North Korea’s Elites and Their Exposure to Creature Comforts Overseas

 -RW

Senate Passes Budget: Rand Paul Responds to His Republican Senators Who Passed the Bill

Senate Republicans late Thursday passed the fiscal 2018 budget.

It passed on a 51-49 vote.

Senator Rand Paul heroically voted "no" and issued the following statement after the vote:

The American people are sick and tired of Congress spending recklessly with no end in sight. We can’t spend our way to prosperity. Today, the Senate considered a budget that simply didn’t measure up and spent too much. I will fight for the biggest, boldest tax cut we can pass, but I could not in good conscience vote for a budget that ignores spending caps that have been the law of the land for years and simply pretend it didn’t matter. We can be for lower taxes AND spending restraint.

In a tweet, he let his fellow Republicans senators have it for passing the huge budget:

Nearly all Republican Senators just failed a litmus test on cutting spending.

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) October 19, 2017

  -RW

Student Socialist Group Calls for 'Extermination' of Capitalists

The Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) chapter at Iowa State University has called for the hanging and extermination of

The Two Great Crashes of October and What the October 2017 Stock Market Looks LIke

The Financial Times is running the above chart of the October 1929 stock market crash and the October 1987 crash, along with the chart of the current stock market.

In the EPJ Daily Alert, I am advising that investors should be very cautious of the general stock market right now but that I see no threat of a recession.

 -RW

REPORT: Trump Leaning Toward Powell for Fed

Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell is the leading candidate to become the chair of the U.S. central bank after President Donald Trump concluded a series of meetings with five finalists, according to Politico.

The sources cautioned that

Former Fed Chair Paul Volcker Writing Memoir

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker is at work on a memoir he says will address the larger themes that have dominated his life of public service, reports The Wall Street Journal.

“There are a few things I’d like to talk about,” said  Volcker, 90 years old. “When I got

HOT Spain To Activate Article 155 Process

Spain has announced it will trigger the so-called "nuclear option" of Article 155 under the Spanish Constitution, and move

HEROIC Rand Paul Opposes Senate GOP Budget

Sen. Rand Paul is prepared to vote “no” on the Senate GOP budget if leaders do not agree to cut billions in spending from the plan, he said in an interview Tuesday, reports Politico.

Rand said he wants to get rid of the $43 billion in overseas war funding that exceeds federal budget caps Congress agreed to in 2011.

WARNING: Bitcoin is Going to Be Much Easier to Regulate Than Cash

 -RW

Fritz Machlup, Gary Cohn and Stock Buybacks

Fritz Machlup with Ludwig von Mises

There has been quite a bit of criticism about President Trump's desire to "bring back" US corporate profits that are parked overseas.

Many argue that any tax break that allows corporations to bring back profits will allow corporations to simply bring back the cash and do buybacks, as if buybacks are negative for the economy.

But Director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn told Yahoo Finance he’s okay with corporations using the repatriated funds for buybacks.

Good for him.

Buybacks are just another transaction in the economy. All free market transactions should be viewed as "good" in the sense that both the buyer and seller in such a transaction desires to do the trade.

Specifically, how the transaction impacts the economy is determined by what the seller does with the cash. Indeed, it may be a number a series of trades after a buyback trade before we see any "real" impact on the economy.

Stock transactions and their role in an economy are much more complex than a shallow consideration would have one believe.

Fritz Machlup, a sometimes Austrian-leaning economist who attended the famous Mises seminar in Vienna, in his book The Stock Market, Credit, and Capital Formation, spent a considerable amount of time tracing how different stock transactions impact the economy.

The dyslexic Cohn would have trouble working his way through the meticulous Machlup book, but he should know that Machlup has his back.

 -RW

Is National Defense a Justifiable Reason to Put Trade Barriers on Steel?

A Don Boudreaux letter to the Wall Street Journal:

Nucor Steel CEO John Ferriola doth protest too much against free trade for the steel industry (Letters, Oct. 17).  He starts by complaining that Chinese steel is subsidized and ends by asserting that U.S. steel producers should be protected from foreign competition because such protection will strengthen U.S. national defense.

If the national-defense argument is valid, then

INSANITY ALERT: Socialist Wants Seattle To Take the Next Step Toward a Municipal Bank

Socialist Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant wants to allocate $200,000 in next year's budget to study the feasibility of a public bank in Seattle, reports The Stranger.

