November 13, 2024

President Trump, Money’s Broken

“Trump Will Fix It,” the campaign sticker says.  If President Trump is serious about fixing things, then he should turn to reforming monetary policy.  The U.S. dollar is broken.  It is not a stable measure of value, the eco...

October 8, 2024

Forever Wars, This Way

Alluding to her opponent Donald Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris recently criticized any compromise in the Ukraine war that might involve territorial concessions as a “surrender” policy.  Her position is within the consensus vi...

June 29, 2023

America’s ‘Revolutionary moment’

The road to war in Ukraine started with the decision in the mid-1990s to enlarge NATO’s membership to include countries formerly in Russia’s security sphere. The enlargement took place in phases, but finally sinking Ukraine into the NATO ...

June 16, 2023

Do Not Underestimate Russia’s Resolve

In the time since the United States was founded in the 18th century, Russia has been invaded by Europeans five times.  In 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte occupied Moscow but badly misjudged the will of the Russian people to resist.  The cause of t...

February 25, 2023

Biden Denies the Russians a Choice

It is said that President John F. Kennedy gave the most important speech of his presidency before the graduating class at the American University in Washington, D.C., in June 1963.  The occasion was five months before his death and eight months ...

February 13, 2023

The Debate over the Origins of the War in Ukraine

All wars are like car accidents, and all car accidents have causes.  Trouble is, conflicting testimony will often produce different explanations of the cause. The conventional view on the Russo-Ukraine War holds that Russia's invasio...

December 7, 2021

'Partition' Lebanon: Here's Why

Lebanon is in general crisis.  The economy is in free fall.  Hyperinflation has evaporated salaries and savings.  Half the population is in poverty.   Sectarian tensions could go “hot” amid economic collapse....

August 25, 2021

Bitcoin, Fiat Currencies, and ... Gold

Tesla CEO Elon Musk riled the crypto-currency community some months ago when he announced that Tesla would accept Bitcoin as a mode of payment only to withdraw the offer when reports of Bitcoin’s profligate use of energy became too prominent to...

July 12, 2021

Bitcoin, or Bitter Con?

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan and other books on risk and probability is Bitcoin’s nemesis.  A one-time supporter of the cryptocurrency he now calls it a “Ponzi scheme.”  Taleb recently posted an analytic...

April 28, 2021

How to save Lebanon from a hyperinflationary collapse

The word "Lebanon" has become synonymous with political anarchy and a failed state.  It's been that way since the 1970s, when the country slid into years of civil war.  Even though Lebanon has long been at peace, it ...

September 9, 2020

Libertarians Unite! -- Behind Trump, That Is

Outside the earshot of the news outlets and slipping through the data gathered by the pollsters, millions of conversations are taking place in America today that have the general form of:  “I don’t like his tweets but he’s done...

June 26, 2019

Understanding Leftists in Three Easy Steps

America is fighting a culture war and the Progressive Left is the aggressor.  The latest front was opened on June 21 when the House of Representatives passed the so-called “Equality Act,” which would allow boys who self-identify as g...

June 13, 2019

The profound intellectual and moral vacuity of Kirsten Gillibrand

On the hustings in Iowa in search of the Democratic Party presidential nomination, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) recently gave an interview with the Des Moines Register in which she held forth on the Progressive Left's position on abortion....

January 9, 2019

President Trump Should Reform the Fed

President Trump should use the occasion of his upcoming State of the Union Address to call for legislation reforming the Federal Reserve System and for examining alternative ways to conduct monetary policy. A bill along those lines passed the Hous...

December 28, 2018

The Fed’s Nightmare Scenario

December 29 marks the twenty-ninth anniversary of the high-water mark in Japanese stocks.  On that date in 1989 the Nikkei 225 Index closed at its all-time high of 38,915, but within months fell into “bear market” territory.  It...

November 29, 2018

The Dollar Dearth and the U.S. Economy

With signs of economic weakness popping up everywhere, the Federal Reserve has come under increasing pressure to slow down the pace of interest rate hikes.  The Fed has hiked rates six times since President Trump took office and is on track to u...

October 27, 2018

The Fed Trumps Trump

Policymakers at the Federal Reserve are expected to raise short-term interest rates again in December, which would be the seventh such increase since President Trump took office, and they may ratchet them higher three more times in 2019.  The nu...

October 16, 2018

Mr. President, Money's Broken. Please Fix It.

"I think the Fed is making a mistake," President Trump told the press recently.  "They are so tight." He was referring to the Federal Reserve's decision on September 26 to raise the federal funds rate to...