EDITORIAL
Showing 901 - 950 of 2166
January 01, 2014
As 2013 draws to a close, let's pause to recall some important developments for the cause of liberty – some of which you already know well, and others you'll be hearing about for the first time. Edward Snowden. After sitting on the Bush-era warrantless wireta ...
December 31, 2013
Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, and his designated successor, Janet Yellen, have defended the central bank's $4 trillion monetary expansion over the last five years as a necessity to fight recession and prevent deflation. The only problem is that booms ...
December 30, 2013
Fast-food workers across the county have recently held a number of high profile protests to agitate for higher wages. These protests have been accompanied by efforts to increase the wages mandated by state and local minimum wage laws, as well as a renewed push ...
December 28, 2013
The Nation magazine recently posted a small articled entitled, "Pakistan gets second tranche of $553.5m from IMF." We are so used to these kinds of announcements that they hardly register anymore. But this is how the entrenched corruption of our day is carried ...
December 27, 2013
The Federal Reserve's announcement on December 18 that beginning in January its monthly purchases of mortgage-backed financial instruments and US Treasury bonds would each be cut by $5 billion is puzzling, as is the financial press's account of the market's res ...
December 26, 2013
A friend is celebrating the season by visiting her children in the States. Like many millennials, her 20-something son is working brutal hours for minimum wage at an unfulfilling job. After visiting with him and his girlfriend, my friend emailed, "These kids ar ...
December 25, 2013
The following essay was published by The Daily Bell on December 25, 2009 and remains a favorite of ours. It's called, "Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus." The Federal Reserve and Congress are acting as our collective Santa Claus as we celebrate this Christm ...
December 25, 2013
USC economist Arthur Laffer identified, back in 1974, an interesting feature of oppressive public policies, applicable in numerous areas of concern to us. The principle acquired the name "the Laffer Curve" and its gist is that people will normally tolerate impo ...
December 24, 2013
Barack Obama is finishing his fifth year as president, and continues to try to move America further in the direction of increased government paternalism with the implementation of ObamaCare, a push for a higher minimum wage, more intrusive business regulation, ...
December 23, 2013
It is the time of year we feel a sense of joy and optimism. We are preparing for the holidays and looking to spend time with our families and friends. This year as we look back we see several developments that leave us feeling optimistic. A US attack on Syria w ...
December 21, 2013
The World Bank has a new mission. The Economic Times tells us that the World Bank has a new enemy to confront. It is not poverty but "corruption." Here's more: Corruption top foe in developing countries: World Bank ... World Bank chief Jim Yong Kim said Thursda ...
December 20, 2013
Washington has had the US at war for 12 years: Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen and almost Syria, which could still happen, with Iran waiting in the wings. These wars have been expensive in terms of money, prestige and deaths and injuries of b ...
December 19, 2013
The US is attempting to give multinational corporations a status that has hitherto been reserved to sovereign nations. According to documents recently leaked from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations, the Obama administration wants corporations to b ...
December 18, 2013
Given the considerable power and success of the Declaration of Independence, its detractors – e.g., Professor Garry Wills, in his massive effort to belittle it in his book Inventing America (Houghton Mifflin, 1978, 2002) – are hard put to refute the philoso ...
December 17, 2013
The public eulogies marking the passing of Nelson Mandela at the age of 95 on December 5, 2013 have refocused attention on the long struggle in South Africa to bring about an end to racial discrimination and the Apartheid system. Mandela and His Marxist View of ...
December 16, 2013
A week from now, the Federal Reserve System will celebrate the 100th anniversary of its founding. Resulting from secret negotiations between bankers and politicians at Jekyll Island, the Fed's creation established a banking cartel and a board of government over ...
December 14, 2013
The National Journal reports: "Adversarial journalism has been replaced by secretarial journalism. Obamacare's glitches have not slowed the trend." This is not exactly a profound statement but it captures the times. Like much in the National Journal, it is an o ...
December 13, 2013
The payroll jobs report for November from the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that the US economy created 203,000 jobs in November. As it takes about 130,000 new jobs each month to keep up with population growth, if the payroll report is correct, then most of t ...
December 12, 2013
The US Constitution is clear. Legislation must be approved by the House of Representatives, the Senate and the president before it becomes law. With very limited exceptions, revenue bills must originate in the House of Representatives. The Obama administration ...
December 11, 2013
It may have been either Will Rogers or Mark Twain, I cannot now recall which of the two great American humorists it was, who said all politicians are criminals. But it makes no difference because when something is true, its source is not the main issue. Fact is ...
December 10, 2013
One hundred years ago this month, on December 23, 1913, the Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act, establishing a national central-banking system in the United States. The governing board of the Federal Reserve was organized on August 12, 1914, and the Federa ...
December 09, 2013
One of the most important cases the US Supreme Court will consider this term is Hobby Lobby's lawsuit challenging the Obamacare mandate that employer-provided health care plans must cover abortion and contraceptives. Hobby Lobby, a corporation owned and managed ...
December 07, 2013
This fat so-and-so is shooting off his mouth again. Just stuff him full of crack cocaine and shut him up. After reading a recent Hill article about Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's comments blasting Obamacare's unaffordability, I looked for a little bit more informatio ...
December 06, 2013
The several days of organized protests in Ukraine are notable for the relative lack of police violence. Unlike in the US, Canada, Thailand, Greece and Spain, peaceful protesters have not been beaten, tear-gassed, water cannoned and tasered by Ukrainian police. ...
December 05, 2013
The great political lie is that individuals need the state. It is a lie on at least two levels. The first layer of the great lie: It states the opposite of what is true; the state needs individuals. And the state is desperate for you to believe it is indispensa ...