The study would "focus on the legal issues and implementation details," including the "actual feasibility of a public bank, the participation of surrounding municipalities, banking requirements, the ability to provide community benefit lending and the ability to handle cannabis business deposits," according to Sawant's proposed amendment to the 2018 city budget.

A socialist with her own bank, oh yeah.

 -RW

White House Memo Claims NAFTA Led to Increased Abortions, Spousal Abuse

Peter Navvaro, memo writer

White House officials working on trade policy were alarmed last month when a top adviser to President Trump circulated a two-page document that alleged a weakened manufacturing sector leads to an increase in abortion, spousal abuse, divorce and infertility, reports The Washington Post.

The documents, which were obtained by The Washington Post, were prepared and distributed by

Is Xi Jinping the Most Powerful Man in the World?

The video below has bit of a Western elitist propagandist slant, but still informative.



 -RW

KRUGMAN GOES INSANE: Links Racism and Goldbugs

Following the goofy comments by Marc Faber (SEE: Oh Boy, Forecaster Marc Faber: If the US " had been settled by black people instead of whites."; Sprott to Fire Him), the Keynesian Paul Krugman sent out this mad series of tweets:

Oh Boy, Forecaster Marc Faber: If the US " had been settled by black people instead of whites."; Sprott to Fire Him

Tyler Durden reports:

Marc "Dr. Doom" Faber is in trouble, only this time it's not for yet another doomsday forecast which hasn't come true, but for launching into a racially charged diatribe against blacks.

Overnight the eccentric veteran investor and former Drexel director, claimed in his monthly newsletter that “the U.S. would look like Zimbabwe” if the country had been settled by black people instead of whites. In the latest edition of his 15-page investor letter, "The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report," Faber argued against

BREAKING Trump Plans to Pick Next Fed Chair Before Nov. 3

President Donald Trump plans to announce his nominee to chair the Federal Reserve before he leaves Nov. 3 for an 11-day trip to Asia and Hawaii, a source tells Bloomberg.

The shortlist for the

CNBC Hit Job on Rand Paul

Senator Rand Paul appears to have the ear of President Trump and is moving his perspective ever so slightly in the direction of liberty.

Tara Golshan does not think it is wise for the President to develop this liberty-leaning relationship.

In a commentary for CNBC titled, Trump is buttering up exactly the wrong senator if he wants to pass tax reform, she writes:

President Donald Trump spent the weekend with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) playing golf, in another chapter of a reportedly growing

WAR: Baghdad Hassett vs. Larry Summers

Baghdad Hassett

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has responded to the charge by President Trump's chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, Kevin Hassett, that Summers doesn't know what he is talking about and that he is just making ad-hominem attacks.

Summers writes at his personal webpage:

Kevin Hassett accuses me of an ad-hominem attack against his economic analysis of the Trump Administration’s tax plan.  I am proudly guilty of asserting that it is some combination of dishonest, incompetent and

Trump’s Trade Policy Is Madness

A Don Boudreaux  letter to the Wall Street Journal:

I applaud your clear explanation of the great damage that Trump’s proposed changes to Nafta will inflict on the American economy (“Trump’s Nafta Threat,” Oct. 16).  Yet one feature of Trump’s approach to trade warrants more explicit criticism – namely, his belief that

Trump to Interview Yellen About Fed Chair Appointment

President Donald Trump will interview Janet Yellen Thursday about potentially staying on as chair of the Federal Reserve after her first term ends in February, according to multiple news outlets.

There are a number of other contenders for the chair, including

Rothbard Crosses the Pond

Another important talk at the recent Mises Institute's 35th Anniversary Celebration in New York City. This one by Jörg Guido Hülsmann.



Also, must viewing is the Hans-Hermann Hoppe keynote speech.

 -RW

Dear Mr. President, Please Don't Make Me "Laffer"

Art Laffer just said that he doesn't know how a Democrat could vote against the big tax cut/reform bill and live with themselves! @FoxNews

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 16, 2017

As I explain, the Laffer Curve is a joke. SEE: Laughing at the Laffer Curve.

 -RW

The Real Problems With Healthcare in the United States

Thanks to Chris Rossini, here is the flipped version of the mirror image of the original.

If you want to find out all the problems with healthcare in America, here it is.

We aren't close to solving the problems.




 -RW

Trump May Be Setting Up to Crush Free Trade

Jonathan Swan reports for Axios:

It's hard to overstate how concerned free-traders on Capitol Hill are about the current state of the Trump administration's negotiations on two consequential trade deals: the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the U.S.-Korean trade deal (KORUS.)

