Economists have always fashioned themselves in the style of physicists. They endlessly scrawl incomprehensible equations on blackboards because it is the epitome of science, the allure of great intelligence seemingly to do great things. But where physicists have continued to describe and solve some of the world’s great mysteries, Economists only bungle. They described free trade from among the myriad [...]
Earlier this week Bloomberg published an absurd story trying to claim that Donald Trump is being warned by foreign holders of US debt. Warned about what, the article didn’t say, so we can reasonably speculate (unlike the article) it was about politics. Bloomberg never did seem to report any such spreading alarm throughout the last Obama years even though selling [...]
In the middle of 1919, the United States was beset by a great many imbalances. Having just conducted a wartime economy, almost everything before then had been absorbed by the World War I effort. With fiscal restraint subsumed by national emergency, inflation was the central condition. Given that the Federal Reserve was by then merely a few years old, no [...]
If a central bank is doing something, you can almost be assured that at its theoretical root lies a statement or idea proposed by Milton Friedman in the 1960’s. This is not to say that Friedman would approve of what has been done in his name, even before he died a decade ago he became flustered over what his disciples, [...]
It’s pretty safe to write that no matter what happens in the global monetary system it won’t be considered properly. Orthodox doctrine which dominates the media (why there are still credentialed economists quoted in these articles) essentially prevents it from happening. From terms like “capital outflows” spring up analysis predicated on there actually having been both capital and outflows of [...]
The cruelest part, perhaps, of this economic condition globally is how it plays against type. In all prior cycles, economies of all kinds and orientations all over the globe would go into recession and then bounce right of it once at the bottom. It was often difficult to see the bottom, of course, but once recovery happened there was no [...]
Commentator Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard reignited a fierce debate this week, though it seems like he correctly surmised at the time anonymity would have been preferable. Speaking with author Charles Murray, Kristol echoed a sentiment that has been underneath a lot of what passes for analysis these past few years of the “rising dollar.” Being one prominent Never-Trumper, [...]
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) of China does not publish any of the big three data series (Industrial Production, Retail Sales, Fixed Asset Investment) for the month of January. It combines January data with February data because of the large distortions caused by Lunar New Year holidays. Unlike Western holidays that are but a single day, the Golden Week [...]
Quantum physics has always had a math problem, one that even in its early days the leading physicists were troubled about. Einstein famously remarked, “God does not play dice with the universe.” Erwin Schrödinger’s thought experiment now known simply as “Schrödinger’s cat” was meant to mock the Copenhagen interpretation rather than help explain it. But we live in an age [...]
Initial jobless claims fell to just 234k for the week of February 4, nearly matching the 233k multi-decade low in mid-November. That brought the 4-week moving average down to just 244k, which was a new low going all the way back to the early 1970’s. Jobless claims seemingly stand in sharp contrast to other labor market figures which have been [...]
Stay In Touch