Today Janet Yellen announced that she will be leave the Fed entirely when Jay Powell is confirmed as the next Federal Reserve Chairman, she had the option of staying on as a governor. It was widely expected that Yellen would stay on, though there was some thought that her ideological similarity with Powell made it possible she could have stayed on the Federal Reserve Board.
On the campaign trail last year, Donald Trump derided the Transportation Security Administration as a “total disaster”. But his administration is making TSA more intrusive and abusive while its 42,000 screeners remain as incompetent as ever.
New TSA screening guidelines will likely make Thanksgiving travel a disaster for legions of Americans — and the worst is yet to come.
This time of the year, whether in good economic times or bad, is when Americans gather with their families and friends and enjoy a Thanksgiving meal together. It marks a remembrance of those early Pilgrim Fathers who crossed the uncharted ocean from Europe to make a new start in Plymouth, Massachusetts. What is less appreciated is that Thanksgiving also is a celebration of the birth of free enterprise in America.
Currency rates of exchange appear to be moving in response to so many factors that it makes it almost impossible to ascertain where the rate of exchange is likely to be headed. But rather than paying attention to the multitude of variables, it is more sensible to focus on the essential variable.
As far as the currency rate of exchange determination is concerned, this variable is the relative changes in the purchasing power of various monies. The relative purchasing power of various monies sets the underlying rate of exchange.
In a recent blog post, Paul Krugman tried to illustrate a point about the GOP tax cut plan by imagining interplanetary trade with Martians. (At least he’s now entertaining voluntary transactions, rather than an alien invasion.) Yet in his zeal to downplay the potential benefits to workers from a corporate tax cut, Krugman ends up shortchanging the versatility of markets.
In the first episode of the new season of Historical Controversies, which will focus on the sectional crises that led to the Civil War, I gave a brief explanation of my problem with the “Tariff Thesis” for the cause of southern secession.
Bloomberg reports an astonishing bit of interest rate news from France. Mark Gilbert reports,
There is one important area of American life where no effective freedom of speech or the press does or can exist under the present system. That is the entire field of radio and television. In this area, the federal government, in the crucially important Radio Act of 1927, nationalized the airwaves. In effect, the federal government took title to ownership of all radio and television channels. It then presumed to grant licenses, at its will or pleasure, for use of the channels to various privately owned stations.
