On New Year’s Eve, US Navy helicopters in the Red Sea engaged and sank three boats belonging to Yemen’s Houthis, killing ten. According to US Central Command, the boats were attacking a container ship and fired on the helicopters as they responded to the ship’s distress call. The encounter represents a significant escalation that risks forcing a whole new war on the American public and the Middle East.
What’s in store for 2024? Will the Fed cut rates? If so, will it be because everything is awesome and the fabled soft landing has been achieved? Or will rate cuts just be a small part of a new multi-trillion-dollar bailout package? If the latter, who will bear the brunt of the blame?
Those on Wall Street seem largely unperturbed. On the final trading day of 2023, CNBC reported that:
Taxes are not a contractual obligation between the state and the individuals it governs. By definition, taxes are noncontractual debts in which the state is the creditor, and the payment of these debts is demanded through coercion and violence. While there may be taxes linked to the performance of certain economic activities (e.g., the sale of products), all forms of this economic policy share the characteristic of being indifferent to the consent of those individuals being governed.
June 6, 2018, is a historic day as the 74th anniversary of the allied forces D-Day invasion of France and the opening day for the Texas Bullion Depository (TxBD). 2023 is the five-year anniversary of its operation.
To the Chinese reader:
It is safe to say that economics suffers at least as many fallacies and misunderstandings as any other field of study. Had physics suffered the same level of issues, we would not have seen much—if any—of the progress that we have made over the past centuries. Yet, economics—the queen of the social sciences—keeps being misrepresented, if not abused, and we suffer the consequences.
Back when I was a construction lender, I thought the perfect construction loan would pay off after one day, just long enough to collect the loan fee. After all, time is your enemy in construction lending. Any of a myriad of unknowns can keep construction from being completed: the market may evaporate for what is being built, interest rates may rise to make a loan uneconomic, construction costs could increase to require a loan modification or more borrower equity (good luck), just to name a few.
Jamaica is a small island in the British West Indies, but despite its stature, this tiny nation has elicited the attention of global elites. In politics, Jamaica’s voting behavior at the United Nations is closely monitored by her neighbors in the Caribbean and the global community because she commands influence. Due to historical and cultural complexities, Jamaica is a magnet for academic research, and writing about the country has manifested into a cottage industry. Consistent with her fame, those who study Jamaica tend to be heavyweights in academia.
