Recent Podcast Episodes

John Tamny chronicles the profound ignorance and malfeasance of policymakers at all levels during 2020.

Nixon’s closing the gold window should be seen as the end of the last remnant of the gold standard, not some kind of market failure. Governments controlled most of the gold and set its price.

Was covid merely the excuse to justify new police powers under the guise of public health—powers politicians will use to impose draconian controls in the future?

After more than a year of unprecedented state intervention in our private lives, have Americans accepted a grim "new normal"?

It's not just the civilian politicians. For twenty years, the military itself pressed for more war, endlessly claiming that victory was right around the corner.

In 1971, David Rockefeller favored a “new international monetary system with greater flexibility” and “less reliance on gold.” Seeing an opportunity to expand his own power, Richard Nixon enthusiastically embraced the scheme.

There is no reason to expect the Afghanistan debacle to humble Washington policymakers. Korean War fiascos were swept under the rug, paving the way for the Vietnam War. The cycle didn't end there.

Fear of China and Iran, combined with the more practical desire for continued “free” money from the federal government, will continue to fuel opposition to any serious movement toward secession.

Nixon's decision to end the gold redeemability of the greenback was probably the most comprehensive act of monetary expropriation of modern times.

When we think in terms of the foundational law of property, it's clear that broad charges of aggression through infection are spurious at best.

All the propaganda that whitewashes the Cuban dictatorship is based on two lies: the nonexistent “blockade” and the allegedly excellent “public health.”

Western intellectuals are trying to tear down symbols of traditional colonialism. Yet the West still continues a form a colonialism in Africa: eco-imperialism.

Many people want the state to take the lead in revitalizing run-down towns. How does this make sense, when it is private industry that conceived these towns in the first place?

Republicans put a free market happy face on the latest environmentalist policy prescriptions in DC, but that does not change the fact that centrally planned climate policy is terrible economics.

It wasn’t "fascism" or "Russia" that normalized lockdowns, mandates, and massive whirlwind profits to politically connected cronies in the West—it was the alleged defenders of "liberal democracy."

If every new virus or variation warrants shutdowns or new vaccines, we will face an unending dystopian hellscape of state intervention in our medical decisions.

In a developed economy, the satisfaction of desires can be obtained not only by goods in use, but also by goods in exchange.

We should be extremely concerned about the short and diminishing impact of monster stimulus plans.

While it’s easy to fixate on the handful of success stories, the litany of government innovation failures should be enough to sober up even the most enthusiastic proponent of state-backed entrepreneurship.

Creating a functioning and sustainable local economy is much more time consuming and complicated than sprucing up a few buildings to look good on a TV show.