The CRE Bust is a Slow-Moving Train
Day-to-day we don’t hear much about the commercial office property crash. As The Fed’s Michael Barr said at an event hosted by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition in Washington, “This is the kind of thing where it’s likely to be a very slow-moving train as the financial sector and commercial real estate market move forward,” he said, adding that refinancing deals will play out in the next few years. “It’ll take some time.”
Butler, Butt Out!
Who’s Afraid of Gender?
by Judith Butler
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024; 308 pp.
FDR and the End of Gold: 2,500 Percent and Counting
The world is full of scraps of paper today.
- Benjamin Anderson, economist, Chase Manhattan Bank (1920 - 1939)
Fixing FDR’s Biggest Blunder: From Gold Standard to Fiat Folly and Back
Today, states across the country are beginning to actively embrace prosound money legislation, inviting a critical examination of how America abandoned the gold standard of money and racked up $34.5 trillion in debt. To understand how we got here, it’s important to understand the policy that initiated our monetary decline.
Abolish all Treason and Sedition Laws
The word “treason” has enjoyed something of a renaissance in recent years—on the Left. It used to be more popular on the Right. During the Cold War, conservatives frequently employed the word to demand their ideological enemies be exiled or executed. Nowadays, anti-immigration activists frequently denounce their opponents as “the treason lobby.”
James Bovard on the Ron Paul Liberty Report
“It would be helpful if libertarians understood the government policies they oppose.” My 2 cents in talking with Ron Paul today on his Liberty Report:
US Job Growth is Slower than Reported
The news media has been reporting steady job growth in the US economy since the Covid 19 crisis. Employment has grown steadily. However, data on employment represents progress in the number of jobs filled. The total number of jobs in business plans is the sum of all filled and unfilled jobs, total employees plus total job openings (see the red line in the top-left graph below).
Why Genocide?: Every Law of War Has Been Violated in Gaza
Why, then, are Israel’s 2023-2024 actions in Gaza genocidal?
In a November 14, 2023 essay, “Bibi Netanyahu May Find Himself In the Dock, In The Hague,” your columnist explained why, logically at least, Israel has met the threshold for criminal intent, mens rea.