Since politicians increasingly use tax law as a means of regulating American life, the IRS has become a supercharged regulatory organization that goes far beyond just collecting taxes.
After an old red barn was given "heritage protection" by the city council, the owner demolished it anyway. Many townspeople cheered the defiance of the council's blatant violation of property rights.
The coronavirus impact adds to an already weak and bloated global economy that was showing poor growth, high debt, and an evidently disappointing earnings season before any epidemic was included in estimates.
Why did Europe go from a poor backwater to an economic and technological powerhouse? A major factor was its lack of any centralized government, and a large number of small competing states.
Although consensus building surely is an important and noble pursuit, one would think that it wouldn't really fall within the purview of a central bank president. It’s been clear for a long time that allowing politics to influence monetary policy carries significant and numerous risks.
Today's rate cut of 50 basis points is the largest rate cut since December 2008, in the midst of the aftermath of the financial crisis. But Chairman Powell insists the US economy is "strong."
Mayor Bloomberg is an antipopulist, and is thus, unlike Trump, a very polite and subtle authoritarian with alarming indifference to civil liberties and legal limits on his own power.
There are echoes of the 1973 oil shock in the current virus scare and resulting economic seize-up. Central banks are likely to respond similarly: with "stimulus" and inflation.
By being so dovish for so long, the Fed has greatly limited what it can do in case of recession without resorting to untried and radical solutions like negative rates.
Government spending overall—not just deficits—is the real problem. Government spending diverts wealth away from truly productive people and toward the government and its favored groups.
