This note serves as a rejoinder to Philipp Bagus’ recent response to my comment. I will not comment on all the issues raised in his response, but focus on the most important points.

To the Democratic Socialists of America and their fellow travelers, “The Moment” has arrived. With the victory of Zohran Mamdani in New York City’s mayoral election Tuesday night, the DSA has another attractive face to add to its advocates nationwide, someone to complement Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders as socialism marches to its inevitable triumph over the entire United States.

Pseudo entrepreneur Sam Altman now wants “a federal guarantee to make it easier to finance massive investments in AI chips for data centers.”

Back in the Dotcom bubble days, Alan Greenspan worried about “irrational exuberance,” but chose to let markets adjust on their own, without hiking interest rates to pop the stock market bubble. Today’s bubble economy stretches well beyond stocks, wrote Greg Ip for the Wall Street Journal. There’s artificial intelligence (AI), of course, and,

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York this week released its Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit for the third quarter of this year. 

The federal government shutdown in recent weeks has highlighted the full cost of many government programs, including the food stamp program. Many people—especially the kind who don’t spend their time tracking federal spending—have been shocked by the fact that one in eight Americans—12 percent of the population—receives food stamps. That’s about 42 million people. Moreover, most food stamp recipients receive other forms of government “welfare” as well. 

Mainstream financial academia regularly seeks to impress upon investors the supposed pointlessness of any entrepreneurial effort on their part, under the guise of cost efficiency and risk reduction.

Today, the Supreme Court is hearing arguments in the landmark case of Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, which will determine whether President Trump can use an emergency declaration to unilaterally impose tariffs on foreign goods that Americans buy, as he did earlier this year.