The Martin Hutchinson Place
Former President Donald Trump is often accused of not having a policy program for a potential second administration. Commentators talk of his followers as being mere cultists and suggest that the soft-left belligerence of the George W. Bush administration represented more authentic “Conservatism.” This is wrong; on most subjects (I will discuss the exceptions) Trump […]
The World Economic Forum meeting last week was interesting in that, for the first time, some dissent appeared to the WEF’s party line. That party line is not “corporatism” which requires private property (albeit owned by corporations). With its slogan of “You Will Own Nothing and Be Happy” the WEF negates private property and represents […]
There is a central contradiction in modern capitalism. Markets have become concentrated in a few ultra-large companies, which then attempt to broaden their spectrum of employees through “diversity” initiatives. Yet the oligopoly of large companies diminishes competition and harms consumers, while “diversity” weakens trust within the corporations and increases communication costs. How much better was […]
Mexico appears to face a dismal future after its election on 6 June this year. The leading candidate Claudia Scheinbaum is a devoted follower of current President Manuel Lopez Obrador, and according to current polls is likely to win and thereafter follow his hard-left policies. The opposition candidate Xóchitl Galvez combines the forces of both […]
The interminably prolonged era of zero-interest-rate “funny money” in 2010-21 produced an unparalleled tsunami of “malinvestment” – investment that was not economically justified in normal conditions – in both the United States and throughout the world. This tottering ziggurat has held up in 2022-23, despite soaring interest rates. But there are signs that, as 2024 […]
The wooly-headed economist Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) divided humanity into two classes: the laboring classes (which included merchants and industrial management) and the idling class, who should be suppressed. Investors were included in the idling class, as Saint-Simon failed to recognize the importance of capital allocation in economic development. Keynes, with his “euthanasia of the […]
Interest rates turned up decisively during 2021 and inflation has receded somewhat, yet stock prices are close to their all-time highs, far above traditional valuation norms. Analysts expect this trend to continue, with Goldman Sachs this week raising its 2024 target for the Standard and Poor’s 500 index to 5,100. The problem is: continued bullishness […]
The Biden Administration’s Lina Khan, head of the Federal Trade Commission, is one of the administration’s very few bright spots, intellectually speaking. She has overthrown the existing merger jurisdiction, set up by the late great Judge Robert Bork in the 1980s, to question why the FTC should let through mergers as a matter of course. […]
It was French President Charles de Gaulle who in 1965 referred to the dollar’s position as the world’s leading international reserve currency as conferring “exorbitant privilege” on the United States. De Gaulle’s words represented his usual mixture of deep and subtle wisdom and fierce resentment of the Anglo-Saxon powers. For forty years after he spoke, […]
Much has been written about the end of the bond bull market of 1981-2021 and the return to higher interest rates in the future. In this environment, conventional long-term bonds are a poor investment – their value is eroded by inflation and their prices will fall if interest rates rise. However, there is now an […]