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Writing by John Tamny and Parkview contributors, from the latest commentary to the collected archive.
994 essays · Newest first
Clear filtersTo this day it’s said that mark-to-market (MTM) accounting rules are what caused existential troubles for banks and investment banks back in 2008. It sounds so compelling at first glance, but only…
One of the most hated ideas in human history is the toll. This hatred is best exemplified by the 19th Century “Three Billy Goats Gruff” fairy tale, where a troll under the bridge (who tries to…
It’s been said before by many inside and outside of science that so-called “global warming” is a good thing. Usually it’s pointed out that warming associates with more food production, not to mention…
Economist Gordon Tullock (1922-2014) once quipped that there was an easy way to create safer conditions on American roads: rather than install seatbelts and air bags, attach a rather sharp,…
“The traditional argument against a rules-based monetary policy is that it requires Fed officials to specify too many contingencies ahead of time.” Those are the words of economist Jason Furman,…
The view here is that mass deportation of Mexicans from the United States will ultimately result in quite a few more Mexicans searching for a way to get to the United States than before. It’s basic…
“The federal government owns a little more than one-fourth of the total land area of the United States. The time is long overdue to consider whether that is the best economic arrangement.” Those are…
If you ever want to learn economics, just purchase books about entertainment and sports. It’s that simple. Considering antitrust alone, the whole profession could be put out of business by the…
“The greatest fever of all was aspiration, a belief in the sheer possibility to remake a life.” That’s what Evan Osnos wrote in Age of Ambition, his remarkable 2014 book about life in emerging China.…
What should the interest rate be? The very question insults reason simply because economies are comprised of individuals, businesses and governments with wildly divergent pasts, presents and futures.…
Repeat it over and over again: there’s no interest rate, and there’s no such thing as interest rates. There are individuals, and individuals face a myriad of borrowing costs as numerous as there are…
“At 5-foot-10, Henderson was smaller than many big leaguers, but he overcame his size with a combination of horse power, a savant-like ability to exploit deficiencies in pitchers, and an extreme…
Andy Kessler writes in his latest Wall Street Journal column that the U.S. “is strong precisely because we don’t all think the same way. New ideas come from new ways of thinking.” Kessler puts it so…
No individual, no corporation, and no country ever runs out of money. Ever. What all three run out of is investor trust. The above truth rates frequent repeat in light of a recent news account about…
“I love kids because I was never a kid. I was too poor to be a kid.” That’s what the late professional golfing legend and personality Chi Chi Rodriguez told Sports Illustrated. What Rodriguez said…
Never turn down capital when it’s offered to you. The previous axiom is easily as old as business. The wise refuse what’s precious precisely because they know well that tomorrow is another century.…
Bitcoin “doesn’t trade on fundamentals, but supply and demand.” The previous point was made in a recent column meant to explain the surging value of the most prominent crypto concept. In the same…
If you want to age yourself, talk about how you used to stay up until 11:30 on Friday nights to watch NBA playoff games. This was in the early 1980s. Friday night prime time was far too valuable to…
Booming Columbus, OH is thick with former Ohio State Buckeye football players who are part of the boom. Their close ties with the school’s most prominent alums, and that were forged during their…
They “ate, slept, made love, raised children, and tried to keep body and soul together by finding ways to make a living.” Those were the words of the late, great Wall Street Journal deputy editorial…
The big credit card companies “should have killed us when they could have.” Those were the words of early PayPal employee Todd Pearson in Jimmy Soni’s excellent 2022 book, The Founders: The Story of…
Whether it’s Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan talking to their high-net worth prospects, or Edward Jones and Charles Schwab talking to traditional retail customers, there’s a constant theme in the…
If you look at the market prices of consumer goods you’ll much more often than not be blinded to inflation’s truth. To which more than a few readers will reply that prices are precisely the way to…
“You don’t have a baby here, you have a funeral expense.” That’s what the doctor said about recently deceased actor Earl Holliman to his parents upon seeing the baby they’d just adopted. The adoption…
