Division in the Fed
Evidence of the division between those in the Fed who want tighter money and the Keynesians on the FOMC who want easy money to continue has just appeared. The vice … Read More
Bending History
We may be approaching in economics what Thomas Kuhn in his seminal book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (reference [S2]), called a paradigm shift. Kuhn laid out scientific history in … Read More
Why What Happens in China Matters
Last week for two straight days, China reminded us of how much we have shrunk as an economic power when they devalued their currency. The U.S. stock market promptly tanked. … Read More
Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand” and Evolution
I was inspired to write this post by a person named Cai in a comment on Clouds and Global Warming. Not that the suggestive part of Cai’s comment had anything to … Read More
Solar Power Output and Global Warming
Without the Sun we die! Yet how many of us give frequent thought to whether we can can continue to absorb its gift of energy? Or whether that gift will … Read More
Clouds and Global Warming
How do clouds affect global warming? This is an important, urgent and fascinating question! Clouds are involved in a number of physical and chemical processes and are surprisingly complex. Their … Read More
Dialogues and Quora
I have just found a wonderful place on the internet at Quora.com for carrying on dialogues on serious subjects. Readers of this website will recall that inspiring such conversations was … Read More
Economic Effects of Current Tax Policy
One of the biggest sources of problems government imposes on individuals, businesses and the economy is taxes. It has truly been said that “the power to tax is the power … Read More
Collapsing Commodities Point To Hard Times
Lately there have been a number of blogs that have noticed the collapse in commodity prices, such as this one on businessinsider.com. Included in that post was a histogram display … Read More
Ideologies and Conflicts
Cole and Suzanne, this post is for you. How is an ideology formed and what makes us accept its contents as statements about Reality with a capital R? Recently friends of … Read More
What Has Caused Global Warming Periods?
If carbon dioxide has not caused periods of global warming, what has? In our last post of this series on global warming, Global Warming Data, we concluded just on the … Read More
Stock Market Continues Downward March
Have you been keeping track of our favorite canary-in-the-coal-mine for the economy? I refer to the current state of the stock market, of course. The last time we looked at … Read More
Global Warming Data
The simple physical theory in my previous post on global warming, coupled with measured data, is not quite sufficient to prove that global warming caused by man is not real. … Read More
An Infrared Photon’s Life in The Atmosphere
Did you know that the fraction of the atmosphere that is CO2 is 0.0004 by volume? By the atmosphere I really mean the troposphere, which is the layer of atmosphere … Read More
Basic Physical Processes of Greenhouse Gas Warming
Before we get to the question of how important greenhouse gas warming by CO2 is, we should all have a grasp of the basic physical processes involved. That will help … Read More
The Great Global Warming Scam
Antarctic Ice Extent 9/21/2005 Surely, someone should go to jail for the lies and fraud perpetrated in the name of global warming! What has been said by the supporters of … Read More
OMG!! This Economy Has Been Even Worse Than We Thought!
This morning the Wall Street Journal (access requires subscription), in an editorial entitled “The Six-Year Slough“, revealed that the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has just released new, revised numbers on … Read More
The Complexity of Reality
How arrogant people are who think they understand enough about a nation’s economy that they can control it! This thought came to me while thinking about the implicit assumptions progressives make. … Read More
The Phenomenon of Donald Trump
Astoundingly, Donald Trump is currently at the head of the Republican pack. He does present some attractive (albeit vague) positions for conservatives, but his past political affiliations and flip-flops in … Read More
Progressives’ Basic Assumptions
The lady in the photo above, like most others in the conference I am attending, has a sunny, upbeat personality that takes anything that life offers in stride. The conference … Read More
Do Progressives Want a Police State?
Many progressives seem to yearn for a police state. Although I can not believe that all progressives desire a fascist state, even a small fraction of authoritarian-leaning Leftists is very, … Read More
Lessons of the “Great Recession” Not Learned
The Obama administration believes in its own propaganda. Believe it or not, the U.S. federal government is currently mandating the same kind of bad behavior that caused the 2007-2008 financial crisis. The … Read More
Putin’s Russia and the West
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, in a speech to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, declared that the breakup of the USSR was “the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the twentieth century”, or … Read More
Current Economic Effects of the Federal Reserve
Having given the institutional composition and powers of the Federal Reserve, and having given our opinion on what it should be doing and why, we will now look at what it … Read More
In Which States Does $100 Buy The Most?
Last week on July 8 The Tax Foundation published a report entitled The Real Value of $100 in Each State. In their study they took data from The U.S. Bureau … Read More
Divided Indeed
What follows is a poem by Mike Martin of Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada. It gives his impressions from this website. Divided yes indeed I say It might take me a … Read More
Why Socialism Does Not Work
Typical grocery store queue in Vilnius, Lithuania, USSR in 1990. Note the bare shelves. Photo Credit: Reddit/HistoryPorn Yesterday I published a post in which I viewed with alarm the rise … Read More
Bernie Sanders and the Road to Serfdom
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) Photo Credit: Wickimedia Commons/Nick Solari This morning I read a very disturbing article by David Harsanyi on the federalist.com entitled “Bernie … Read More
The Disqus Community
I love the Disqus community! Disqus (it is pronounced “discuss”) is a community of people on the internet (URL: https://disqus.com) who want to comment on everything under the sun. Actually … Read More
The Evolution of Modern Economic Theory
In order to understand why the Federal Reserve has chosen its policies of the past three decades, we need to understand the New Keynesians. The response by neoclassical economists to the … Read More