"We're all on collapse-watch," one knowledgable source told

Grabbing the Oil? Iraqi Forces Advance On Oil Rich City of Kirkuk

Iraqi forces drove toward pesh merga positions on Sunday near Kirkuk. (via NYT)

The US sockpuppet regime in Iraq has launched an attack on the city of  Kirkuk.

Iraqi federal forces have moved to enter city of Kirkuk. It is a serious escalation following the

Koch Brothers Memo: Ignore the Deficit Explosion

The Intercept has obtained an internal Koch brothers memo and reports: 

The Intercept obtained a messaging memo from the Koch brothers’ network on how to sell tax reform legislation. The memo went

The Real Problems With Healthcare in the United States

In this edition of Sunday Morning With Robert Wenzel, I discuss the many, many problems with the government interventionist healthcare system.



  -RW

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The Screen Actors Guild Role in Promoting the Casting Couch

The Screen Actors Guild's  mission statement says that it attempts to negotiate and enforce collective bargaining agreements that establish equitable levels of compensation, benefits, and working conditions for its performers.

Yeah right.

A pig like Harvey Weinstein can roam Hollywood for decades and SAG (now SAG-AFTRA) never

How Socialism Ruined Venezuela

By Rafael Acevedo and Luis B. Cirocco

In order to understand the disaster that is unfolding in Venezuela, we need to

These Feminist Economists Are Right about GDP

By Jonathan Newman

Gross Domestic Product has numerous issues, especially as a measure of national-level standard of living. It is supposed to be a measure of total production and therefore the general health of an economy, but it falls short of this in many ways. In the US, the Bureau of Economic Analysis is responsible for estimating GDP, and their preferred estimation technique is to add up all consumption, investment, government, and net export spending (export spending minus import spending).

GDP Ignores Black Markets and Household Production

Official estimates of total production are lacking because there is much of total production that isn’t counted. Some goods are not traded or not traded legally. For example, black markets in drugs, untaxed goods, prostitution, and copyrighted media aren’t produced, distributed, or traded legally, and so are absent from official GDP statistics. Estimates for the size of black markets range from 10-30% of GDP, depending on the country. It represents many trillions of dollars of spending globally.

Other forms of production are legal, but still not counted in GDP, like household production. I mow my own grass, which is production from an economic perspective, even though I’m not producing something for the market.

On this issue, feminist economist Joyce Jacobsen at Wesleyan University says that women are

Citibank Chief Economist Says Cryptocurrency Trading is "Cute"

"ICOs and cryptocurrencies are just regulatory arbitrage," says Willem Buiter, global chief economist at Citi in New York. "It's cute. But the regulators are catching up to it now."

He made the comment after the Russian Central Bank has come down at least twice in the last month on all cryptocurrencies, prohibiting there trading.

  -RW

THE PLOTTING CONTINUES: Pence Met With Supply-Side Economists

News is breaking that on Wednesday, Vice-President Mike Pence with Heritage Foundation economist Steve Moore, conservative economist Larry Kudlow and former President Ronald Reagan economic adviser Art Laffer to discuss a range of topics including who could be the next most effective Fed leader, according to FOX Business.

I wonder if they had a good laugh about the Laffer Curve.

All three economists and Pence are not responding to questions about the meeting---over even willing to confirm it took place.

From AP:

A spokeswoman for Pence declined to comment.  Laffer also declined to comment and Kudlow did not return FOX Business’ emails for comment. When reached by phone on Thursday, Moore did not deny the meeting took place, quickly saying “I can’t talk about that,” and then hung up.

  -RW

How Hayek Understood That Artificial Intelligence Machines Will Never Take Over the World

Friedrich Hayek

By Andrew Sheng

There has been so much hype about AI that rock star historian turned futurist Yuval Noah Harari thinks that Man (Homo Sapiens) will evolve into Homo Deus – almost god-like through technology and science conquering famine, war and possibly even death (Vintage Books, 2015).

We used to suspend belief through science fiction, until large parts of the gadgets that we watched in Star Trek in the 1960s have all become reality.  With the ability of computers to beat the best human Go champion, science fiction is becoming reality.  The computer AlphaGo can not only learn from humans, but

Arthur Laffer Admits He Was Drinking When He Created the Laffer Curve

Imagine my surprise.