December 04, 2013
Although I am no professional historian, I do have an interest in what happened and why, especially involving big economic events of the past. One such event is the Great Depression. I attended a superb week long conference a while back (Cato Institute's Summer ...
December 03, 2013
A great many people – more than ever, probably – describe themselves as supporters of the free market today, in spite of the unrelenting propaganda against it. And that's great. Those statements of support, however, are followed by the inevitable but: but w ...
December 03, 2013
In the United States policies are being promulgated by those with political power in Washington, D. C. that involve a massive and dangerous growth in the size and scope of government. At the core of the Obama administration's push for implementing a comprehensi ...
December 02, 2013
You cannot negotiate with Iran. That is what they told us for years. The Iranian leadership is too fanatical, they are not rational actors, they are "not like us." One US official even recently said that deception is part of the Iranian DNA. But just over a wee ...
November 30, 2013
Andrew Huszar has been making the rounds apologizing for Federal Reserve strategies, and he recently gave an interview to RT that was posted as " 'Easy money' a relief for financiers, burden for most Americans – former Fed trader … " Huszar's comments are c ...
November 29, 2013
I am often asked what percentage of their total assets or liquid portfolio a person or family should hold in precious metals. I find it impossible to answer this question generically. What I can do is describe the process I use to help determine the ideal amoun ...
November 28, 2013
A headline in Mint Press News (Nov. 6) declared, "U.S. Police Have Killed Over 5,000 Civilians Since 9/11." An earlier Mint article (Aug. 19) reported, "Claims of Minneapolis Police Misconduct: 439; Officers Disciplined: 0." It is almost cliché to talk about a ...
November 27, 2013
Paul Krugman, Princeton economist and columnist for The New York Times, has never had a problem with coercing people to do what they'd rather not do. So it's no surprise that he favors the universal health care system advocated by numerous politicians in our ti ...
November 26, 2013
This time of the year, whether in good economic times or bad, is when many Americans gather with their families and friends and enjoy a Thanksgiving meal together. It marks a remembrance of those early Pilgrim Fathers who crossed the uncharted ocean from Europe ...
November 25, 2013
After a year of talks over the post-2014 US military presence in Afghanistan, the US administration announced last week that a new agreement had finally been reached. Under the deal worked out with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the US would keep thousands of t ...
November 23, 2013
Just look at this. Here it is in all its glory, from a recent Bloomberg article entitled "Gold Analysts Most Bearish Since June on Fed Taper: Commodities": "For safe-haven assets, there's no point because the economy is recovering," said Andrey Kryuchenkov, a c ...
November 22, 2013
November 22, 2013, is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The true story of JFK's murder has never been officially admitted, although the conclusion that JFK was murdered by a plot involving the Secret Service, the CIA and th ...
November 21, 2013
I believe America's political institutions are beyond redemption. The hope for America lies with individuals who live freedom rather than talk about it or pursue it through authorized means. Freedom now rests with individuals who say "no," in combination or alo ...
November 20, 2013
The utilitarian insists that the morally right way to act is to promote the greatest good for the greatest number (of people but perhaps of all sentient beings). This goes for public policy as well! The goal overrides any individual rights, so if to secure it s ...
November 19, 2013
Should bad legislation be supported simply because it is the "law of the land"? Larry Summers, Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton and former economic advisor to Barack Obama, thinks so. In a recent editorial Summers argues that in spite of the false start an ...
November 18, 2013
Last Thursday the Senate Banking Committee held hearings on Janet Yellen's nomination as Federal Reserve Board Chairman. As expected, Ms. Yellen indicated that she would continue the Fed's "quantitative easing" (QE) policies, despite QE's failure to improve the ...
November 16, 2013
Republicans are beginning to mention a gold link for the US dollar once more. This information is presented to us in a recent Bloomberg article entitled, "Republicans Asserting Reliance on Gold as World Loses Faith." This is more of a dominant social theme than ...
November 15, 2013
In my last column I emphasized that it was important for American citizens to demand to know what the real agendas are behind the wars of choice by the Bush and Obama regimes. These are major, long-term wars each lasting two to three times as long as World War ...
November 14, 2013
Obamacare's failure to enlist young people into its ranks may well result in an American version of the New Soviet Man. That man was the communist ideal of a person who served the state and its leader with selfless devotion. White House advisor Dr. Ezekiel Eman ...
November 14, 2013
I was reading a commentary this morning by a Swiss money manager whose opinion I respect. He commented that there was a widespread perception that something is very wrong, though people can't quite put their finger on what that is. He argues that the problem is ...
November 13, 2013
What's happening with the economy and why? Is there no end to this? What can I do to protect my family and myself, to plan better for the future? Many of us have asked questions to this effect at one point. Running away from the madness of it all is impossible. ...
November 13, 2013
Statists routinely suggest their distrust of human initiative. This is why they keep advocating government stimuli instead of free markets. In a free market, one which prohibits government intrusions, regulations and regimentation, it is understood that when me ...
November 12, 2013
The controversy and scandal over Obamacare in America today is not simply about a website that does not work, or existing private health care insurance policies that are being dropped, or government-approved health insurance policies that cost a lot more becaus ...
November 11, 2013
One of the least discussed, but potentially most significant, provisions in President Obama's budget is the use of the "chained consumer price index" (chained CPI), to measure the effect of inflation on people's standard of living. Chained CPI is an effort to a ...
November 09, 2013
Forbes has posted an article, "New York Is The New Power For Silicon Valley Tech IPOs," explaining the Valley is now subservient to New York. But was Silicon Valley ever really in charge? This article will make the point that the balance of power never really s ...
