Utopia, you are standing in it!

This excellent article was contributed by New Zealand journalist Peter Drew who is clearly concerned & wants the word out. Please do share it far & wide. EWR

NOTE: the article has had over 10K views since posting … & 2.5K FB shares. It’s pleasing to see that many Kiwis are awake to what is going down.

By Peter Drew

Jacinda Adern

Prime Minister – New Zealand

Dear Jacinda,

I write this letter as a patriotic Kiwi with best intentions for my country and for the future health and welfare of my fellow Kiwis. You have a very difficult job at this moment in time. There can be no doubt about that.

There is a famous saying. “The first casualty of war is the truth”. Well, from what we are seeing around the world, the first casualty of a pandemic is not only the truth, but also rational thinking. That…

It’s time for libertarian wonkery! My friend Jeremy posted a link to libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick’s Tale of the Slave on Facebook and I guess most of his Facebook friends are not libertarians as it stirred up a bunch of controversy.

If you haven’t read it I’d recommend doing so. It’s only about a two minute read. But nonetheless I will summarize it here.

Nozick starts by describing a typical case of slavery and then in subsequent steps modifies the terms of the slavery to be slightly less bad than the previous step. After a handful of modifications he ends up at representative democracy and asks “At which step did this become no longer a tale of a slave?”.

The intuitive response you’re supposed to have is that it never really stopped being a tale of a slave. The only difference is a matter of degree. This is reminiscent of…

(1918 Spanish Flu Epidemic)

As I sit at my desk and examine the latest Covid-19 statistics and fantasize about what might have occurred had the Trump administration carried out its constitutional duties to care for American citizens instead of fomenting a civil war against democratic governors and denying their role in the current pandemic I am appalled and overwhelmed.  At this moment there are 927,000 cases of people testing positive for the virus in the United States out of 2,790,000 worldwide.  The death rate is 52,400 in the U.S. out of 196,000 worldwide, and each day we add thousands to the total.  Words like mitigation, social distancing, ventilators, and numerous others have entered our everyday vocabulary.  The questions that pervade the news are when we will “open up” the country? what happens if we do it too fast? and what will happen if each state goes its own way?  Writer…

When I put forth the “The Case for Social Security Personal Accounts” in early 2011, I pointed out that the program’s long-run fiscal shortfall was more than $27 trillion.

We should be so lucky to have that problem today.

The Social Security Administration just released the annual report on the program’s finances, so I went to to Table VI.G9 of the “Supplemental Single-Year Tables” to peruse the yearly projections for future revenue and spending (which are adjusted for inflation so we have a more accurate method for comparisons).

The bad news is that an ever-increasing amount of our income is going to be grabbed by payroll taxes. The worse news is that Social Security’s spending burden will climb at an even-faster rate (historical data to the left of the red line, future projections to the right of the red line).

For those who focus on

Edward II (April 25, 1284 – September 21, 1327), also called Edward of Carnarvon, was King of England and Lord of Ireland from 1307 until he was deposed in January 1327.

Edward II was the fourth son of Edward I, King of England, Lord of Ireland, and Infanta Eleanor of Castile, Countess of Ponthieu in northern France.

Infanta Eleanor of Castile, Countess of Ponthieu was born in Burgos, daughter of King Fernando III of Castile and Joan, Countess of Ponthieu. Her Castilian name, Leonor, became Alienor or Alianor in England, and Eleanor in modern English. She was named after her paternal great-grandmother, Eleanor of England.

By his first wife Eleanor of Castile, King Edward I of England had at least fourteen children, perhaps as many as sixteen. Of these, five daughters survived into adulthood, but only one son, and last child, outlived his father, King Edward II (1307–1327).

Here are the…

There are few economists that have had a bigger influence on my thinking about monetary matters than former Richmond Fed economist Robert Hetzel.

Bob is not only one of my biggest intellectual heroes, but also a very a good friend and I am therefore extremely happy that he has allowed to publish some of this insights and thoughts on Fed’s 50bp ’emergency’ rate cut today.

Lars Christensen

Fed and Covid19

By Robert Hetzel

Cutting the funds rate just before an FOMC meeting sends a strong but not necessarily appropriate message.  The fact that the cut came without the discussion from the regional Bank presidents of their respective regions that would come routinely at an FOMC meeting suggests that the FOMC was responding to the decline in the stock market.

That turned out badly for the Fed in October 1987 when the market fell 20% and the FOMC cut the funds…