Podcast

A trade deficit isn't actual evidence that anything is wrong. But if it were, one of the best things to do would be to reduce government spending. Unfortunately, politicians disagree. 

The Japanese experience offers valuable lessons for the US and Europe. A loose monetary policy can stabilize a recession for the short term, but a persistent flood of cheap money paralyzes productivity gains and growth.

Useful goods and services, and the productive resources needed to create useful goods and services, are wealth. Money is not wealth, and creating more money without first creating wealth is a big problem.

The masses only choose between the ideologies developed by the intellectual leaders of mankind. But the masses' choice is final and determines the course of events. If they prefer bad doctrines, nothing can prevent disaster.

Election 2020 is the same as every other election, only the state’s mask of legitimacy is slipping. 

Pollsters, many of whom predicted an overwhelming "blue wave," obviously failed miserably as reliable gauges of political sentiment. But prediction markets may offer an alternative.

The cynical voter casts a vote with the belief that it might improve his situation, or at least throw some obstacles in front of a regime that is bent on inflicting ever greater damage on the voters.

Even if he loses, Donald Trump still has time to change military policy, pardon allies, unseat the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and throw a wrench in the deep state apparatus.

The 2020 election results will be a test of earlier liberal/progressive “investments” in modifying how Americans think about things. But at this point, perhaps more important will be whether, after the fact, people recognize how much they have been manipulated.

The new "right to repair" measure on the ballot in Massachusetts has very little to do with rights, and a lot to do with new costly and bureaucratic mandates on automakers.