In questioning the authenticity of a second Laffer Curve napkin now at the Smithsonian (The curve was drawn on a napkin), The New York Times reports:

“Look at how neatly it was done!” Mr. Laffer said of the museum napkin, on which he drew his curve, along with a brief explanation. “You tell me how, late at night with a glass of wine, you’re going to do it that neatly.”

And there is this from the story:

Mr. Laffer has always said he does not have a clear recollection of the original meeting...

For my take on the Trump Administration using the Laffer Curve to justify deficit spending, see:

A Ludwig von Mises Letter to Ayn Rand

(from the Mises Institute via Michael Edelstein)

Jamie Dimon: People Who Buy Bitcoin Are Stupid

Speaking at an Institute of International Finance conference, JPMorgan Chase Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon said he could care less about what bitcoin trades at and said that if you're "stupid" enough to buy it you'll pay the price one day.

(via CNBC)

Social Security Benefits Expected to Increase By the Largest Amount Since 2012

The Social Security Administration has announced taht a 2.0% increase for monthly checks starting in

Roubini ThoughtLab and Visa Tag Team to Promote Cashless Cities

Visa has announced the results of an "independent study" conducted by Roubini ThoughtLab  and commissioned by Visa examining the economic impact of increasing the use of digital payments in major cities around the world.

The conclusion: Cities would

How to Always Get Additional Discounts When You Shop Online

Okay, this is my one and only consumer tip for 2017.

This works for almost all major shopping sites except Ebay (and it is complicated with Amazon) and it also works for subscriptions at major online sites.

When you are shopping online, put anything you want to buy into the website's shopping cart. Then

POPCORN TIME: Lawyer Wants Krugman to Testify On Bitcoin

An entrepreneur who sued the state for foiling his efforts to get seven city bodegas to accept bitcoin wants Pulitzer Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman to testify in his case, reports the New York Daily News.

An attorney for Theo Chino says

HOT BREAKING BOMBSHELL: Trump Kills Payments to Health Insurers

This is a stunning move by the President in the direction of less government involvement in the healthcare system.

CNBC puts it this way:

The Trump administration will stop making critically important payments to insurers who sell Obamacare health plans, a bombshell move.

The move comes just hours after President Trump signed an Executive Order that will allow individuals to form Health Associations and purchase insurance across state lines.

The payments, worth $7 billion or so to insurers this year and up to $10 billion or more next year, reimbursed insurers for discounts on certain health costs.

This is most certainly the hand of Rand Paul guiding the President.

Subsidy advocates are already decrying the Trump move and charge that it will raise premiums. However, if the move comes with the shrinkage of insurance coverage particulars mandated by Obamacare, it will most assuredly lower premiums, especially with insurance coverage now open across state lines.

  -RW

UPDATE

Is this just a Trump con?

Some reports now indicate he would support a bipartisan deal to keep the payments flowing.

Breitbart Breaks with Trump Says Tax Plan Won't Benefit Truckers

"There’s very little in the framework...that would directly benefit most truckers," Breitbart's John Carney writes, saying that  President Trump's plan would raise taxes for a family making the median income for truck drivers by about $200 a year.

In front of a crowd of truck drivers in Pensylvania, Trump said

A Huge Healthcare Victory For Rand Paul

Pretty much singlehandedly Senator Rand Paul stopped the horrific Cassidy-Graham bill and earlier bills, and moved healthcare more in the direction of free markets.

Rand writes today:

 President Trump will today legalize and allow individuals to form Health Associations and purchase insurance across state lines. This is what real free market replacement looks like. Millions of Americans will be eligible to band together to demand less-expensive insurance. The 28 million individuals left behind by Obamacare will now be eligible for inexpensive insurance.

The cost to the taxpayer? ZERO! As opposed to

Top IMF Economist Warns Trump: US Debt Will Explode Under Tax Reform Plan

Chart via The Financial Times

The Trump administration and the IMF have decidedly different views on what theTrump tax reform plan will mean for US government debt.

Maurice Obstfeld, IMF chief economist, said earlier this week that any US tax reform should not increase the budget shortfall. “If the stance of fiscal policy turns out to be very expansionary with a big deficit, that would have implications for the dollar, possibly for growth and the current account deficit,” he said.

Obstfeld is correct. However, he is a government technocrat so he is all for higher taxes to solve the deficit problem, whereas lower taxes with cuts in spending is the way to shrink the government debt burden.

