The 200th birthday of Karl Marx on May 5 passed with several indications, in both Europe and China that his appeal is not dead, and indeed showing considerable signs of revival. China has significantly reversed its move away from Marxism, whereas elements in the EU High Command seem to be recognizing that a centralized Marxist […]

While we are in a brief period of decent global growth, the underlying productivity trends in rich countries are disquieting. What’s more, it now seems likely that, except in the United States, we will not escape the zero-interest rate lunacy before the next downturn. Even more disquieting is a re-acceleration of global population growth, so […]

Most EU countries are rich and highly productive, with specialized industries other countries would die for. Yet the bloc’s economic track record has been mediocre in the past decade and looks likely to become considerably worse. In its 2021-27 Budget, the European Commission plans to tweak its “cohesion funds” away from Eastern Europe and towards […]

Larry Kudlow, the President’s new chairman of the National Economic Council, is a well known proponent of the idea of “King Dollar.” That concept states, basically, that the U.S. should aim for a strong dollar, even though it produces large trade deficits, because it allows the country to buy more foreign goods and services and […]

Opponents of President Trump’s proposed tariffs obscure one important feature of them: they provide revenue for the Federal budget. President William McKinley financed the naval squadron that Admiral George Dewey sailed into Manila Bay to capture the Philippines entirely without an income tax. Looking at our budget today, he would be horrified by the trillion-dollar […]

For several years, the stocks of the FAANGs (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) have been the way to make money. Over the five years to December 31, 2017, the FAANG stocks returned 41.6% annualized, compared with 18.6% for the S&P 500 Index, to trade at almost 70 times historic earnings by that point. Yet all […]

Richard Clarida, heavily tipped to be the new Fed Vice-Chairman, has propounded an interest rate theory of the “new neutral.” This states that the Federal Funds rate at full employment, when policy is neither loose nor tight, should revolve around an interest rate of 2% instead of the previous 4% — in other words zero […]

The fury from Facebook and its friends over Cambridge Analytica’s misuse of their database to help elect President Trump is matched by the reality that Facebook officials voluntarily allowed use of their data to help elect Barack Obama in 2012. Given these realities, close to 100% of the users of Facebook (everybody except the modest […]

The announcement of a possible meeting between “Little Rocket Man” North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and President Trump has startled observers, with much of the American right, especially the neocon variety, worrying that Trump will prove incapable of outmaneuvering Kim. Yet an examination of the economic and political possibilities for North Korea and for Kim himself […]

President Trump’s sudden announcement of tariffs on steel and aluminum is by no means unprecedented – Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush took similar actions. Yet it emphasizes a reality first pointed out in these columns in 2010 and in a presentation later that year: the globalization project, beloved of Whig economists and big-government types […]