As 2018 came to an end, politicians and media pundits insisted that “ gun violence “ was growing and hitting crisis levels .

The Federal Reserve has injected $278 billion into the securities repurchase market for the first time. Numerous justifications have been provided to explain why this has happened and, more importantly, why it lasted for various days. The first explanation was quite simplistic: an unexpected tax payment. This made no sense. If there is ample liquidity and investors are happy to take financing positions at negative rates all over the world, the abrupt rise in repo rates would simply vanish in a few hours.

Recently, something unusual happened: instead of the more normal reverse repurchase agreements, the Fed escalated its repurchase agreements (repos).

“In order to show that it is a half-truth, we must have recourse to long and dry dissertations.”
— Frédéric Bastiat

For the sake of argument, let’s follow the lead of behavioral economics and assume for the sake of discussion that people are not rational. Consistency requires we apply this description to all representatives of homo sapiens, including those who make government policy. As the public-choice school shows, officials and members of parliaments are not angels, but the same people as everyone else. If so, cognitive errors, so publicized by behavioral economists, should also apply to them.

Presumably bolstered by the fiery claims of Greta Thunberg and the general theme of Climate Week, people on Twitter have been declaring that capitalism threatens humanity.