Shrink the State. End the Fed. Balance the budget. Make a profit. Leave an inheritance.
Gary North
Written by Gary North on January 13, 2015
The most influential poem in history is Bernard Mandeville’s “The Grumbling Hive; or Knaves Turned Honest” (1705). It challenged Western moral philosophy, Christian theology, and common sense. It changed the thinking of Western social theorists. Through Adam Smith, it changed the economic world. Yet it was not a good poem. This gives me hope. You […]
Continue reading →Written by Gary North on December 26, 2014
When a central bank decides to cut interest rates, it can do it. It just buys up all of the government’s bonds with newly counterfeited money. Nothing to it! The government loves it. It can get all the money it wants at 0.31%. Anyone can afford that, especially the government, which never pays off debt. […]
Continue reading →Posted on December 26, 2014
Japanese drew down savings for the first time on record while wages adjusted for inflation dropped the most in almost five years, highlighting challenges for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as he tries to revive the world’s third-largest economy. The savings rate in the year through March was minus 1.3 percent, the first negative reading in […]
Continue reading →Posted on December 26, 2014
After the peace came $7.2bn of relief funds from international donors and the Indonesian government in one of the world’s biggest and most complex disaster reconstruction efforts. It left Aceh with some of the country’s best roads and hospitals, 140,000 new homes and 1,400 new schools. The funds also gave a big boost to the […]
Continue reading →Written by Gary North on December 22, 2014
The prestigious Financial Times offers an explanation for the West’s pessimism. It blames aging. It does not blame Keynesianism. It does not blame a loss of faith in the idea of progress, a factor that Robert Nisbet warned against in the Epilogue to his great book, History of the Idea of Progress (1980). It does […]
Continue reading →Written by Gary North on December 17, 2014
If the price oil fell to $3 a barrel, and it stayed there for 10 years, that would be a good thing. What if this led to massive unemployment in the oil industry? That would be a good thing. But isn’t the primary task of a free market economy to balance supply and demand? Yes, […]
Continue reading →Written by Robert Murphy on November 20, 2014
I coined the term “Krugman Kontradiction” to refer to the Nobel laureate’s tendency to lead his readers in one direction on an issue, then do a total about-face when circumstances make that convenient, while whipping up a new set of assumptions and emphases in his economic analysis so as to reconcile the switch. I’ve got […]
Continue reading →Posted on November 6, 2014
By David Stockman The information flow in a $17 trillion economy is far too vast to be digested and assessed by the 12 mortal members of the FOMC, and their policy control instrument—-the bludgeon of interest rate manipulations—-could not possibly shape its short-run course in any event. That’s especially true since the macro-economy is not […]
Continue reading →Written by Gary North on November 1, 2014
One of the fields of historical study is the history of ideas. In almost all cases I have ever read, an author concentrates only on the ideas; he does not describe the historical circumstances in which a particular idea faded, or triumphed, or never had any effect at all. Robert Nisbet once had a great […]
Continue reading →Written by Gary North on October 25, 2014
Politically conservative Americans and libertarians generally agree on the worst year of the 20th century: 1913. In 1913, three major events took place. First, Americans were informed that a constitutional amendment establishing an income tax passed. That was a lie. It did not pass. But the Attorney General of the United States announced that it […]
Continue reading →