A common myth about American history is the one in which a handful of so-called “founding fathers” in the 1780s declared that America would create a “wall of separation” between religious institutions and government institutions. After that, the First Amendment to the US constitution was instrumental in ensuring that religious institutions would be totally separate from American political institutions. Or so the story goes.

He’s described by media as “hard right” and “ultra-conservative” which suggests he’s a center-right candidate who, nonetheless, handily beat his communist rival. 

Journalists and mainstream economists love to place simple labels on things they don’t understand to indicate regularity and partly to cover for their ignorance. You have no doubt heard of the K-shaped economy which is dominating discussions across all areas of the media including Christmas sales, job prospects, and policy in Washington DC. The K-shaped economy has completely displaced talk of the L-shaped and V-shaped versions.

Donald Trump told Politico’s Dasha Burns that he gives the US economy an A+++++. He posted on Truth Social, “When will I get credit for having created, with No Inflation, perhaps the Greatest Economy in the History of our Country?” Herbert Hoover had the same view back in 1930.

According to the Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT), financial asset prices fully reflect all available and relevant information, and that any adjustment to new information is virtually instantaneous. For instance, if the central bank raises interest rates by 0.5 percent, and if market participants anticipated this action, asset prices will reflect this expected increase prior to the central bank raising interest rates. Note that, by the MPT, once the central bank lifts the interest rate by 0.5 percent, this increase will have no effect on asset prices since it is already embedded in prices.

When Congress enacted the Farmland Protection Policy Act (FPPA) in 1981, it declared that a “continued decrease in the Nation’s farmland base may threaten the ability of the United States to produce food and fiber.” The statute—together with later summaries—announced a national policy to “minimize” the “unnecessary and irreversible” conversion of f