We have just seen what is probably yet another failure of universal suffrage, admittedly in Argentina, where such failures have been themselves universal. The reformist Javier Milei, who had a good handle on the pretty robust reforms Argentina desperately needs appears to have been defeated by the government Peronist, who assisted his campaign with massive government handouts (sending the country further bankrupt) and was swept to power by the shirtless and propertyless mob in Buenos Aires. One man, one vote does not work. One man, one vote with the left stealing all the close elections works even less well, but election security is a separate albeit important question. Continue reading →

Two groups of people from elite backgrounds, Boston merchants of the early 19th century and Stanford professorate alumni of the early 21st century, founded institutions that made important changes to the U.S. financial system. Yet the financial institution founded by the Boston merchants played an important stabilizing and constructive role, while that founded by Stanford alumni was intrinsically destabilizing and ended in a record-breaking disaster. The structural differences between an unregulated yet sound financial system in the early 19th century and an over-regulated yet utterly unsound one in the 21st century explain the differences in outcomes. Continue reading →

Janan Ganesh, in a recent Financial Times column, described Britain as “Europe’s haven from the hard right.” In doing so, he crystallized why the last 13 years have been ones of gentle, increasingly annoying decline. In all Western societies, policy is bedeviled by a kind of creeping “woke” socialism representing the centrist consensus; that brings only accelerating decay. As a believer that the correct governing policy is the Toryism of Lord Liverpool, never fully followed since the Tories lost power in November 1830, I posit the “hard-right” or “far-right” is thus the only way of escaping this morass. Continue reading →

Kabosu, the Shiba Inu dog made famous by the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, died recently at the age of 18 – a good run for even a famous dog. Dogecoin itself is far from its April 2021 market capitalization of $50 billion, although its current $8.8 billion ranks it a very respectable ninth on the cryptocurrency league table. A new movie “Dumb Money” celebrated the GameStop/ Dogecoin retail-driven stock and crypto- boom of 2021; a blistering review by hedge-fund manager Clifford Asness in the Wall Street Journal denounces the movie vitriolically, mostly for its assumption that amateurs could beat the “People who have spent their entire careers committed to the practice” of investing. However, institutional investors have always underperformed the market on average and the “wisdom of crowds” is generally wrong. It is worth trying to explain why. Continue reading →

The current U.S. and British education systems are increasingly dysfunctional. Far too high a percentage of the population has been bullied into attending college, with very little benefit in most cases and with costs that have escalated several times faster than inflation or even incomes. The faculty and administration of top colleges are increasingly isolated from the political outlook of their fellow citizens – and increasingly unconstrained in forcing their warped worldview on the untrained youthful minds in their care. Fortunately, help is at hand, from online learning and artificial intelligence. These will revolutionize both learning and job possibilities, forcing change that may allow us to cut down to size both colleges and their costs. Continue reading →

President Trump has proposed a universal 10% tariff on U.S. imports and has been met by universal derision among professional economists. Not so fast! High tariffs were a feature of Republican governance before the Great Depression. While they operated on a “beggar my neighbor” basis against the British steel industry, for example, they have retained an inchoate appeal to Republican voters that Trump exploited in his 2016 campaign and as President. A low universal tariff, such as Trump now proposes, may be both politically and economically optimal, as I shall explain. Continue reading →

At the end of 2019, the Standard and Poor’s 500 index of U.S. share prices stood at 3221.29. Since then, the United States has been subjected to a devastating epidemic, has wasted trillions of dollars in response to that epidemic, driving its debt to GDP ratio up to 108%, has suffered debilitating inflation that has caused interest rates to be raised sharply, and has replaced competent economic policies with ones that seem especially designed for economic destruction. Yet the S&P 500 Index is today up a full 40% from its December 2019 level. When examined carefully, the market is not only overvalued, it stands at three times its fair level. Continue reading →

Jason Furman, in the Wall Street Journal, is just the latest former senior financial official (Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, 2013-17) to suggest the Fed should raise its inflation target above the current 2%. We know what these people want – a target high enough that rates can be reduced to zero again, below the rate of inflation, benefiting their rich friends with access to leverage. For the rest of us, there is only one proper inflation target: zero. Adopting that target would solve most of the economic problems currently plaguing the West. Continue reading →