A year into the Biden Administration, the asset management group BlackRock appeared to recognise what other financial institutions had missed: the shift to a “new investment order”. Covid-era fiscal stimulus, wrote a panel of the firm’s executives, was here to …
Fifty Shades of Central Bank Tyranny
The United States has had a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) since the late 1990s—or possibly even as far back as the 1970s, depending on how you define it. Definitions matter. Just as the bestselling novel 50 Shades of Gray …
This Is Not Capitalism
The word capitalism has no stable definition and should probably be permanently retired. That won’t happen, however, because too many people are invested in its use and abuse.
I’m long over trying to push my definition over someone else’s understanding, …
What Is Really Going on at Federal Agencies?
Years ago as an intern in D.C., and long before the agencies all locked their doors to visitors, I had the occasion to putter around the Department of Transportation and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
These were obviously …
Rate Cuts Will Achieve Nothing
Here is the result of the Fed’s misbegotten pro-inflation policy since it officially adopted its 2.00% target in January 2012. According to our trusty 16% trimmed mean CPI, the price level is up by +41% since then, and was still …
The Trajectory of Emergency Lands on Price Controls
The US’s serious bout of inflation – mirrored in many countries in the world – was set in motion in the first week of March 2020, like much of the rest of our ongoing emergency. This was a fortnight before …
You Might Own Nothing Sooner Than You Think
Imagine a world where ownership is a distant memory, replaced by an eerie semblance of joy in dispossession. In 2016, Klaus Schwab, the enigmatic architect of the World Economic Forum, foretold a future whereby, in 2024, humanity would be stripped …
What Did $6.5 Trillion in Money Printing Achieve?
Here we go again. The Fed has spent the last 16 years fueling the mother of all financial bubbles on Wall Street. And by way of spillover effects on the mortgage market, it has also fostered parallel bubbles in commercial …
Throne and Altar: Delusional Messianic Expectations
Poorly formed expectations are premeditated resentments.
This piece of wisdom occurred to me recently while reflecting on the beginning of the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel. Our Lord performs the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fish as …
China’s plan to defeat the West
In the five-year political cycle of the Chinese Communist Party, the Central Committee’s Third Plenum is often considered the most important for the setting out of transformational and strategic economic goals. In reality, there have only been a couple of …
Surveillance Capitalism: You Are the Commodity
“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
Mark 8:36, New King James Bible
Under the New World Order of Stakeholder Capitalism, Business Models Drive Economics, Economics Drives Politics,…How Big Tech Spawned Surveillance Capitalism
Surveillance capitalism is a novel economic system that has emerged in the digital era. It is characterized by the unilateral claim of private human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioral data. In this version of capitalism, predicting and influencing …
Broken Britain needs a tax hike
The recent British election was, by most accounts, a “service-delivery” vote. Appalled at the state of their public services, Britons opted for new management. And while they need no reminding of how bad things have become, the facts are still …
Canada’s “Worst Decline in 40 Years”
Canada’s standard of living is on track for its worst decline in 40 years, according to a new study by Canada’s Fraser Institute.
The study compared the three worst periods of decline in Canada in the last 40 years – the …
Ten Points About Post-Lockdown Economics
The sudden economic lockdown of March 2020, the world over, was one of the more shocking moments in history. The very core of the economic problem from the beginning of recorded time was getting more of what people needed to …