Essays

Bootleggers and Baptists

"We all know bootleggers and Baptists rarely see eye to eye. Ask one group and its members will probably tell you they despise the other group. Yet, when it comes to government regulation, both bootleggers and Baptists work together. Prof. Bruce Yandle explains that this happens because both groups actually desire the same outcome. Groups who would never meet together but both desire the same outcome can often be found upon closer examination of many government regulations. What are some other 'bootleggers' and 'Baptists' who benefit from government regulations?" Continue reading →

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The Largest Gold Share Rise of All Time

"During our many walks together, my father and I often compared his experiences in the 1920s and ’30s with mine in more recent decades. Each time brought new revelations. But we rarely missed the obvious fact that history repeats itself in strange ways. His experiences with the world’s leading gold mines in the early 1930s are a classic example. Their shares were downtrodden, misunderstood and undervalued, much as they are today. Then, right in the midst of the nation’s worst depression, select mining shares surprised nearly everyone. They bust out of their doldrums. They surged to their highest levels in history." Continue reading →

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Jeffrey Tucker: Thank You, Russia?

"I’m as glad as the next guy that 'we' won the Cold War. But sometimes you just have to wonder: What was the point of those 45 years of nuclear stalemate? All that time, we were told that this was a mighty struggle between individualism and collectivism, between freedom and tyranny, between capitalism and communism. But at the end of the day, once everything has shaken itself out, it is Russia that is providing sanctuary to our best citizens. Is this some sort of strange dystopian novel? Well, yes, and it has a name: Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell." Continue reading →

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David Galland: Answers from a Monetary Master

"Mr. Bernanke will get to visit his ideal world of 2% price inflation, but it will only be a whistle stop. The price inflation that lies ahead will be at least as bad as what happened in the 1970s episode, when the annual inflation rate approached 15%. The money that's already been printed so far may be enough to produce such a 1970s-size problem. Making matters worse is that the devices for paring down the amount of cash that you need for the sake of convenience—such as credit cards, ATMs and online banks—are now far more widely available and cheaper to use than they were in the 1970s." Continue reading →

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The Fed Doesn’t Control as Much as You Think It Does

"In actuality, the Fed has little control or influence over the things that really matter in the real economy. Innovation is often a meaningless buzzword (think 'financial innovation'), but it is also the key driver of wealth creation in the real economy. The Federal Reserve could be shut down and all its asset bubbles could pop, and innovations in energy, agriculture, transportation, education, media, medicine, etc. would continue to impact the availability and abundance of what really matters in the real world: energy, knowledge, water, food, and opportunity, to name a few off the top of a long list." Continue reading →

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Why Oil Could Move Higher–Much Higher

"A more intriguing dynamic has been presented by Financial Times reporter Izabella Kaminska over the past year: Financiers are buying oil as collateral for various speculations. Kaminska sees this financial hoarding of oil (i.e., reduction of supply) as inducing 'scarcity amidst plenty.' In broad terms, I would characterize this as one aspect of the financialization of commodities. The financialization of commodities is driven by several macro factors: 1. The scarcity of non-phantom, easily tradable collateral in a financial system that is increasingly dependent on phantom collateral. 2. A scarcity of sound investment opportunities." Continue reading →

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Former IMF Chief Economist: Sadly, Too Big to Fail Is Not Over

"There are three issues: the powers of the Federal Reserve, the mandate of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the vulnerability of taxpayers when one or more large complex financial institutions fail. We have at least five such companies in the United States, all of which are intensely cross-border in their operations (in order of size, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley). The biggest and most leveraged financial companies in the United States today are all now bank-holding companies, with access to the discount window at the Fed, via their commercial banking subsidiaries." Continue reading →

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The True Value of Bitcoin

"As a digital asset, the first widely adopted use of bitcoin was as a safe and secure store and transfer mechanism for fiat currency value. This is how most people think of and use Bitcoin today, as a substitute for money, but it is an inadequate classification. Bitcoin replaces the traditional chain of title in property law. The bitcoin protocol secures a party’s interest in an asset in an identifiable and secure manner, and provides a transparent set of rules and enforcement mechanisms so that all parties are held equally accountable. It does all this without any reliance on financial, regulatory, or judicial authorities. Truly, bitcoin is code as law." Continue reading →

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On The Road Again: Customize Your Life with Location Independence

"Then there’s Life Remotely, which got me thinking about the topic. Basically, that site’s done by three people who have found gigs they could do on the road and then spent a decade doing them, mostly on the road. In the process, they’ve also developed a suite of skills and information that can bring this kind of life that much closer to other people. Theirs is also an entrepreneurial response in that it fits together needs, desires, and resources in a novel way that offers people a way to assemble their own happiness. It relies on the alertness to spot what can be made from things that haven’t been combined quite this way before." Continue reading →

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