At least in this post…this is a lightening round of some of the issues in the news: Yes the markets are getting whipsawed, even with today’s big move back up. Not surprising; valuations using conventional metrics (such as the market price to earnings multiple) have been extremely high compared to history. One can make the […]
Archives
-
All economics, all the time
06 Feb 2018
-
What George Orwell Knew
09 Sep 2017
The mainstream media coverage of the economic impact of hurricanes Harvey and Irma has been very good. There is generally an acknowledgment of the individual human pain and suffering that comes from catastrophic natural disasters. The loss of human life is incalculable from an economic perspective. Upwards of 70 people have died because of hurricane […]
-
Deconstructing the “De-growth” Movement
20 Aug 2017
Tom Rogan in the Washington Examiner wrote a very interesting piece on the new expression of an old idea–”degrowth.” (see http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/the-far-left-has-an-idiotic-new-craze-reduce-economic-growth/article/2631274). He leads with these words: “Even the Soviets sought to maximize economic output. But today’s contemporary far-left are far bolder: they believe that economics itself is wrong.” He writes further, “From their perspective, government […]
-
We haven’t really touched on the economy in a while, so I’ll briefly hit some of the latest news and invite your discussion in the comments. First up is the state of the markets. Many Berean readers know that I’m suspicious of the markets, and have been for years, since valuations by most conventional measures […]
-
The “Better Deal” is Another Raw Deal
28 Jul 2017
The Democratic Party, recognizing that it has lost touch with many of its former constituents, rolled out its “Better Deal” this week in Virginia. We have now had Teddy Roosevelt’s “Square Deal,” Franklin Roosevelt’s more famous (or infamous) “New Deal,” Harry Truman’s “Fair Deal,” and now the latest “deal” for the American people. All of […]
-
I realized only this week that last year was the centennial of the birth of Jane Jacobs, who was born in 1916 and died in 2006. Now some or all of my readers might not recognize the name, but among city planners, architectural scholars, urban historians, urban economists and political scientists of an urban bent, […]
-
Henry Hazlitt said: The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists of tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups. The drumbeat gets louder daily about Amazon crushing retailers, and it is […]
-
I just returned from a visit with my mother in my (and her) home city, Huntington, West Virginia. We drove by way of Portsmouth, Ohio. Both cities are in “flyover country” and both have suffered from the heavy (and likely irreversible) loss of manufacturing jobs. To give you an idea of the losses, Huntington has […]
-
President Trump has withdrawn from the Paris Climate Agreement. I will say at the outset that I support this move. Let’s settle the “legal” issues first. The agreement was not a treaty, and was not ratified by the Senate. It might be classified as an executive agreement or as a simple presidential agreement. The courts […]
-
A reader asked me to post something on President Trump’s proposed budget to Congress. Opinions have varied as to whether this budget is the apocalypse on one end or the second coming on the other, and pretty much every nuance in between. As with most budgets–though you may not remember the last one, since it […]
Bert Wheeler
Jeff Haymond
Marc Clauson
Mark Caleb Smith
Tom Mach