As for the details of why the Trump tax reform will not produce growth, I covered that in last week's Sunday Morning with Robert Wenzel:




  -RW

Koch Brothers Go On Attack Against Tax Deductions

Part of President Trump's tax reform plan calls for an elimination of various tax deductions that will ultimately result in an increase in taxes for approximately 30% of taxpayers, some studies have determined.

It will also, according to various studies, result in an average decrease in tax bills of only between $5.00 and $30.00 a year.

Various organizations are against this crony tax reform but the Koch brothers are fighting the groups.

A group backed by Charles and David Koch, known as The Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, has launched a television and digital campaign attacking those opposed to the bogus tax refor. They label them as bad guys and as being "business and lobbyists."

The Koch group is, however, in favor of cuts in corporate taxes.

Below is one of their spots which both Trump and Baghdad Hassett will be happy with.



  -RW

Trump to Meet With The Most Boring Economist in the World

President Donald Trump is meeting this week with Stanford University economist John Taylor, who is on the shortlist of people under consideration to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve, reports Bloomberg.

Taylor is well-known for his rules-based formula for central bank interest rate setting, known as the Taylor Rule. He should be considered a conservative Keynesian (i.e. moderate money printers) with strong beliefs in the disproven Phillips Curve.

An economist from Stanford who knows Taylor tells me, "John is so boring he would put Alan Greenspan to sleep. I can't imagine him having a conversation with Trump."

  -RW

How to Raise $45 Billion in 45 Minutes

This is a fascinating back and forth between David Rubinstein and SoftBank Group Corp. Chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son.

Rubinstein, co-founder of Carlyle Group, is no slouch when it comes to raising money but he is clearly intrigued by the way Masayoshi Son raised $45 billion---in 45 minutes.



Note to Austrian school economists: You don't need to have your own capital to be a successful entrepreneur. You just need to know where to find it.

Israel Kirzner's observation on this is correct and extremely important.

Kirzner's observation means that a ghetto kid is not deprived of being a successful entrepreneur just because he has no capital of his own. It is a very important insight, deserving of the Nobel Prize, that should give hope to those who have no starting capital of their own.

  -RW

How North Korea Evades Sanctions

Thank the heavens that some trade continues for North Korea despite aggressive U.S.-led sanctions.

Sanctions only hurt the people of a country, not the leadership.



  -RW

Krugman on Baghdad Hassett

 Baghdad Hassett

I am in agreement with Paul Krugman's lead paragraph in his New York Times essay: The Schlock Of The New:

I’m still thinking about Kevin Hassett’s appearance at the Tax Policy Center, where he repaid his hosts’ graciousness by gratuitously impugning their integrity. But insults aside, he offered a new analysis of corporate tax incidence – an approach that is novel, innovative, and completely boneheaded. Oh, and it just happens to say what his political masters want to hear.

After the first paragraph, Krugman turns Keynesian political hack and he obviously hasn't read  The Fed Flunks: My Speech at the New York Federal Reserve Bank or chooses to ignore what he learned after reading it, because he writes:

True, nobody saw the [2008 financial] crisis coming. 

That said,  Baghdad Hassett needs to be exposed for the Trump apologist he is, so I have no problem featuring Krugman's lead paragraph.

  -RW

Trump Tax Reform Comments Coming Today

Can't wait for this.

Trump Schedule || Wednesday, October 11, 2017

10:00 am || Receives his daily intelligence briefing
2:05 pm || Meets with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
3:15 pm || Departs White House
4:20 pm || Arrives Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
5:45 pm || Gives remarks on tax reform; Harrisburg International Airport
6:25 pm || Departs Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
7:30 pm || Arrives White House

  -RW

IT'S OUT: Murray Rothbard's New Book on the Progressive Era

From the blurb:

Rothbard's posthumous masterpiece is the definitive book on the Progressives. It will soon be the must read study of this dreadful time in our past. — From the Foreword by Judge Andrew P. Napolitano.

 The current relationship between the modern state and the economy has its roots in the Progressive Era. — From the Introduction by Patrick Newman

Progressivism brought the triumph of institutionalized racism, the disfranchising of blacks in the South, the cutting off of immigration, the building up of trade unions by the federal government into a tripartite big government, big business, big unions alliance, the glorifying of military virtues and conscription, and a drive for American expansion abroad. In short, the Progressive Era ushered the modern American politico-economic system into being. — From the Preface by Murray N. Rothbard

Order the book here.

