Is Britain ready for Scooterland?

Driverless Cars? Drone deliveries? Electric scooters? Smart cities were just a science fiction dream; now they are a possibility that only an injection of competition and improvement of our transport infrastructure can secure. Just because E-Scooters have become a mass European phenomenon, doesn’t mean we have to leave them too. While I’m sitting down in a cafe in Madrid, I feel like I’m in the capital of “scooterland” with 8,600 licenced...

Not The Greatest Economy Ever, Part 3

Liberation from the Parasite State

[Liberty Magazine, January 1991] There is no need to emphasize for this audience the world-historical significance of the changes that are taking place today in east-central Europe and, especially, in the Soviet Union. This great transformation has led many people to reconsider the merits of an ideology once thought to be obsolete — liberalism. Today I wish to deal with liberalism as it has been understood historically, and to consider its...

Epstein and the Explosive Crisis of the Deep State

Speculations by outsiders must give Deep State insiders many opportunities to chuckle, “if only they knew.” We don’t know, of course, and public leaks are engineered to misdirect our attention from what’s actually going on or “frame” our understanding in a positive way. Decades later, history reveals a very ordinary mix of great successes and horrific failure in secret operations, caused by errors of judgment, faulty intelligence, poor...

When Saving a Child's Life for Free is Bad News

Drug manufacturers, health insurers, hospitals, and medical vendors don’t always inspire sympathy, but sometimes, what’s portrayed as disturbing is actually pretty inspiring—or at least justifiable. In late April, the “Bill of the Month” feature produced by National Public Radio (NPR) and Kaiser Health News (KHN) ran a story, “Summer Bummer: A Young Camper's $142,938 Snakebite.” NPR’s audio broadcast and accompanying article describe the...

China Dumps US Treasurys for Third Straight Month

China dumped more US Treasurys in May, pushing their holdings to the lowest level in two years, according to data released this week by the US Treasury Department.The Chinese divested themselves of US debt for the third straight month, selling off another $2.8 billion in Treasurys in May. The month before, China dumped $7.5 billion in US bonds and that followed on the heels of the biggest US Treasury selloff by the Chinese in nearly 2 1/2...

Michel Accad and I Discuss Kenneth Arrow on Health Care

In episode 45 of the Bob Murphy Show…

Ep. 1450 The CIA and 1953 Coup in Iran

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Housing Bubble 2 Lost its Mojo in the San Francisco Bay Area: House Prices Drop 8%

Prices in June fell in 8 of the 9 counties, compared to June last year, down to June 2017 levels. Today we got the final numbers from the California Association of Realtors (CAR) about the status of the housing bubble in the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area, which includes some of the most expensive sub-markets in the US, such as the most expensive zip code in the US, plus the Wine Country (Napa and Sonoma), Silicon Valley (Santa Clara and...

White House Offers Pelosi ‘Menu’ Of Spending Cuts As Debt-Ceiling Talks Enter Most Fraught Phase

Though you wouldn't be able to tell from the price action in US stocks, which roared back into the green after John Williams offered some of the most dovish comments yet re: a July rate cut, only for his comms staff to walk them back hours later, the market is getting anxious about the prospects for a deal to raise the debt ceiling, which the White House has promised would be reached before the end of the summer. That anxiety has so far...

Necessity is the Mother of Invention – Retirees Desperate Reach for Yield

Ben Bernanke’s creativity inspired a generation of economists and central bankers. QE, ZIRP and NIRP established a new class of economics that is mathematically sound but practically disastrous. Billions of dollars were transferred from savers to investors to boost the economy, but the wizards of quant forgot that something has to give. In this case, it was the formation of a pension crisis that threatens the golden years of millions of...

How Large Is American Government?

America’s strong economic growth and high living standards were built on our relatively smaller government. U.S. per capita income is higher than nearly all major countries and our government spending is still somewhat less. However, America’s lower-spending advantage has diminished. The OECD publishes data on total federal-state-local government spending as a percentage of GDP for its member countries. The chart shows spending for the United...

How to Fix GDP, Report 14 Jul

Last week, we looked at the idea of a national balance sheet, as a better way to measure the economy than GDP (which is production + destruction). The national balance sheet would take into account both assets and liabilities. If we take on another $1,000,000 debt to buy a $1,000,000 asset, then we have not added any equity. This is so, even though assets have gone up. But unfortunately, as a consequence of assets going up, consumption goes...

Dunce’s Cap for Russiagate Coverage

If there was a dunce’s cap awarded to the most gullible – or worse, complicit – news outfit in the whole ‘Russiagate’ affair, it would surely go to CNN. The small consolation is that its ratings have plummeted in direct proportion to its fake news agenda. Unless trapped in a hotel room in Ulan Bator and having already read the Gideon’s Bible, nobody in their right mind goes looking for CNN. However, other media do, of course, amplify their...

Liberation from the Parasite State

[Liberty Magazine, January 1991] There is no need to emphasize for this audience the world-historical significance of the changes that are taking place today in east-central Europe and, especially, in the Soviet Union. This great transformation has led many people to reconsider the merits of an ideology once thought to be obsolete — liberalism. Today I wish to deal with liberalism as it has been understood historically, and to consider its...

Dunce’s Cap for Russiagate Coverage

If there was a dunce’s cap awarded to the most gullible – or worse, complicit – news outfit in the whole ‘Russiagate’ affair, it would surely go to CNN. The small consolation is that its ratings have plummeted in direct proportion to its fake news agenda. Unless trapped in a hotel room in Ulan Bator and having already read the Gideon’s Bible, nobody in their right mind goes looking for CNN. However, other media do, of course, amplify their...

Dunce’s Cap for Russiagate Coverage

If there was a dunce’s cap awarded to the most gullible – or worse, complicit – news outfit in the whole ‘Russiagate’ affair, it would surely go to CNN. The small consolation is that its ratings have plummeted in direct proportion to its fake news agenda. Unless trapped in a hotel room in Ulan Bator and having already read the Gideon’s Bible, nobody in their right mind goes looking for CNN. However, other media do, of course, amplify their...

Epstein and the Explosive Crisis of the Deep State

Speculations by outsiders must give Deep State insiders many opportunities to chuckle, “if only they knew.” We don’t know, of course, and public leaks are engineered to misdirect our attention from what’s actually going on or “frame” our understanding in a positive way. Decades later, history reveals a very ordinary mix of great successes and horrific failure in secret operations, caused by errors of judgment, faulty intelligence, poor...

Dunce’s Cap for Russiagate Coverage

If there was a dunce’s cap awarded to the most gullible – or worse, complicit – news outfit in the whole ‘Russiagate’ affair, it would surely go to CNN. The small consolation is that its ratings have plummeted in direct proportion to its fake news agenda. Unless trapped in a hotel room in Ulan Bator and having already read the Gideon’s Bible, nobody in their right mind goes looking for CNN. However, other media do, of course, amplify their...

Dunce’s Cap for Russiagate Coverage

If there was a dunce’s cap awarded to the most gullible – or worse, complicit – news outfit in the whole ‘Russiagate’ affair, it would surely go to CNN. The small consolation is that its ratings have plummeted in direct proportion to its fake news agenda. Unless trapped in a hotel room in Ulan Bator and having already read the Gideon’s Bible, nobody in their right mind goes looking for CNN. However, other media do, of course, amplify their...