While the mirage is gone, the debt remains. The paths out of debt are dangerous at best, catastrophic at worst. The safest path involves structural reforms to overturn the elite consensus and return to neomercantilist policies to create jobs and growth inside the United States. The most dangerous path involves more of the same — […]
It was founded in 1913 specifically as a lender of last resort for Wall Street. Its purpose was not to restrict credit growth and the balance sheet expansion of Wall Street banks but to encourage and support them. The Fed was instrumental in extending the credit-driven boom of the 1920s that set up the economy […]
There’s a multitrillion-dollar black hole growing at the heart of the world’s financial markets. Negative-yielding debt — bonds worth less, not more, if held to maturity — is spreading to more corners of the bond universe, destroying potential returns for investors and turning the system as we know it on its head. Now that it […]
What I am opposed to is misleading people with false climate science claims and alarming them into diverting vast sums of the public’s wealth into expensive energy schemes, thus creating energy poverty and reducing our standard of living. When such policies are followed, it is the poor who suffer the most. Roy W. Spencer, Ph. […]
A new scientific study could bust wide open deeply flawed fundamental assumptions underlying controversial climate legislation and initiatives such as the Green New Deal, namely, the degree to which ‘climate change’ is driven by natural phenomena vs. man-made issues measured as carbon footprint. Scientists in Finland found “practically no anthropogenic [man-made] climate change” after a series of studies. […]
The contrast between the thousand years from AD 500 to 1500, and the five hundred years since 1500, illustrates the importance of systemic scale. Kingdoms came and went in the Middle Ages, yet there was no catastrophic breakdown. Political fragmentation served as watertight compartments on a ship, and low network density was resistant to political […]
Under the genuine gold standard, inflating the number of pounds in circulation would cause pounds to flow into the hands of other countries, which would demand gold in redemption. Therefore gold would move out of British banks and pressure would be put on Britain to end its inflation and to contract credit. But, under the […]
The Fed furiously printed money to put out fires at Lehman, AIG, and Goldman Sachs. At the same time, China began to orchestrate massive inflows of gold, not under a gold standard, but rather stealth purchases using secret agents and intelligence tradecraft. The mirage of dollar strength continues. Still, the ground under the dollar has […]
The choice, in short, is not between economic progress and pollution. The situation is exactly the opposite. The faster the new industrializing countries modernize, and the wealthier they become, the sooner their pollution problems can be dealth with.
Banks, like people, borrow money. They borrow money from the Fed or from each other, depending on their particular short-term needs. The interest rate banks are charged when they borrow from the Fed is called the discount rate. The rate they’re charged when they borrow from each other is called the federal funds rate. When […]