Unmentioned in Assange arrest coverage — the US government after 9/11 dropped an Iron Curtain around itself. Wikileaks exposed US government crimes no one else would touch.

Julian Assange is charged with “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.” What about all the politicians and military officials who conspired to deceive Americans about the Iraq war?  

Financial markets seem to have a great deal of confidence in the effectiveness of central bank monetary policy — in the sense that by keeping interest rates low, or bring interest rates down, the economies will keep expanding and asset prices, in particular, will keep rising. There is, however, good reason for savers and investors alike to think very carefully about the truth value of such a proposition.

There is something unique about walking into a mom and pop shop and being on a first name basis with the local business owner or feeling a sense of pride towards the rising entrepreneur from the same city or country setting their mark on the global market. The truth of the matter is, there is nothing wrong with purchasing local goods and services, even when it is more costly to do so. The value of a product is subjective to each individual and that sense of community or local pride make any additional monetary cost worth it.

Trying to overcome a financial crisis with more debt is ineffective and a scheme of deceit. It would be just another step closer to final bankruptcy. In order to overcome a financial crisis, policies in favor of private business are required. Austerity need not be painful when the contraction of the public sector is accompanied by the expansion of the private sector. This way, the recipe for making austerity work requires to do away with the interventionist burdens and to ignite the entrepreneurial spirit.

Hedge fund titan Ray Dalio is just the latest billionaire to call for government to save us from guys like him.  

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez never misses the opportunity to bash capitalism.

At the 2019 South by Southwest festival, the Congresswoman derided capitalism, describing it as “irredeemable.” She says that the U.S. is currently facing the consequences of “putting profits over everything else in our society.” Curiously, the freshmen congresswoman pivoted her rant towards a critique of the New Deal.

Are conservatives warming up to the ideas of secession?

It is widely accepted that by means of suitable monetary policies the US central bank can navigate the economy towards a growth path of economic stability and prosperity. The key ingredient in achieving this is price stability. Most experts are of the view that what prevents the attainment of price stability are the fluctuations of the federal funds rate around the neutral interest rate.

The other week, the infamous and much-derided Green New Deal was voted down in the Senate and with it the dreams of a Federal spending party for tackling climate change. But maybe its advocates have been going about this the wrong way, engaged in political solutions and international treaties such as the Paris Agreement.

The recent arrests of actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman for allegedly using fraudulent means for getting their daughters into prestigious private universities has exposed a dark underbelly in college admissions, something that will reverberate for a long time. (Huffman already has agreed to plead guilty, which almost certainly will mean some jail time.) Unfortunately, we can assume that Americans will learn the wrong lessons from this scandal.