Even after its 489-point rally last Wednesday, the stock market’s recent performance remains dismal. What’s wrong? The economic news is good, if not great. Earnings have been better than expected, with positive surprises outnumbering negative by four to...
POLITICS
Double Standard: Dead Jews vs. Dead Arabs
Does anyone seriously believe the Palestinians want peace? The Israelis retaliated against a man who had plotted the deaths of hundreds of their countrymen and, in return, his colleagues kill whom? University students. Young people among whom were four Americans. The...
At What Cost?
Now that we have all breathed a sigh of relief at the rescue of the miners trapped underground in Somerset, Pa., perhaps we might reconsider some of the things that send men down into such hazardous places to get us the fuel to power our economy. The cost of coal is...
The Wall Street Journal’s Immigration Foul
The Wall Street Journal editorial page is a reliable beacon of truth and common sense. Except when it comes to immigration. The open borders zealotry of the newspaper’s editorial writers has led to positively Clintonian rationalizations for undermining the rule...
Loosing the ABM Handcuffs
The world just became a little safer. Such a statement may sound puzzling in an age of “dirty” bombs and other terrorist threats, but it’s true. That’s because this June the United States now has officially withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic...
Protecting Squid Before Sailors
Osama bin Laden gets help from the strangest creatures. As America’s military struggles to prepare its forces for the War on Terror, radical environmentalists are using marine life — whales, dolphins, and even squid — to try to block sea-based...
Stock Crash Aftermath
What can be even worse than a stock market crash — including the great crash of 1929 — are politicians rushing in to fix things. At one time, it was widely assumed that the 1929 crash led directly to the Great Depression that lasted throughout the decade...
Can’t live without them
Q: What does it mean to love someone so much that you can’t live without them? A: In most cases, such an emotion is not healthy. As profoundly traumatic as it is to lose a beloved romantic partner to illness, accident, or break-up, life must go on. Life should...
Two Trials — and Future Trials
While much attention has been focused on the trial of American Taliban John Walker Lindh, another trial halfway around the world may be more relevant to our own future. This was the trial in Pakistan of terrorists who killed Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl....
Educational Vouchers
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Cleveland school voucher case, Zelman vs. Simmons-Harris, that taxpayer funds that go to parents who might use the money to enroll their children in religious schools was constitutional. One need not be a rocket scientist to...
Un-bear-able Deals: When Bears Turn “Bullish”
For years, Grant’s Interest Rate Observer was noteworthy for being both exceptionally witty and consistently wrong. Times have changed. The newsletter, edited by James Grant, who has written wonderful books on such topics as the life of Bernard Baruch and the...
Expanding Definitions and Suspicious Statistics
One of the latest in the seemingly endless rounds of alarming statistics is that one out of 12 American children has some form of disability. With all the things that are supposedly getting worse, you have to wonder how our life expectancy keeps increasing. A cynic...
Free Ride for Foreign Ship-Jumpers
While Washington buzzes over President Bush’s homeland security plan to secure America’s borders, untold numbers of foreigners continue to pour into our country illegally through limitless unsecured cracks and crevices. Joining the ranks of the estimated 9...
Hauling CEOs Away in Manacles Makes Markets Soar!
Newsflash: Hauling CEOs Away in Manacles Makes Markets Soar! This is not a headline from The Onion, the satirical weekly newspaper that prints fake news stories. No, it is the story that was repeated last week by most of the nation’s supposedly serious financial...
Capitalists vs. Crooks
Are American corporations being run by crooks in pinstripe suits? According to Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, “infectious greed” is to blame for the scandals engulfing firms like Enron, WorldCom and Global Crossing. On this view, which virtually...
Society Says vs. Thinking
You will often hear experts in the media — particularly psychologists and the like — use the phrase, “Society tells us …” For example: “Society tells us that women should look perfect all the time.” Or: “Society tells us...
