With today’s unexpected decline in December payrolls, the cry for more job-related stimulus will grow even louder. But the sad truth is that any new stimulus or jobs bills will ultimately swell the ranks of the unemployed, thereby raising calls for an even...
MARKETS
The Precarious State of Our Union
In this week's much anticipated State of the Union address, President Obama again demonstrated his poor understanding of the fundamental problems that confront our nation. By following the advice of the same people who helped guide our economy to the precipice of...
Congress Sacks Samoan Economy
Like many football fans around the country, I recently tuned into a heavily promoted 60 Minutes segment on the uncanny ability of tiny American Samoa to produce a steady stream of NFL players. Although it was certainly interesting to learn how Pacific island warrior...
Poland
Watching the world’s leaders stumble their way through the economic crisis, it often feels as if political success and economic understanding are mutually exclusive. Even the Chinese, who over the past generation have engineered a dramatic turnaround from their...
Bumbling Ben Bernanke
It seems that the primary qualification needed by any chairman of the Federal Reserve is the ability to never admit error, no matter how damning the evidence. During his tenure on the job, Alan Greenspan set the standard for implausible deniability. But in a speech...
A Pro-Free-Market Program for Economic Recovery
My pro-free-market program for economic recovery is a provisional 100-percent-paper-money-reserve system applied to checking deposits, accompanied by a demonstrable commitment to ultimately achieving a 100-percent-gold reserve system.
Employee Free Choice Act: Organized Extortion Made Possible by Federal Labor Laws
Congress should not only reject the transparent power grab known as the Employee Free Choice Act, it should start hacking at the root of the complex federal regime that denies free choice in bargaining. That means repealing the Wagner Act, so that labor law can recognize and protect the absolute right of companies and employees to deal with each other on an entirely voluntary basis.
Inflation and Deficits: Politicians Cause Inflation
With the massive increases in federal spending, inflation is one of the risks that awaits us. To protect us from the political demagoguery that will accompany that inflation, let's now decide what is and what is not inflation. One price or several prices rising is not...
Billion Euro Antitrust Fine Against Intel
The European antitrust regulator has announced last month that it will fine Intel Corporation $1.44 billion (1.06 billion euros) because it "harmed millions of European consumers by deliberately acting to keep competitors out of the market for computer chips for...
The Decline of General Motors
If a company as great and as economically powerful as General Motors once was can collapse into a shadow of its former self, so too can every other company in the United States. So too can the United States itself.
The Housing Boom and Bust
Hot off the press is my colleague Dr. Thomas Sowell's 43rd book, "The Housing Boom and Bust." The book is an eye-opener for anyone interested in the truth about the collapse of the housing market that played a major role in our financial market crisis....
Fraud in Academia: Grade Inflation 101
Soon college students will come home and present parents with their grades. To avoid delusion, parents should do some serious discounting because of rampant grade inflation. If grade inflation continues, a college bachelor's degree will have just as much credibility...
The Housing Boom and Bust
In the spirit of bipartisanship, my newest book-- "The Housing Boom and Bust"-- shows how both Democrats and Republicans ruined both the housing markets and the financial markets. Like so many disasters, the current economic crisis grew out of policies based on good...
Altruism: The Moral Root of the Financial Crisis
The financial crisis is, fundamentally, a moral crisis. To end the crisis, we must acknowledge that government intervention caused it, and we must demand that the government begin removing its coercive hands from the economy. With an eye to the short term, we must demand that it scale back the powers of the GSEs, the Federal Reserve, and the FDIC; and with an eye to the long term, we must demand that the government abolish these agencies entirely and restore a gold standard run by private, currency-issuing banks subject solely to the objective commercial and bankruptcy codes.
Green Jobs
Once we put our minds to it, nothing is easier than to think of things that would require the performance of virtually unlimited labor in order to accomplish virtually zero result.
Standing Keynesianism On Its Head
As Employment Increases in Response to a Fall in Wage Rates, the Rate of Profit Rises, Not Falls
Broken Windows, Broken Principles
Economic success requires recognition, not evasion, of the fact that the principle of cause and effect applies just as inexorably in financial policy as it does in the scientist’s lab. Only when we reestablish acceptance of this idea can we hope to reverse course and return to the road of long term prosperity.
Tax Cuts and the “Trickle Down” Economics Straw Man
Among the suggestions being made for getting the American economy moving up again is a reduction in the capital gains tax. But any such suggestion makes people on the left go ballistic. It is "trickle down" economics, they cry. Liberals claim that those who favor tax...
The Fundamental Obstacles to Economic Recovery: Marxism and Keynesianism
While the influence of Marxism stands directly in the path of a fall in wage rates and prices, by blocking its way with laws and threats, Keynesianism aims to prevent any attempt to overcome these obstacles by allegedly demonstrating the futility and harm of doing so.
False Solutions and Real Problems: The Housing Crisis Revisited
Someone once said that Senator Hubert Humphrey, liberal icon of an earlier generation, had more solutions than there were problems. Senator Humphrey was not unique in that respect. In fact, our present economic crisis has developed out of politicians providing...
Message To The Bailout Boys: Bankruptcy is Economically Valuable
What is bankruptcy? Bankruptcy is a financial state that occurs when a person or business can no longer repay its debts. In the legal sense, bankruptcy begins when a court recognizes that the financial state of bankruptcy exists. The bankruptcy court takes charge...
Obama’s “Logic” on the Mortgage Crisis
In his "Remarks by the President on the mortgage crisis" on February 18, Obama stated: Our housing crisis was born of eroding home values, but it was also an erosion of our common values, and in some case, common sense. It was brought about by big banks that traded in...
Blame Socialist Government Policies Not Capitalism for the Financial Crisis
Massive government interventions in the market in the form of myriad regulations and financial irresponsibility on the part of the government are really to blame.
Change Under Obama
The President’s statement reveals a great deal about his understanding or, more correctly, lack of understanding of economics.
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