We’re regularly told by the Fed and defenders of the current incumbent president that the economy is humming along pretty well. Yes, there are concerns, we are told, the US is performing below its “potential output” level, but we’ve achieved the most that can be expected under the circumstances. People who write columns for the New York Times and who compile government reports are doing pretty well. Unfortunately for those who don’t write columns or enjoy comfortable government jobs, things seem less rosy. 

In his Economic Viewpoint memo yesterday, Brendan Brown,  Executive Director and Chief Economist of Mitsubishi UFJ Securities International, surveyed the crowded field of prospective Republican Presidential nominees on the subject of radically reforming the Fed and pronounced it sadly lacking.  

I am working on a couple of articles about the Skyscraper Curse when a curious notion popped into my head: “Many of the South American economies are in great economic distress so I wonder if the Curse could be at work south of the border?”

The Puerto Rican government has defaulted on its debt. USNews reports: 

Puerto Rico failed to meet a $58 million debt repayment deadline Monday, triggering one of the most significant municipal bond defaults in U.S. history.

Per Bylund writes in The Orange County Register:  

New technologies fascinate us – from the precision of robotic surgery to the potential of Amazon dropping packages on our doorsteps via drone. But at the same time, there is anxiety over robots and artificial intelligence making human labor unnecessary and, ultimately, replacing us.

I thought this photo (below) from July 2015 did an especially good job of capturing the camaraderie between Joe and his Summer Fellowship students at the Mises Institute. Summer Fellows arrive in May each year and stay through Mises University in late July, working on articles, dissertations, and other research while being able to work closely with Joe, Mark Thornton, and visiting scholars.

A Bulgarian translation of Democracy: The God That Failed is now available.

Ronald Reagan used to be called the Teflon president, on the grounds that no matter what gaffe or scandal engulfed him, it never stuck: he didn’t suffer in the polls. If Reagan was the Teflon president, the military is America’s Teflon institution. Even people who oppose whatever the current war happens to be can be counted on to “support the troops” and to live by the comforting delusion that whatever aberrations may be evident today, the system itself is basically sound.

Three months ago, the CEO of Gravity Payments, a Seattle credit card processing firm, announced that all of the firm’s employees would be paid a minimum of $70,000 a year, according to this story. Now, the firm has fallen on hard times, and some of the firm’s “higher valued” employees have quit.

The online tech and science magazine Verge recently published an essay on the economic and political impact of disruptive ride-sharing startup Uber: Uber can’t be stopped. So what happens next? Whereas one might expect an online tech magazine like Verge, itself part of a wave of disruptive publishing efforts, to be optimistic about innovative tech initiatives, the essay offers a surprisingly bleak, pessimistic, and politicized “analysis.”