The Martin Hutchinson Place
Saudi Arabia recently signed a contract with China to sell oil with payment in yuan (China’s currency, sometimes known as renminbi, for inscrutable Chinese reasons). Argentina and Brazil are proposing to use a common currency, the sur, for trade between them. India and Russia are undertaking trade in rupees and rubles. This is a gathering […]
Thomas Hobbes in his 1651 “Leviathan” described life in a state of nature as “nasty, brutish and short.” Fortunately, shortly after Leviathan was published, the Tory architects of the English Restoration Settlement brought several protections into the British and later American Constitutions that revolutionized our fates: they were property rights, Habeas Corpus and the First […]
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) this week announced the winner of its auction for the loans and deposits of the failed Silicon Valley Bank: First Citizens BancShares (Nasdaq:FCNCA), a North Carolina outfit with no obvious synergy with SVB’s customer base or tech know-how. Given First Citizens’ capital base of only $14.1 billion ($9.7 billion […]
Since the time of Sir Robert Peel (Prime Minister 1834-35, 1841-46) the British Conservative party has been notorious for its inability to conserve anything worthwhile, let alone to restore anything that its opponents had dismantled. For a few years in the 1980s, it appeared that Margaret Thatcher, while imperfect on several issues, had reversed this […]
Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was at first sight a splendid 21st century replica of the 18th century Country Banks that fueled the Industrial Revolution – it was local to Silicon Valley, supremely attuned to the major industry in its locality, and easy for that industry to deal with. So why did it fail? The answer […]
The Federal Trade Commission under its fearless leftist chair Lina Khan is proposing to ban non-compete agreements, which prevent employees from working for a competitor for an often lengthy period after their departure and are applied to some 30 million U.S. employees. The usual Chamber of Commerce types and “conservative” journalists have squawked, arguing that […]
The reputations of past Presidents are continually being re-evaluated. Woodrow Wilson, a demi-god at the time of the 1944 film “Wilson,” has now been sharply downgraded by both left (for his racism) and right (for his rigid Progressivism and his share in the disastrous Versailles Treaty). Conversely, Harry Truman and Calvin Coolidge have been rehabilitated […]
The admirable Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R.-Ga.), my favorite Congressperson, this week called for a “national divorce” by which “blue states” and “red states” would separate, thereby allowing the “red states” to form a smaller union of the like-minded: Christian, capitalist and economically vibrant. It’s a lovely idea, but the new Red America, increasingly wealthy […]
President Joe Biden, in his State of the Union address last week, scored a moral victory over the Republicans by accusing them of wanting to cut the Social Security and Medicare entitlement programs, thereby forcing them to deny any such intention. However, the actuarial reality is clear: Medicare will become insolvent around 2027 and Social […]
In 2016, this column recommended that Americans choose Robert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool as their President (having been born in 1770, before U.S. independence, he was clearly eligible). Alas, the American people made the mistake of ignoring this recommendation, both in that year and in 2020. This time around, this column has […]