Category Archives: Business & Economy
The Fed Is Spooking the Markets Not China [Audio]
Fasten your seat belts, this ride is getting interesting. Last week the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down more than 1,000 points, notching its worst weekly performance in four years. The sell-off took the Dow Jones down more than 10% from its peak valuations, thereby constituting the first official correction in four years. One third of all S&P 500 companies […]
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7 Million People Haven’t Made A Single Student Loan Payment In At Least A Year
Perhaps it’s all the talk about across-the-board debt forgiveness or maybe the total amount of outstanding student debt has simply grown so large ($1.3 trillion) that even those with no conception of how much money that actually is realize that it’s simply never going to paid back so there’s no point worrying about, but whatever the case, the general level […]
Read moreAfter 6 Years Of QE, And A $4.5 Trillion Balance Sheet, St. Louis Fed Admits QE Was A Mistake
As you’re no doubt aware, the Fed is fond of using the research departments at its various branches to validate policy and analyze away bad economic outcomes. Share This ArticleFacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinemail
Read moreThe Unseen Consequences of Zero-Interest-Rate Policy (ZIRP)
In a dynamic economy, an action not only triggers just one effect, but always an entire series of different consequences. While the cause of the first effect is easily recognizable, the other effects often occur only later and no such recognition occurs. Share This ArticleFacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinemail
Read morePrime Aged Workers Tumble In July, Workers 55 And Over Surge To New All Time High
By now what we first, heretically, said back in 2010: that the US is becoming a part-time economy, is common knowledge only the politically correct way of phrasing it, one which supposedly gives it a bullish spin, is “the sharing economy“, as if that makes it better for millions of millennials that they will never again have any career security […]
Read moreAmericans Not In The Labor Force Rise To Record 93.8 Million, Participation Rate At 1977 Level
While the Fed is digesting what the X-13 Arima seasonally adjusted payrolls number means for the future of US interest rates, the devastation of the US labor force continues. Share This ArticleFacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinemail
Read moreAre American’s Debt Slaves? 7 Out Of 10 Americans Believe That Debt “Is A Necessity In Their Lives”
Could you live without debt? Most Americans say that they cannot. According to a brand new Pew survey, approximately 7 out of every 10 Americans believe that “debt is a necessity in their lives”, and approximately 8 out of every 10 Americans actually have debt right now. Share This ArticleFacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinemail
Read moreBank Stress Tests: What Are They Good For?
In the aftermath of the financial crisis, central banks around the world began to subject their banking systems to “stress tests” – creating hypothetical worst-case scenarios and analyzing whether or not banks were capable of remaining in operation under those hypothetical conditions. The central banks would then publicize the results of the stress tests and announce which banks had passed […]
Read moreHow Student Loans Create Demand for Useless Degrees
Former Secretary of Education and US Senator Lamar Alexander wrote in the Wall Street Journal that a college degree is both affordable and an excellent investment. He repeated the usual talking point about how a college degree increases lifetime earnings by a million dollars, “on average.” That part about averages is perhaps the most important part, since all college degrees […]
Read moreWhy Do We Celebrate Rising Home Prices?
In recent years, home price indices have seemed to proliferate. Case-Shiller, of course, has been around for a long time, but over the past decade, additional measures have been marketed aggressively by Trulia, CoreLogic, and Zillow, just to name a few. Share This ArticleFacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinemail
Read moreAthens On The Potomac – It Could Never Happen Here, Right?
Financial experts in New York, London, and Brussels have tut-tutted Greece’s economic travails as Athens considers its future with the European Union. Why did they borrow so much money? How can they ever pay it back? Do they think that much debt is sustainable? Share This ArticleFacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinemail
Read moreNo End in Sight For Higher-Education Malinvestment
Those of us leaning in the Austrian direction see bubbles and malinvestments around every corner and assume, wrongly as it turns out, the market will right these wrongs lickety-split. But, for the moment a rational market is no match for cheap money. “Any college that is thinking about capital expansion, now is a very good time,” Robert Murray, an economist […]
Read moreGovernment Spending on “Innovation”: The True Cost Is Higher Than You Think
University of Sussex Professor Mariana Mazzucato is making headlines with her 2013 book The Entrepreneurial State, which argues that government, not the private sector, ultimately drives technological innovation. In a series of detailed case studies from information technology, pharmaceuticals, biotech, and other industries she argues that government labs and public agencies are mainly responsible for the fundamental, high-risk discovery and development […]
Read moreWealth Must Be Created Before We Can Give It To the Poor
Business is often portrayed as being crude and cruel. According to the popular narrative — the Charles Dickens view of the world — businesses are filled with cold-hearted scrooges who value profits more than people. This is then contrasted with the kindness and altruism of charities, non-profits, and governments, which are all supposedly created to help people. Charity, in particular, […]
Read moreLet’s Hope Machines Take Our Jobs: We Want Wealth, Not Jobs
The job-threatening rise of the machines is an economically illiterate meme that refuses to die. We’re actually probably in the early stages of it, a bull-market in neo-luddism, if you will. Bastiat’s “Candlemakers Petititon” answered this one long ago, but today I’ll run a little thought experiment that owes it all to good old Bastiat. Share This ArticleFacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinemail
Read moreWe Don’t Have a Wage Problem; We Have a Money Problem [VIDEO]
Over the last several months, a concerted push to raise the minimum wage has grabbed headlines across the country. Several major cities recently passed minimum wage hikes, and protests by fast food workers demanding a $15 per hour minimum drew thousands. Share This ArticleFacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinemail
Read moreOur (Not So) Safe Deposit Boxes–Will Texans Ride to the Rescue?
As I reported recently, banks are beginning to collaborate in the campaign by governments to stamp out the use of cash among the public. Chase, for example, rolled out a new program in several markets in March that restricts borrowers from using cash for making payments on credit cards, equity lines, mortgages and auto loans. Share This ArticleFacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinemail
Read moreThe Fed Considers a More Seasoned Approach
Just as the steady torrent of awful economic data, which began in the First Quarter and continued well into April and May, had forced many market analysts to grudgingly concede that 2015 would not see the robust economic growth that most had expected, the statisticians arrived on the scene like a cavalry charge and routed the forces of pessimism with […]
Read moreNo, Tax Breaks are not Subsidies
There’s a popular misconception that giving tax breaks to industries is the same as subsidizing them. Sadly, like many economic myths, this one just won’t die. Share This ArticleFacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinemail
Read moreIt Is Mathematically Impossible To Pay Off All Of Our Debt
Did you know that if you took every single penny away from everyone in the United States that it still would not be enough to pay off the national debt? Share This ArticleFacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinemail
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