Rand Paul, The Heroic Senator "No"?

Just days after my post, Rand Paul is the Only Person in the Senate that May Be Able to Prevent New Taxes as a Result of Tax Reform, Politico reports that Sen. Rand Paul’s “outspoken opposition to a leadership-backed Obamacare repeal-and-replace bill and the backup Graham-Cassidy plan helped demolish the GOP’s health care agenda. And now Republicans are worried that

Federal Reserve's Inspector General Probing Several Fed Economists

Domenico Giannone explaining that information improves forecasting accuracy.

The Federal Reserve’s internal watchdog is probing a group of Fed economists who also own shares in a U.K. economic-forecasting company, reports Katy Burne at the Wall Street Journal.

The inquiry, by the Fed’s Office of Inspector General, centers on several economists who

What Tax Reform Would Look Like If Economic Prosperity Was Really the Goal

By Ron Paul

President Trump and the congressional Republican leadership recently unveiled a tax reform “framework.” The framework has a number of provisions that will lower taxes on middle-class Americans. For example, the framework doubles the standard deduction and increases the child care tax credit. It also eliminates the alternative minimum tax (AMT). Created in the 1960s, the AMT was designed to ensure the “wealthy” did not use “loopholes” to “get out of” paying taxes. Today the AMT is mostly a means to increase taxes on the middle class.

The framework eliminates the “death tax,” thus enabling family-owned small businesses and farms to remain family owned. It also helps the economy by lowering the corporate tax rate to 20 percent, reducing taxes on small businesses. The framework also adopts a territorial tax system, which means US companies would only pay tax on profits earned in the United States.

However,

What Is Your City’s Debt Burden?

By Craig Eyermann

What is your local government’s debt burden? Or in other words, how much of your local government’s annual revenue would be fully consumed by its liabilities?

That’s a question that J.P. Morgan took on in its recent analyst report The ARC and the Covenants 3.0, in which it considered the total debt burdens of the governments of U.S. cities, counties and states.

Here’s an excerpt from the report’s Executive Summary, in which the private bank explains its interest in the results of the analysis and what

Statist Anti-Cash Economist Says Governments Will Crush Bitcoin

Pyrite

Kenneth Rogoff, author of The Curse of Cash, and who wants to see most cash banned, writes in an essay for Project-Syndicate, titled  Crypto-Fool’s Gold?:

[I]t is hard to see what would stop central banks from creating their own digital currencies and using regulation to tilt the playing field until they win. The long history of currency tells us that what the private sector innovates, the state eventually regulates and appropriates.

I have no idea where bitcoin’s price will go over the next couple years, but there is no reason to expect virtual currency to avoid a similar fate.

  -RW

The Fake News Portrayal of Neo-Liberalism By the Left

Richard Ebeling emails:

Dear Bob,

My new article on the website of the Future of Freedom Foundation is on “Neo-Liberalism: From Laissez-Faire to the Interventionist State.”

One of the most accusatory terms used by “progressives” and others on the political left is “Neo-Liberal.” To be called “Neo-Liberal” is to be condemned as an “extremist” advocate for unbridled capitalism and, therefore, an enemy of humanity.

In fact, the origin and meaning of “Neo-Liberalism” is

The Nobel Prize Committee Has Gone Over to the Dark Side (Economics Award)

The only Nobel laureate in economics to ever deserve worldwide recognition was Friedrich Hayek. The man was brilliant. He taught us much about the complex world, about signals in society (price signals and others) and he warned about the fatal conceit of those who believe a complex world can be centrally planned.

No other Nobel winning economists come close to his achievements. Most of the others are esoteric technocrats that will have no significant impact on economic policy or thinking.

It should be remembered that even Nobel laureate Milton Friedman was terrible when it came to methodology and monetary policy. And when it came to applied economics the bastard helped create the tax withholding system.

But this year, the Nobel committee has outdone itself in making a horrific choice, Richard Thaler. It has truly gone to the dark side.

Thaler, quite simply, is a technocratic, central planning, creep, who

Thank You Janet Yellen: Diamonds All Over San Francisco

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen has a money printing spigot at the epicenter of Silicon Valley, home of Google, Facebook and Yahoo, among many others.

The money is being pumped out fast and furious and it is flowing north up to San Francisco, the home of Twitter,

There is so much money being pumped into the area that the top of the line diamond merchants Cartier and Harry Winston are both building massive retails stores across from each other in the center of the city.




  -RW