Investors are happy today that a deal was reached on “tax cuts for the rich.” Lower taxes definitely help the real economy, but, except for a one-time pop, they can’t raise the stock market.

Only money/bank credit can push stock prices higher.

See here and here for explanations.

As I’ve mentioned previously, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is pending and is bad news.

This book shows us how to fix money. The best path is not to depend on governments or world-government agencies. It is to remove completely the creation and functioning of money from the domain of public policy, once and for all.

“We are not printing money” but one wonders where the $600 billion comes from.

As I noted in Ideas Are Free: The Case Against Intellectual Property, statists used to be much more honest. The federal government used to a Dept. of War. In 1947, its named was chagned to the Dept. of Army of the “New Military Establishment,” and in 1949, to the Department of Defense. Europeans are usually more honest than Americans. Socialists in Europe admit they are socialists, or even communists. In America, they call themselves “conservatives” or “liberals.”

In her latest op-ed piece, Trudy Rubin expresses concern that WikiLeaks may lead to a downgrade in the “hard-won trust between the United States and the leaders of Russia, China and Arab countries.”

Hard-won trust? Downgraded by publishing an exposé of backstabbing behavior? Isn’t that the same as the philanderer blaming the private eye for the inevitable downgrade in marital trust that follows exposure of the latest affair?

Shawn Ritenour is Professor of Economics at Grove City College and adjunct scholar at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He earned a B. A. in economics from Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa and a Ph.D. in economics from Auburn University. He has held the Ruby Letsch-Roderique Chair of Economics at Southwest Baptist University and has served as visiting professor at the University of Angers in France.

Job creation has become the central theme of the current recession. The focus on job growth is widespread among both conservative (if I may use this term liberally) and left-leaning economists. Furthermore, if you ask the man on the street what the pressing economic problem of the time is, he will certainly respond, “Jobs.”

George Bragues is the head of the business program at the University of Guelph-Humber in Toronto, Canada.