Big Banks Oppose Volcker Rule, Urge Delay in Implementing It
The deadline for comments on the proposed Volcker Rule was Monday night and hundreds, if not thousands, of letters arrived at the last minute to rail against the rule, mostly from...
Economic Commentary
Rising Oil Production in Alberta: More Evidence Disproving Hubbert’s Peak
The latest report from the Calgary (Alberta, Canada) Herald was nothing but good news: The steadily declining production of light oil from 2002 to late 2010 has reversed itself completely and...
Report: Government Dependency Increases 23 Percent Under Obama
American dependence on government has soared to an all-time high under the Obama administration, growing 23 percent in just two years, according to a new study by the Heritage Foundation. The...
Printing Money in Britain Doesn’t Work There Either
The long-awaited announcement of another bout of money printing in England on this Thursday will prove once again that experience doesn’t modify behavior on the other side of the pond either....
Friday’s Unemployment Numbers: Correcting the Corrections
The news released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on Friday appeared to be all good: The unemployment rate was down by 0.2 percent to 8.3 percent, the lowest since...
Housing: Prices and Ownership Still Correcting
Just when CoreLogic, the California-based mortgage data provider, began to wax optimistic about the housing market, the Census Bureau and the S&P/Case-Shiller index doused their enthusiasm with some cold facts and daunting data. ...
CBO Report: U.S. Deficits “Unsupportable”
In the summary of its “Budget and Economic Outlook” published on Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) noted the supportability of deficit spending even under its “alternative” analysis. Noted the CBO:...
Keynesian Economists Agree: China to Have “Hard Landing”
Mainstream economist Robert Samuelson admitted last week that the case for the ending of the economic boom in China has some substance. Keynesian economist Paul Krugman also confirmed that China is...
The Beauty of Private Property — from China?
A farmer in the communist collective of Xiaogang, a small village in eastern China, was starving, along with his family and his neighbors. At one of the political indoctrination classes he...
Obamacare, Price Controls, and Theft
With the announcement by Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, that Trustmark Life Insurance Company’s recent increases in premiums for their health insurance were “excessive” comes the certain result:...
First, Borders; Then, Kodak; Now, Barnes & Noble?
When Barnes & Noble announced its awful earnings per share losses on Thursday, it didn’t help any that its losses were so much worse than the company had projected just a...
Free Market Thinking Inside the Van
Inside the Lucky Dragon van sitting by the curb at the Chinese consulate in New York (left) is a couch, a folding chair, two Mac laptop computers and a printer running...
The Good News: The Bad News Isn’t All Bad
Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul noted on Tuesday that efforts to rein in government spending appeared to be in vain, due to an agreement reached with the White House during the recent...
Whirlpool Wants Gov’t to Force Consumers to Pay More
One of the ways that Whirlpool Corporation celebrated its 100th anniversary last year was to file petitions against two of its main South Korean competitors for “dumping” washing machines onto the...
China Finds “Rare Earth” Monopoly Losing Money
China is the largest producer of rare earth elements, or “rare earths, “which are important for many sophisticated technology applications. In fact, it has been estimated that China has 97 percent...