No one buys, sells, borrows, or lends with “money.” Production buys and sells production, while borrowing and lending are an exchange of products over longer stretches of time in return for more products (interest). It’s worth keeping in mind as members of the Austrian School claim that the only limit to government borrowing is […]
The $39 Trillion National Debt Is a Loud Tell That the U.S. Isn’t “Printing” Read More »
Matthew Lynn writes that a “financial castrophe” is in our future. He claims it’s due to the national debt. Lynn’s analysis implies that markets are quite stupid. Misunderstanding and non sequitur follow. Let’s start with Lynn’s headline assertion that “A financial catastrophe is looming.” Except that there’s $39 trillion worth of debt, get it? Lynn
Matthew Lynn Is Blissfully Innocent of “Coverage Ratios” Read More »
Jeff Bezos got the national debt wrong during last week’s CNBC interview. He has to know why. Amazon was founded in 1994, but it didn’t issue debt until 1999. Why did Bezos and Amazon rely for so long on equity finance over debt? It’s expensive to exchange precious shares for cash when there’s debt financing
Jeff Bezos Missed An Historic Chance to Correct a National Debt Falsehood Read More »
The markets are never a snapshot of the present. They’re a look ahead. It’s worth keeping in mind as commentators try to make sense of rising Treasury yields. Take the Washington Post editorial board’s analysis of the recent jump. They write that, “Yields for long-term U.S. Treasury bonds shot up to almost 5.2 percent on Tuesday, reaching their
No, the Treasury Market Didn’t Just Discover the National Debt Read More »
U.S. workers are – by far – the most taxed workers in the world. Evidence supporting the previous claim can be found in $39 trillion worth of federal debt. Yet not everyone agrees. A recent report by Adam Michel and Santiago Forster at the Cato Institute reported the opposite of what you just read. In the
Tax Rates Are Dangerously Misleading As a Tax Burden Gauge Read More »
The rich of tomorrow will happily be quite a bit richer than today’s rich. That’s because the proliferation of AI meant to do and think for us will unearth superhuman qualities in a growing number of us. Even better about a rising wealth gap is that as it grows, the lifestyle gap between rich and “poor”
Rising Inequality Is Great. Its Downside Is Bigger Government Read More »
“And on the tax front, it’s time for rich people like me to pay more.” As some may know, but exponentially fewer than he surely hoped, that’s what 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney wrote recently in the New York Times. Romney seemingly missed that “Rich Republican apostasy on taxes” is nothing new. Paraphrasing
Please Mitt Romney, Do Not Pay More In Taxes Read More »
Money buys nothing, while products always and everywhere buy products. Which means governments that produce nothing can only spend insofar as they have taxable access to private sector production, not an active printing press. Without the former, they have no spending power. None. The obvious requires stating firstly because Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is having
If the U.S. Treasury Employed Fraudulent “MMT,” It Would Have No Debt Read More »
While agreeing with Javier Milei’s reforms, this opinion piece asks if he got the order wrong. Up front, what’s not to like about Milei firing tens of thousands of government workers, his shuttering of 9 out of 18 government ministries, and his freezing of various government projects? Milei did right because government is an
Javier Milei’s Policies Are Right, But the Order Was Wrong Read More »
“Washington’s spiraling debt trends are simply unsustainable.” Those are the words of Manhattan Institute budget expert Jessica Riedl in the Washington Post. But unless Riedl knows something that the deepest markets in the world don’t know, what she describes as unsustainable is quite sustainable. The $37 trillion (and rising fast) worth of federal debt
$37 Trillion Debt Vivifies the Perils of Future Budgetary Balance Read More »
