No, Jerome Powell Is Not the Hero of Today’s Economy
Silicon Valley VC legend Don Valentine purchased a 33% stake in Cisco decades ago for $2.5 million. Cisco is one of the many great investments made by the VCs at Sequoia Capital, and it’s worth…
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Essays
Writing by John Tamny and Parkview contributors, from the latest commentary to the collected archive.
993 essays · Newest first
Clear filtersReplying to Michael Munger Replying to John Tamny On SALT, Debt
Responding to me, Duke professor Michael Munger writes that, “If the real hawks like John Tamny get their way [full SALT deduction], with the cap going up to $100,000 or more, the loss in tax revenue…
The Fatal Conceit of National Debt “Hawkery”
“First, and most obviously, the U.S. government’s fiscal situation is very bad, getting worse, and driven mainly by unsustainable entitlement programs that grow faster than the economy and inflation,…
Forced Foreign Investment Is the Most Embarrassing Aspect of Trump’s Trade Deals
Americans don’t require their government to secure them investment. The world lines up to invest in U.S. genius not because presidents or Commerce Departments enter deals with other countries, but…
Ben Bernanke & Janet Yellen’s Inflation Mystification Ails Fed
Fed officials don’t grasp what inflation is. If they understood what it is, they wouldn’t be so worried about the Fed’s so-called independence. For background, contemplate a recent New York Times…
Americans Don’t Hate Immigrants, They Hate Central Planning
Americans loathe lines. See their disdain for the gasoline lines of the 1970s, and that were an effect of price controls naively meant to contain the cruel effects of a devalued dollar. What’s funny…
Book Review: Simon Kuper’s “Impossible City: Paris In the 21st Century”
I’ve never been a fan of Paris. To read about Paris is to read about its beauty, charm and sophistication, but when I first visited in 1998, it struck me as rundown, dirty, and way too touristy.…
$100,000+ State Retirees In Illinois Speak to the Urgency of a SALT Credit
The Illinois Policy Institute’s Brad Weisentein wrote at RealClearMarkets last week that there are at least 32,000 former government workers in the state of Illinois who can claim $100,000+ income…
Soaring Wealth Inequality Is the Greatest Retirement Gift of All
Nvidia’s valuation reached the $4 trillion mark recently, and co-founder Jensen Huang’s shares are now worth something like $143 billion. Present and future retirees should rejoice the rapidly…
Without Billionaires, There Would Be No Medicare and No Debt
Do Bagladesh, Haiti and Peru have Medicare-style programs soon to cost $1 trillion annually? Hopefully the question quickly answers itself. Ideally it also answers Washington Post columnist Catherine…
Hassett Wants To Be Fed Chair. That Is What’s So Dangerous
In his classic book Lombard Street, 19th century financial writer Walter Bagehot observed that due to the unwarranted prestige attached to central banks, posts within tend “to be desired by vain men,…
Jerome Powell’s Critics and Supporters Alike Beclown Themselves
Remember “costless” credit? Neither do I, neither do you the reader, neither does Elon Musk. As Walter Isaacson’s biography of the world’s richest man makes very apparent, Musk was so desperate for…
Book Review: Mark Shupe’s “The Moneyball Method”
Charlie Munger famously said, “It’s remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.” Were he…
Excessive Federal Taxes Foist California and New York Onto All of the U.S.
Government spending amounts to the central planning of precious resources by politicians. Worse, it amounts to the warping of the people and businesses on which it’s spent precisely because no one…
There’s No ‘Retirement Crisis,’ LeBron James Shows Why
There’s no retirement crisis. Those promoting the notion that Americans don’t have enough money to retire will eventually regret their expressed pessimism. Contemplate the happy fact that LeBron…
If the U.S. Ever Needs the ‘Printing Press,’ It Will Have No Debt
Money is ruthless. The genius of compounding confirms the previous truth. This rates mention as economists Yeva Nersisyan and L. Randall Wray promote the fiction that U.S. “cannot default on debt…
Economists: The Only Barrier To Return To The Gold Standard
At least 66 countries peg their currencies to the dollar. The previous number undercounts the actual number. Figure that the growth of cryptocurrencies is largely a dollar peg story (think…
Anna Wintour Is a Brilliant Reminder That the Customer Is Always Wrong
“She was never some algorithm trying to give us more of what it thinks we want, or something driven by A.I. She was a person who judged and decided based on her own haughty sense of what was best.”…
Conservatives Adopt Left-Wing Tactics To Allegedly Fix Universities
“Without broader hiring reforms, proto right-wing employees will continue to control big business. Several states are trying to dictate what conservative executives should and shouldn’t instruct…
To Limit the Federal Government, Texas Should Levy a State Income Tax
Texas should institute a state income tax. So should Florida and Tennessee, along with all U.S. states that presently don’t have an income tax. Please read on. This is decidedly NOT a call for more…
Let the Market Punish Corporate Mistakes, Not the Federal Government
What keeps the CEOs of financial institutions awake at night? One or two errant employees out of tens of thousands can bring down the franchise. What robs financial institution heads of sleep…
Markets Will Tell Us When We’ve Borrowed Too Much
“This is clearly a shift in budget accounting that will clear the path to ballooning the debt now, but will also create a precedent that will be used over and over and over again in the future.”…
Say It Routinely, The Fed Isn’t Nor Can It Ever Be ‘Independent’
The Fed can never be independent. Economists should spare readers of any further commentary calling for what can’t be. Long before the Fed existed, and just the same to this day, there were and are…
Robots Will Make the Need for Immigrants More Urgent Than Ever
It’s so easily forgotten that people aren’t a cost. They’re an input, always and everywhere, and this truth won’t lose any validity as robots proliferate. Quite the opposite. Which is why it’s useful…