Shrink the State. End the Fed. Balance the budget. Make a profit. Leave an inheritance.
Gary North
Written by Gary North on January 31, 2013
“The owl of Minerva flies only at dusk.” I came across that phrase many times over 45 years ago, when I was writing my first book, Marx’s Religion of Revolution (1968). (You can download it for free here.) What does it mean? Wikipedia explains. The nineteenth-century idealist philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel famously noted that […]
Continue reading →Written by Gary North on January 22, 2013
Gary North’s Reality Check (Jan. 22, 2013) The largest banks are immune to reform or regulation. They control the Federal Reserve System, and have since the beginning in 1914, when it opened for business. The Congress defers to the FED. So, the banking system never changes much. There is never a significant reform. Today, the […]
Continue reading →Written by Gary North on January 11, 2013
Gary North’s Reality Check Milton Friedman was very smart and a great debater. I knew him. I liked him. But he was no different from other very clever fellows. When he got something conceptually wrong, he was dangerous. My professor of apologetics at seminary was Cornelius Van Til. Apologetics is the philosophical defense of the […]
Continue reading →Written by Gary North on December 27, 2012
In August 2011, the House, the Senate, and the President all agreed: taxes on all Americans would rise, and government spending would slow on January 1, 2013. They signed that law in order to get Republicans to agree to an increase in the government’s debt ceiling. They lied. They had no intention of raising taxes, […]
Continue reading →Written by Gary North on December 7, 2012
Here is a clever video. It takes apart John Maynard Keynes. It shows why the economic problem is not a lack of spending. It’s a spoof of those late-night TV ads that used to sell a record collection of famous hit songs, but which today sell CD-ROM collections of famous hit songs. This collection is […]
Continue reading →Written by Gary North on December 3, 2012
The tax rate on dividends will triple on January 1. It pays to pay out dividends this year. Costco’s Board of Directors decided to pay over $3 million in dividends this year. To pay for this, the company will borrow the money. At today’s low interest rates, that is a savvy move. The Wall Street […]
Continue reading →Written by Gary North on November 29, 2012
Gary North’s Reality Check In the fourth quarter of 2008, the whole world turned to the central banks for deliverance. The central banks responded with the largest monetary expansion in the post-World War II era. All but Austrian School economists either applauded — Keynesians and monetarists — or else remained mute. The politicians did the […]
Continue reading →Written by Gary North on November 27, 2012
Gary North’s Reality Check The fallacy of the broken window was first exposed by Frederic Bastiat in 1850, the year of his death. He argued that when someone breaks a window, this makes the victim poorer. So, it makes the community poorer. But there was a false economic idea common in his era. The broken […]
Continue reading →Written by Gary North on November 20, 2012
Gary North’s Reality Check (Nov. 20, 2012) For every dollar of increased debt in the American economy, the gross domestic product rises by about 8 cents. From 1947 to 1952, GDP rose by over $4.60 for every increased dollar of debt, both public and private. From 1953 to 1984, the payoff it dropped to about […]
Continue reading →Written by Gary North on November 14, 2012
Are you ready for the AMT? That’s the Alternative Minimum Tax. The biggie in the “fiscal cliff” is this one. It will it close to 27 million families. They are unaware of it. They have not budgeted for it. Have you? If Congress decides to revoke it before January 1, the IRS will have to […]
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