Real economic growth has slowed to stall, even according to the official data. What will the central bank do now? Ben Bernanke says,”the FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee] made clear at its June meeting that it is prepared to take further actions as appropriate to promote a stronger economic recovery and sustained improvement in labor …
Vancouver is a wonderful place, a clean metropolitan city featuring both breathtaking scenery and fascinating diversity. The place is no longer cheap, a lesson for Americans in dollar degradation. Figuring I needed a few loonies for my stay and for paying for the cab ride to the Fairmont, I handed a C-note to the foreign …
I’m here in Vancouver for Agora’s Financial Symposium, where there will be plenty of discussion of booms, busts and stagnation. Watching BNN this morning, Canada’s version of tout TV, a message crawled along the bottom of the screen: “RBC: Toronto, not in a condo bubble.” Fears of a condo bubble in Canada’s biggest housing market …
There were plenty of big names speaking at FreedomFest in Las Vegas last week. There were TV talking heads like Steve Forbes and Andrew Napolitano. Famous entrepreneurs like John Mackay came. Tea Party star Rand Paul attracted vast attention. But it was an unassuming woman, a brilliant author who rarely leaves her rural home in …
In his famous “you didn’t build it” speech, President Obama cited the Internet, fire departments, the GI Bill, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Hoover Dam as examples of government action that helps business owners. Each needs addressing, but let’s start with the Hoover Dam. The president is riffing off of Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC commercial …
People can’t get enough of predictions. There is that basic human desire to know the future and capitalize on it. People especially like hearing predictions that confirm their view of the world. Hearing prognostications that match up with your own makes you feel smart. And in turn, you view the predictor as smart for confirming …
Christine Lagarde, the head fixer at the International Monetary Fund, says U.S. policymakers need to be more aggressive in dispensing medication to boost America’s punk recovery. Washington bureaucrats, she believes, have all the fiscal and monetary tools they need to get the job done. Ben Bernanke’s printing press is collecting dust, she thinks, and legions …
Isabel Paterson’s The God of the Machine (this week’s Club release) was one of four magisterial libertarian works to be published in the dark days of 1943. Also released that year were Albert Jay Nock’s Memoirs of a Superfluous Man; Rose Wilder Lane’s The Discovery of Freedom; and, by far the most famous, Ayn Rand’s …
Government finance at all levels seems to be unraveling. The city of Stockton, California, declared bankruptcy. North Las Vegas, Nevada, would be in the same boat if the state of Nevada allowed for it. Michigan’s state government has taken over the management of four cities, and the state’s largest city — Detroit — has a …
Nothing starts a fistfight like the health-care debate. The market for what is just a basic service has been contorted and mangled by government intervention for more than a century. The average person wouldn’t know a free-market health care system if they saw one. “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” must include health care, …