Price Inflation Accelerated in October Following the Fed’s Rate Cut
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest price inflation data, CPI inflation in October accelerated and month-to month increases in CPI inflation hit multi-month highs.
The seasonally adjusted Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 0.24 percent month over month in October, rising to a six-month high. Year over year, the CPI rose 2.49 percent in October, not seasonally adjusted. That’s a three-month high.
“NAFTA Fever” and the Myth of Government-Created Free Markets
Left or right, the enemy is the free market. Every problem is the fault of the free market. On the left, the supposed radical deregulation of the 1980s paved the way for the financial crisis and the destruction of the environment. On the right, free trade is responsible for the gutting of manufacturing. The free market is made out in this mythos to have had its heyday in the 1980s and ‘90s and destroyed everything. Even free market advocates fall into this trap, saying that this time in the near past was a free market victory.
The Context Behind Donald Trump’s “Takeover” of the American Right
Stanley’s Orwellian Anti-Fascism
Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future. By Jason Stanley. Atria One Step Publishing, 2024; 256 pp.
It’s Greek to Us: Angry Generation Z Women Reenact “Lysistrata” Post-Election
In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s decisive victory over Kamala Harris on November 5, millions of American women—especially those of Generation Z, born between 1997 and 2012, currently aged from 12 to 27—are despondent and dismayed that Democrats’ campaign focus on abortion policy did not convince more voters to choose Harris. They are convinced that their “my body, my choice” freedom has been stolen from them by the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v.
Caplan’s Errors on the UAE and Open Borders
Arguments advanced to support a political position often fail to withstand the slightest scrutiny. Rather, they are meant to make an impression on the impressionable—those who lack the context required to make an evaluation—and draw large numbers of the uninformed to one side of a political debate. Such is the case with libertarian economist Bryan Caplan’s recent article in favor of unrestricted immigration, wherein he uses the United Arab Emirates as a supposed template for open borders policy.
We’re Already on Track for a $2 Trillion Deficit this Year
The Treasury Department posted its latest revenue and spending totals this week, and deficits continue to mount at impressive speed.
During October—the first month of the 2025 fiscal year—the federal deficit was more than a quarter of a trillion dollars, coming in at $257.4 billion. Tax revenue in October had totaled $326 billion, but spending totaled $584 billion.
The Fed’s “Temporary” Mortgage-Backed Security Experiment Will Last Decades
It has been nearly 14 years since Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress that the Fed’s emergency quantitative-easing policy, of which the most radical part was buying mortgage-backed securities, was “temporary” and would be “reversed.”