Death by the FDA
Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories has developed an injectable antibiotic called Tigecycline. It can be used to treat resistant pathogens — bacteria that are immune to standard antibiotics. However, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has changed the rules for...
Indignation, Inc.
A recent front-page story in The New York Times was headlined: “In Ecuador’s Banana Fields, Child Labor is Key to Profits.” This is part of an ongoing orgy of indignation by the intelligentsia at low-paid labor in the Third World. The question they...
Pilots and Guns
In a stunning reversal, California’s liberal Senator Barbara Boxer has come out in favor of allowing airline pilots to carry guns if they wish, while the Bush administration opposes it. Meanwhile, the House of Representatives has passed a bill to permit pilots...
The Democrats’ Bad, Bad Boy
If Rep. James P. Moran of Virginia were a Republican, he’d be a household name by now — right up there in the infamous conservative pantheon with Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond and Newt Gingrich. He’d be lambasted by leading opinion-makers for his...
The Soft Bigotry of President Bush?
“The soft bigotry of low expectations.” President George W. Bush once used this expression to chastise America’s education establishment for the underperformance of minorities, specifically blacks and Latinos. Bush urged teachers and administrators...
Killing Capitalism in Order to Save It
Earlier this year big institutional investors were blithely telling themselves that Enron was just an exception. After all, it was a case of outright fraud. How often does that happen? And sure, every company cooks the books a little. But we expect it of them and make...
Bill Amendment: Just Another Veiled Attack on Private Property
The recently passed amendment to the Senate’s Sarbanes bill preventing corporations from making loans to their officers is just another step in the socialization of private property in America — and must be fought on that basis. The concept of property...
Practice What You Print: NY Times on Stock Options
There’s a game of “can you top this?” going on, with the Senate, the House, and the White House all trying to one-up each other to see who can talk the toughest tough-talk about corporate crooks. The media sits on the sidelines, egging on the...
Living Through a Bear Market
As the stock market falls for the third straight year — something that hasn’t happened since 1941 — I get asked three questions: 1. When will it end? 2. Why is it happening? 3. What should I do? The third question is by far the most important, and...
What Is Killing The Stock Market? Government Regulation
Politicians and economic analysts are shocked. They have told us for weeks that the stock market is crashing because of low “investor confidence” in response to a “crime wave” of corporate fraud–made possible by “a climate of lax...
Prescription Drug Benefits Violate the Rights of Drug Companies
As both Democratic and Republican proposals to provide prescription drug benefits for the elderly failed in the Senate, members of both parties vowed to try to reach a compromise and get a bill passed as early as next week. Any such bill, if approved, would be a...
China as a Model for ‘Sustainable Development’?
There’s an old maxim in moral philosophy that says, “the ends never justify the means.” Of course, lots of utilitarians think that is so much moral posturing and nonsense. They proffer hypothetical arguments to debunk that maxim, such as: “If...
The ACLU vs. American Liberty
The American Civil Liberties Union recently released a white paper admitting that it is not particularly concerned with defending free speech. But not to worry, this does not make the ACLU purposeless: according to the paper, the leaders in the ACLU derive just as...
Stock Market: Cheap and Unstable
As of yesterday’s close, the S&P 500 has lost 46.2% on a total return basis (including receipt of dividends) since the top in 2000. That exceeds the loss of 45.1% in the 1973-74 bear market — but it’s still shy of the 49.9% lost in the 1937-38...
Voucher Backlash
Opponents of school vouchers have grown desperate in the wake of the Supreme Court’s refusal to outlaw vouchers as violations of the First Amendment. And desperation seldom produces clarity of thought. It was particularly painful to read an outburst by Cynthia...
Holding Syria Accountable
Following the horrific events of September 11, President George W. Bush bravely asserted his administration’s policy toward terrorism. The United States, from here out, was to hold not only terrorist organizations, but also state sponsors of terrorism,...
Subscribe for free.
Latest pro-Capitalism goodness sent weekly to your email box.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.