in many countries, no form of property is exempt from expropriation. We might as well be serfs! Continue reading
The Bear’s Lair: Back the bros against the hedgies
“Bros” connecting through the social media forum “WallStreetBets” last week staged a massive rally in the shares of GameStop (NYSE:GME) causing huge losses to a hedge fund that had shorted the stock. Most commentary suggested this should be a rare occurrence, as the hedge fund was a professional investor performing a valuable market function, while the Bros were amateur retail investors. However, in today’s markets, I would bet on amateur investor Bros showing better investment performance than the hedge funds. Continue reading
The Bear’s Lair: Economic icons the Boomers broke
Helen Andrews’ book “Boomers” is a beautifully written indictment of the Boomer generation, similar to Lytton Strachey’s “Eminent Victorians,” by a Millennial social conservative who believes the Boomers broke U.S. social mores. On the economic side, it is also clear that somebody destroyed sound economic thinking but much less clear who did it – Maynard Keynes, after all, was not a Boomer. Continue reading
The Bear’s Lair: The costs and pluses of Bidenomics
President Joe Biden’s economic program is becoming fairly clear and as expected it imposes severe costs on the U.S. economy. There are however also some positive nuggets, which we should welcome and hope to keep for better times ahead. Even with those nuggets, however, the economic outlook is grim, largely because of policies on which all Presidents for the past two decades have been agreed. Continue reading
The Bear’s Lair: Delenda Est Facebook
The Twitter and Facebook bans on President Trump and the Apple, Google and Amazon bans of Parler certainly intensify one’s dislike of those tech sector giants. Yet beyond dislike, there is a question to be answered: is it possible that, despite their astronomical stock market valuations, they may reduce the overall economic value of global output? It is a question well worth pondering. Continue reading
The Bear’s Lair: The costs of consensus
I have just been researching the politics, ideas and economics of the Restoration period. While political differences were enormous and at times lethal – between outright “Leveller” republicans and followers of Sir Robert Filmer’s “Patriarcha” who believed in absolute monarchy — it was scientifically and economically as creative and entrepreneurial a period as Britain has ever known. Conversely, the half-century of one-party Whig rule under the early Georges was one of the utmost intellectual and technological somnolence. The contrast extends to the present day, as I shall endeavor to demonstrate. Continue reading
The Bear’s Lair: The collapse of California
My address book of friends living in California, some of them rich, has in 2020 gone from double digits to zero. Even within the economically doom-ridden United States, California’s outlook is especially grim, with “Bearmageddon” due in five years rather than ten. Yet there is an avenue of escape: the state must be split into autonomous regions, not to flood the U.S. Senate with yet more profligate and foolish Democrat Senators, but to ensure that any individual doom will be relatively small-scale, with other regions of the state avoiding it. Continue reading
The Bear’s Lair: Will the Bear’s Lair see Bearmageddon?
The twentieth anniversary of this “Bear’s Lair” column passed in late October. During that period, the stock market has risen, but pretty much every other indicator of U.S. economic health has declined. Actuarially at age 70, I can expect to be writing this column for another 14 years and 3 months (though the column’s coherence may be limited in the last few years of that). Whether this column will cover the final “Bearmageddon” collapse of our economic system is thus uncertain – it will be a damned near-run thing, as the Duke of Wellington said of Waterloo. Continue reading
The Bear’s Lair: Escape from the zombie economy
According to statistics collected by the Financial Times, the number of zombie companies, those that do not earn enough to service their debts, has increased steadily since 2010. What is more, the probability of those companies remaining “zombie” has also increased steadily. This is not surprising; 25 years of artificially low interest rates and easy money will increase the proportion of zombie companies, whose life would otherwise end in bankruptcy. However, zombification isn’t capitalism, and it will have the same dire long-term effect as other non-capitalisms have historically had. Continue reading
The Bear’s Lair: The Wokenomics approach to monetary policy
In a thousand years’ time, when the economic history of our era is examined by forensic historians, Senator Lamar Alexander (R.-TN) will receive special notice as the tiny catalyst for economic collapse. His rejection of Judy Shelton for the Fed Board of Governors, on the grounds that she is too close to an administration that is presumably leaving office in 37 days, will ensure that there is no voice of sanity in U.S. monetary policy – and that the final implosion of the U.S. economy is thereby rendered unavoidable. For the Fed’s current management, as for Antifa, even small voices of dissent must be silenced. Continue reading