The monetary consequences of the looming largely unfunded mega tax-cutting package will almost certainly trump all others. Its advocates make vital comparisons with the Reagan era.

The supply of US dollars has slowed during early 2017 with March’s year-over-year percentage increase hitting a 103-month low of 5.9 percent. The last time the year-over-year growth rate was lower was during September of 2008, when the growth rate was 5.2 percent. Monthly year-over-year growth rates in the money supply have been falling each month since October. (All the numbers used here were posted in mid-April 2017.)

Austrians realize that empirical reality is unique, particularly raw statistical data.  Let that data be massaged, averaged, seasonals taken out, etc. and then the data necessarily falsify reality. — Murray Rothbard, Making Economic Sense, p. 246)

Allan H.

Recently one of the most successful Wall Street investors Warren Buffet urged investors to forget about active investment and simply put their money into index funds.

Contrary to his previous ideas that one should strive to make investment decisions based on the understanding of fundamentals, now he is of the view that it is better to embrace a passive approach and follow the index.

Tax cuts are great when they are actually tax cuts. In a system with a central bank, though, tax cuts are never tax cuts if there are no spending cuts to accompany them. This is because tax cuts without spending cuts simply mean more deficit spending. 

In an address to the German parliament on April 27, Chancellor Angela Merkel had tough words for the British government. The European Union’s most powerful leader told the Bundestag that the United Kingdom, “cannot and will not have the same rights” after it leaves the union. In other words, the British government should expect European leaders to refuse to negotiate and grant total access to the European market.

On Kennedy yesterday, Judge Andrew Napolitano explained how the GOP’s “repeal” of Obamacare does nothing to touch the four foundations of the Obamacare plan. 

The new plan “assumes the premise of Obamacare,” Napolitano noted, explaining that the ideological and legal foundations of Obamacare are still in place. 

Napolitano continued:

The late economist Friedrich Hayek, celebrated earlier this week on the anniversary of his birthday, left an enduring body of work and a place in history as the reluctant winner of a Nobel Prize he thought suited only to the physical sciences.

It seems that many residents of the West Coast and the Northeast are leaving those regions behind. 

In March, for example, the Sacramento Bee reported that California “exports its poor to Texas ... while wealthier people move in.” Former Californians report that a lackluster job market, a high cost of living, and high taxes are pushing them out.