The Martin Hutchinson Place
The 1930s saw a major global recession and a decade of debt default and restructuring, sovereign, corporate and personal. The 1970s saw a series of mild recessions, accompanied by inflation; debt defaults and restructurings were far less severe. Today we are likely due for a recession of uncertain length and depth (though unlikely to match […]
The Fed’s decision this week to hold the Federal Funds short-term interest rate at the 5.25%-5.50% range mirrored recent actions in other central banks worldwide. That is a pity; inflation is by no means conquered yet and real interest rates are well below their levels of the United States in 1969, the last time interest […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni, burned Londinium to the ground in AD 61 – we can still find a layer of oxidized iron in the geological record attesting to her success. While Londinium was not a big city by modern standards – its population was probably about the same as today’s Poughkeepsie, with the same […]
Javier Milei, a libertarian economist favored to win next month’s Argentine election, was interviewed by Tucker Carlson last week. After proclaiming his adherence to Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, Milei announced that there should be no public sector layoffs initially, instead allowing the economy to recover before laid-off bureaucrats had to seek work. Bad […]
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 […]
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 […]