If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Niall Ferguson, the celebrated British historian now at Stanford’s Hoover Institution has spouted his own version of that age-old riddle. In Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe, the prolific author sets out to undermine the distinction between natural disasters and manmade catastrophes.
Despite an endless chain of monetary and fiscal stimuli, the eurozone consistently disappoints in growth and job creation. One of the reasons is demographics. No monetary and public spending stimulus can offset the impact on consumption and economic growth of an aging population, as Japan can also confirm.
However, there is an especially important factor that tends to be overlooked: the lack of competitiveness of the eurozone industry due to rising and noncompetitive power prices.
Less than two weeks after NATO members reaffirmed allegiance to Article 5—that an attack on one member was an attack on all members—the UK nearly put that pledge to the test. In a shockingly provocative move, the UK’s HMS Defender purposely sailed into Crimean territorial waters on its way to Georgia.
Last Week, the US Supreme Court confirmed that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are essentially government-owned corporations, and are likely to stay that way.
The court didn’t say this in so many words, but the ruling (namely, Collins v. Yellen) helps to end the fiction that Fannie and Freddie are private organizations only temporarily in a state of “conservatorship” under the control of the US government.
I spent the last week at the Bitcoin Lounge nestled cozily amid the Free State Project’s annual Porcfest in New Hampshire—named for the Porcupine, the libertarian mascot, and located just 7 miles from the infamous Bretton Woods as the crow flies.
