“Pension fund problems worsen in 43 states” says the Bloomberg headline. Laurie Meisler writes,

New Jersey, Kentucky and Illinois continue to lose ground and now have only about one third of the money they need to pay retirement benefits. And three states had double-digit declines in their pension funding ratios in the past year: Colorado, Oregon and Minnesota—though some of this can be attributed to actuarial changes in the way pension liabilities are calculated.

Here’s a question for you: How do you spell boondoggle?

The answer (in case you didn’t already know): P-e-n-t-a-g-o-n.

I am in Switzerland this week interacting with and lecturing to students and faculty at the University of Zurich. The subject of our work is the U.S. Constitution and its protections of personal liberty.

In a recent social media discussion someone raised the issue of Murray Rothbard’s relationship with Milton Friedman. I reported that Rothbard had a good relationship with Friedman and other academic libertarians in the 1950s and early 1960s, with Friedman even recommending Rothbard for a post at Chicago. Thanks to the Mises Insittute’s archivist Barbara Pickard I have the details handy. In early 1956 Friedman discussed with Richard Cornuelle, then running the Volker Fund, the possibility of getting Rothbard to Chicago for a postdoctoral fellowship.

At this point, does anyone believe the Fed is willing to do anything that might really spook markets? 

During the 1990s, back in the days of “Maestro” Alan Greenspan, it was widely believed that investors should pay careful attention to every word uttered by Fed chairment for clues as to where Fed policy was headed in the near future. 

The Washington Post and “60 Minutes” have just peeled back another sordid layer in the War on Drug by exposing Big Pharma’s role in expanding the Opiod Crisis that has resulted in more than 30,000 deaths per year.

[From the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics.]

A review of Andrew Carnegie: An Economic Biography by Samuel Bostaph.

In the end Donald Trump gets what he wanted, a “low interest rate person” who also happens to be a “Republican.” Jerome Powell will replace Janet Yellen. This means Trump will ensure that, while the stationary at the Eccles Building will change, the monetary policy guiding it likely will not.

One of the most devastating consequences of the Obama Administration has been that Americans who don’t have the luxury of large bank accounts are continuing to be treated like second-class citizens by the US financial system.