It isn't altogether clear that increasing inequality has brought with it pronounced deleterious consequences. In spite of claims to the contrary, the United States (which still enjoys more freedom than almost every other country on Earth, in spite of its own massive regulatory/welfare state) outperforms mixed-economy welfare states on a number of margins.
The Fed is powerful but it can't create economic growth, writes Frank Shostak. Contrary to Monetarist claims, even the attempt to flood the markets with money can backfire if the conditions that allow for sustainable investment don't exist. More pumping destroys real funding and destroys more businesses, which in turn makes banks reluctant to expand lending.
How much comfort can the U.S. take in the sufferings of Japan? In a side-by-side comparison of the productivity of the two economies, the U.S. comes off looking worse than one might expect, while Japan, long in the mire of recession, not as badly as one might assume. Example: in the past 12 months, government spending in Japan fell by its largest amount in at least 22 years.
As we observe the current frenzy of lawyers preparing to sue McDonald's and Burger King—and even suing Kraft Foods, the maker of Oreos—for allegedly causing their clients to suffer from obesity, we cannot help but wonder what lunatics have taken over the U.S. legal system.
The measures of inequality on which analysts, policymakers, and armchair pundits typically lean may be misleading, argues Art Carden. Even when measures of real income tell us otherwise, the real differences in income and wealth generated by the free market may be much smaller today than they were 100, 50, and even 10 years ago. So maybe "inequality isn't growing fast enough" for some—it doesn't appear to be growing at all.
Allan Meltzer did not set out to encourage Americans to consider the unthinkable: the Fed is so dangerous to our economic and political health that it should go. But maybe, just maybe, his new but flawed book may reignite a debate that goes back to Jacksonian America. Gregory Bresiger is the reviewer.
There are clues and warnings, beyond mere contrarian instincts, that inflation will once again have her day. Inflation is a process that forcefully re-distributes wealth from one group to another. Prices do not change uniformly in this process, and those that get the new dollars before their costs have risen gain at the expense of those whose costs rise first.
If the government actually believed that the homeland would be safer due to its actions overseas, why does it impose (under the threat of violence) a terrorism insurance requirement? And why do its warnings of impending doom seem to be increasing rather than decreasing?
The World Bank has warned that central bankers around the world are running out of tools for dealing with the flagging global economy. The Fed, in particular, has almost no room left to cut interest rates. The report then turns to hand-wringing about the great monetary fear of our time: deflation.
No one can argue about the current moribund economy, complete with flat or falling stock prices, nonexistent profits, layoffs, airline bankruptcies, and exploding federal and state budget deficits. But few people have accurately pointed out why there is no recovery from the original recession.
