I don’t know who introduced the idea that the market is something egocentric and perverse, but it has distorted its meaning. Originally, those who spoke about the market were not “economists” but—like those of the School of Salamanca—theologians and moral philosophers, or—like Adam Smith—who dedicated himself to moral philosophy.

The historian Frank L. Owsley is often described as a “sectional historian,” meaning that he was a Southern historian, born in Alabama, writing from a Southern perspective. Similarly, the historian Clyde Wilson has been described as “a Southern historian” who is “a Southern partisan in the best sense,” namely, one who offers “a Southern perspective on American history – one that yields interesting and important insights.”

While not surprising, it has nonetheless been remarkable how quickly American conservatives have been convinced to ignore or make excuses for virtually everything the regime does, so long as Donald Trump is in the White House. This includes the administration’s runaway deficit spending, inflationary monetary policy, ramping up of foreign wars, a growing disregard for federalism, and even higher taxes. Policies that would have been denounced by conservatives under Barack Obama or Joe Biden are reframed as virtuous under the current administration. 

Often, we observe that two pieces of data, which are not supposed to have any relationship, appear to have a very high correlation. What makes the apparent good correlation is that they both exhibit an upward long-term trend. In addition, fluctuations of the data do not seem to converge around the trend but just seem to move in an upward direction. These types of data statisticians label as “non-stationary.”