This year, Gabriel Boric won the Chilean Presidency by riding a populist wave of anti-market sentiment. Populism is a political tool not tied to any particular ideology, and it can drive people to very dangerous conclusions. In this case, Boric convinced Chile that the rich elites maintained power in his nation at the expense of […]

Once again, President Biden pushed back student loan payments due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this time until May 2022. As Omicron surges, the White House reversed course on its assurances that payments would not be deferred any longer. However, pressure from those who want all student debt cancelled appears to have won the day, so […]

What if the Fed were right when said earlier in the year that inflation was going to be transitory? Let’s be clear–a kidney stone is transitory, but nobody in their right mind would say, “yeh I’m ok with having a kidney stone since it’s only transitory.” Yes I’m glad the Fed is ending their use […]

The Federal Reserve will end its meeting any moment with the expected announcement of an accelerated curtailing of the extreme monetary stimulus it has provided since Mar 2020. The latest published speculation I’ve seen is that the Fed will end the stimulus by Mar ’22, paving the way for 2-3 interest rate hikes in 2022, […]

For the most partisan of Americans, Donald Trump evokes either the most visceral negative reaction, or the most adoring adulation. As I said a few weeks ago, this I still find strange. When looking back at his tenure as President, I find many things to applaud and many things to condemn. And Donald Trump and […]

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on Wednesday. The case stems from a Mississippi law that bans abortions after 15 weeks except for cases of medical emergency or severe fetal abnormality. The law has no exceptions for rape or incest. Given the current composition of the Court, […]

Dr. Fauci is attracting a lot of attention for his weekend remarks that attacks on him are attacks on science, because “They’re really criticizing science, because I represent science.” Some of the criticisms are that he is revealing himself as the partisan he always was, some are that he has grown enamored with his own […]

As I related in the last blog post in this series, its seems likely we’re going to have inflation rates greater than the Fed’s goal in the near term (say the next couple of years)–if we don’t have some sort of economic collapse. I say the latter because when you have systematic debasement of the […]

In a period of shortages and inflation, I have been thinking a lot about deflation (maybe I have been dreaming about it). As I watch prices increase, it occurred to me that we only every discuss getting inflation back under control, but we never discuss prices falling back to a certain level. Why are we […]

This morning I jotted the following note to James Mackintosh, who authored a weekend article on MMT and my former professor, L. Randall Wray. Mr. Mackintosh Thanks for the article on MMT; as a former student of Randy Wray during the 1990s, I appreciate seeing the consistency of his thought, even though I still see […]