If you read German: Thorsten Polleit has written a rather detailed analysis of the Swiss gold initiative and how it would be implemented if passed.

Thorsten Polleit wrote the “con” side of a debate over whether or not the negative interest rate in Germany is a good thing. Dr. Thorsten’s contribution is in opposition to the “pro” side authored by Ulrich von Suntum (Universität Münster).

The lesson I draw from the Republican victories in the 2014 election is that people want less government. Since 2009 the number of Democratic Senators fell from 58 to 45, the number of democratic House members fell from 256 to 192, and the number of Democratic governors fell from 28 to 18. I’m not the first to observe that these big Democratic losses are directly related to the unpopularity of President Obama’s big government agenda.

There’s a long history of comparing market competition to warfare.

On Sunday, the Catalonia region of Spain held an “informal” or “symbolic” referendum on Catalonian independence.  It was “symbolic” because Madrid politicians have declared it to be illegal, and  ”a sterile and useless sham.” The Guardian concludes that a legal one is now inevitable.

Zero Hedge explains the scam that is Hedonic Quality Adjustments wherein the Bureau of Labor Statistics manipulates price data so that  large increases in the actual prices of certain products can be transformed into decreasing prices when calculating the Consumer Price Index.

That was the solution proffered by eugenicist progressives during the 1920s and 1930s. At least, that was their preferred option. Frank Taussig admitted that we “have not reached the stage where we can proceed to chloroform [the unemployed] once and for all, but at least they can be segregated, shut up in refuges and asylums, and prevented from propagating their kind.”

My anti-democracy critics will shake their heads in dismay at me, but I’ve been forced to come to the conclusion that there’s no reason to believe that plebiscitary democracy is any worse than the usual kind. Indeed, in American states that must hold plebiscites to authorize tax increases, one hears regular howls from the pro-tax crowd about how “direct democracy” is awful and that “representative democracy” is so much better.

“History has been rather kind to the American voter.”