Power & Market

John Calhoun, among the most influential of America’s nineteenth-century statesmen, was born on March 18.

Notwithstanding the fear of disease contagion, the states and feds may only quarantine those who are actively contagious and will infect others imminently. And it must present evidence of both at a trial at which it bears the burden of proof.

Toilet paper producers haven't stopped making it. But anti-gouging laws in many places have ensured that prices can't rise to ensure that your neighbor doesn't buy three hundred rolls at the regular price while others in greater need can't find any at all.

For years there have been warning signs that a recession could light the fuse on a massive corporate debt bomb, and it’s possible that the coronavirus may be the match.

Thanks to relentless intervention by governments and central banks, the financial system now looks to government policy as the solution to every problem.

Printing up paper money and giving it or lending it to domestic businesses or to India will not bring about a miraculous replacement of the lost goods and services or repair broken supply chains.

Although authoritarian states can indeed act swiftly, they always act on the wrong information—and the wrong objectives.

The new powers acquired by the CDC and other agencies will likely be retained and put to use long after this crisis has abated. And further government intervention in the biomedical and healthcare sectors is virtually guaranteed.
 

Everywhere one looks there seems to be panic about the coronavirus.

As Danielle DiMartino Booth put it, this is the money "bazooka reloaded."