The Great Cryptocurrency Crash of 2018
It looks like we have an asset bust for the record books in the making. The cryptocurrency crash now under way today surpassed the dot-com bust that occurred at the beginning of the millennium,. While the NASDAQ Composite Index suffered a decline of 78% from its peak in March 2000 to its trough in October 2002, the MVIS CryptoCompare Digital Assets 10 Index, has tumbled 80% from Ja
The EU Threatens the Existence of Memes
The European Union today voted in favor of Article 13, legislation that risks, in the words of some, “destroying the internet as we know it.”
Controlling Missouri, Part 6: Martial Law
Cop Amber Guyger Is One Reason We Need Private Gun Ownership
When advocates of gun confiscation complain about “guns” and say “no one needs a gun for x” all they are really saying — whether they understand it or not — is “I want only cops and soldiers to have guns.”
Ten Years After Lehman: The Solution Was “More Lehmans”
The day Lehman went bankrupt I left the office in London for Waterloo Station and realized that something monumental had happened. The faces of the dozens of people waiting patiently for trains from the center to their homes were revealing. Most of them were, like me, City workers. Panic.
I remember when Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae — both government entities — were bailed out, because it happened shortly before the Lehman collapse. They were the largest originators of subprime mortgages.
Today’s Average Hourly Wage Has about the Same Purchasing Power it Did in 1978
“The Labor Department reported Friday that worker payrolls expanded by 201,000 in August and private-sector hourly wages grew 2.9% from a year earlier,” last Friday’s Wall Street Journal reported.
In Sweden, Europe’s Drift to the Right Continues
“Populism” seemed to have suffered a premature death a year ago. Emmanuel Macron had beaten Marine Le Pen in the French presidential elections, Dutch right-winger Geert Wilders had underperformed massively, and the EU had found — or at least thought to have found — new popularity all around Europe. After a turbulent 2016, in which the UK voted to exit the EU, and which saw Donald Trump become US president, everything seemed well again.
The Kavanaugh Hearings Were a Missed Opportunity—For Both Sides
By now you’ve heard about the combative spectacle that was last week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing for President Trump’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Brett Kavanaugh. This momentous event was characterized not by political acumen, wit, cunning, or prudence, but by partisan obstruction, lawlessness, tantrums, hysteria, ignorance, frenzy, and anger.