After months of being portrayed as a villain or worse in the mainstream media, Joe Manchin suddenly has become a Democratic Party hero—all because he has declared he will support legislation that he and President Joe Biden claim will “reduce inflation” and give us better weather.
We are in revolutionary times. Given an adequate understanding of economics and behavior, we can learn from the history of past revolutions.
In France in 1789, the government had long built up debts. The elites resisted reforming themselves.
Entrepreneurial advocacy has surged in recent years. Quite frequently, policy makers pen articles elaborating the case for entrepreneurial activities. Rightly, the entrepreneur is perceived as an architect of value. Precisely, because of its importance, global policy makers propose the establishment of institutions and legal reforms to facilitate entrepreneurship.
The twenty-gun HMS Buffalo departed Quebec on September 28, 1839, bound for Australia. Commanded by James Wood, the transport carried 150 crewmembers and 140 exiled passengers: fifty-eight French Canadians and eighty-two American Patriots; the voyage ensured the Upper and Lower Canadian rebellions of 1837–38 were over.
In a presentation last month, St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank president James Bullard remarked, “The current U.S. macroeconomic situation is straining the Fed’s credibility with respect to its inflation target.” It’s easy to understand why this might be the case. Statistics revealed that the annual inflation rate has shot to 9.1 percent, the highest since November 1981, while the month-over-month measure of the Consumer Price Index surged to an astounding 1.3 percent, the highest since March 1980.
Fed officials like Jerome Powell have long downplayed CPI as a price inflation measure in favor of the PCE index. But, much like CPI, the PCE measure is now also hitting 40-year highs. In new data released today for June, the personal consumption expenditures price index rose 6.8%, the biggest 12-month move since the 6.9% increase in January 1982. Excluding food and energy, the ”core PCE” increased 4.8% from a year ago, up one-tenth of a percentage point from May.
