This little known chart (below) is the Fed’s attempt to anticipate a recession in the US economy. The reading from last November is only 3.84%, but that is higher than all but 3 months when a recession did not immediately proceed.

In a previous post, I asked whether Rothbard had been an uncited source in an article on the Panic of 1819 at the NY Fed’s blog.

Apparently it received enough traffic to get the attention of the authors, who have since updated their article with a note:

These days it seems that everything in our lives revolves around taxes. Taxation has always caused problems. Taxes distort the structure of production and the price system reducing the real wealth of society.

Neel Kashkari used his first public speech as President of the Minneapolis Fed to argue in favor of breaking up big banks. Big banks are problematic for a number of reasons, not least of which is the fact that their size, reach, and systemic importance makes it incredibly difficult for the government to allow them to go bankrupt.

Turkey has been increasingly courting a war with Russia, which is something it would not dare do if it didn’t have the backing of NATO behind it.

Once driven by Cold War geopolitics, Turkey’s continued membership in NATO means that American taxpayers subsidize the Turkish state in the form of guarantees of military defense in case of military conflict with non-NATO nations.