Given the contentious topic of money and its influence on the world, I decided to see what ChatGPT “knows” about it. I was surprised by the breadth of its responses, as well as its information on free market positions, especially those of the Austrian school.

Who doesn’t know them: the blood-sucking vampires, the eerie undead, immortalized in countless films, and inspired primarily by Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula (1897). Just think of iconic movies like the silent film Nosferatu – A Symphony of Horror (1922), Dracula (1958) with Christopher Lee, Roman Polanski’s parody The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967), or Nosferatu – Phantom of the Night (1979), starring Klaus Kinski as Count Dracula. 

On September 5th, Reason Magazine published a very strange assessment of the war in Ukraine, written by Paul Schwennesen, titled “The War in Ukraine Is Already Over—Russia Just Doesn’t Know it Yet.” In short, Schwennesen argues that, based on his experience recently traveling to the front in Kursk Oblast, Ukrainian will and high morale mean that the war is as good as over and that Ukrainian triumph is “inevitable.”

China is on the edge of recession — excluding Covid, for the first time since 2008 — as new data showed all-important manufacturing contracted for the fourth month in a row with particular weakness in new orders.

In other words, what they’ve got is a backlog, then it’s a cliff.

Manufacturing makes up a third of China’s economy — much more than the US. The collapse of China’s property — another third of China’s economy — is adding further fuel to the fire.

In recent weeks, both candidate Donald Trump and President Biden—via his staff—have expressed support for the idea of a US sovereign wealth fund (“SWF”). An SWF is simply an investment fund run by a national government. Ostensibly, the goals of such a venture are twofold—to increase the wealth of America and its citizens, and to spur innovation in “critical” areas like infrastructure, technology, and medicine.

According to a recent poll from the Wall Street Journal, many of the policies proposed by Kamala Harris and Donald Trump that economists hate most are very popular with the American public. For example, the plan endorsed by both candidates to eliminate taxes on tips for service workers is favored by nearly 80 percent of the ordinary public. However, only 10 percent of economists support the measure.