The most common news to come out of the Federal Reserve is the result of FOMC meetings and changes to the Federal Funds Rate. Jerome Powell has made news with his aggressive rate hikes that some fear will topple the economy. However, how they raise and change the Federal Funds Rate has changed over time. If one is to offer proper analysis of the Fed’s actions, we must be able to properly understand what its tools are, and how they have changed over time. The fitting target to observe is the Federal Funds Rate above.

In response to the many shortcomings of the Soviet Union, Mao Zedong’s China, and Venezuela, the refrain, “It wasn’t real socialism,” has emerged as a rallying cry among apologists of socialism. Some readily admit the failures of these regimes and attribute the failures to capitalism rather than socialism. Some refuse to recognize the failure whatsoever; they see these experiments as genuine instances of “real socialism” and perceive them to be unequivocal successes.

According to a new report from the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics last Friday, the US economy added 353,000 jobs for the month of January while the unemployment rate held at 3.7%.

Thursday offered a remarkable contrast between the two world leaders. Tucker Carlson released his much-anticipated interview with Vladimir Putin on alternative media hours before Joe Biden addressed the White House press on the question of whether he is a senile man suffering from significant mental decline.

In a 1922 essay about Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in his book Prejudices: Third Series H.L. Mencken asked, “Am I the first American to note the fundamental nonsensicality of the Gettysburg Address”? One example of the nonsense of Lincoln’s rhetoric as explained by Mencken is as follows:

Natural rights are often regarded with deep suspicion by lawyers and economists, who are wary of the wild and extravagant demands framed in the language of human rights. A good example is the United Nation’s list of fundamental human rights, which Antony Flew derides as absurd in “Could There Be Universal Natural Rights?”:

One prominent person rarely associated by scholars with the Bastiat-Ferrara laissez-faire school was the eminent sociologist and economic theorist, Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto (1848-1923). Pareto was born in Paris into a noble Genoan family. His father, the Marchese Raffaelle Pareto, a hydraulic engineer, had fled Italy as a republican and supporter of Mazzini. The senior Pareto returned to Italy in the mid-1850s and gained a high rank in the Italian civil service.