First up is the results of off cycle elections last week. In short, they are are warning to Mr. Trump and the Republicans. While the outcomes were not surprising (as NJ and VA are very blue) the magnitude of the victory was quite a statement. For sure the government shutdown helped pad the margins in […]
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Ever since the Fall, humans constantly compare ourselves to others. Now that we are “naked and ashamed” and have to cover ourselves with fig leaves, we compare ourselves to others almost constantly. If we’re “better” than those we compare to (in some sense) we feel prideful. If we are inferior, we feel shame or envy. […]
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Mr. Trump repeatedly insists there is no inflation for his rationale for berating the Fed for not lowering interest rates, and yet the dollar has fallen ~9% since the beginning of the year. And Gold is up ~40% since his inauguration. Gold is an inflation hedge, and you can be sure, the market is pricing […]
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Trump’s embrace of Socialism is Increasing
19 Sep 2025
According to the Horseshoe Theory of Politics, the extreme left and right are much closer to each other than they are to the center. And that is true of MAGA conservatism; much that distinguishes it from traditional conservatism is precisely its embrace of values and methods from the left. As I’ve repeatedly said here at […]
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Mr. Trump’s capital call
04 Sep 2025
For a politician that ran against the socialists in the Democratic party, and is currently railing against the socialist mayoral candidate of New York City, Mr. Trump’s actions in governing are, shall we say, inconsistent. Freedom loving conservatives* understand that the government’s control in any facet of our lives, leaves less liberty for us in […]
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Trump: Trumped and Thumped
30 Aug 2025
When Joe Biden tried his patently illegal scheme to transfer billions of dollars of debt from student loan takers to a favored constituency, the only question was would someone have legal standing to get the case before the courts. There was little doubt that once there, it would be squashed, and it was in Biden […]
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Bailing out Intel is a bad idea
21 Aug 2025
But industrial policy advocates will nevertheless proudly promote it. Their primary argument is based on national security. “We have to have a chip industry, so a major employer like Intel must be saved.” This is really bad economics, and it comes out of a lack of understanding of what the alternative would be. First of […]
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Yesterday the U.S. Court of International Trade issued a unanimous three judge* ruling against Mr. Trump’s ambitious claims to virtually unlimited power to enact his “Liberation Day” tariffs on the world, as well as his tariffs against Canada, Mexico and China over fentanyl. Mr. Trump will no doubt appeal, but markets already celebrated in the […]
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Much of the declinist view of the U.S. (championed by the populist left and right) centers around the cost to individuals and communities that lose out as a result of economic change. I am broadly sympathetic to those costs and yet we cannot avoid the necessary other side of the coin that this is a […]
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Adam Smith 4, Donald Trump 0
13 May 2025
Yesterday we heard the announcement of a dramatic pullback from Mr. Trump’s trade war with China, and markets had a major rally. Predictably, some fans of the “master negotiator” cheered the market’s reaction, even while saying they didn’t care about Wall Street when markets first corrected. China was told not to retaliate, or they’d regret […]
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