Utopia, you are standing in it!

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…

As an economist I am not happy about going into having strong views on the causes of why people die from Covid19, but at least I can have a look at correlations.

It has been very clear for some time that very few people younger than 50 years old die from Covid19.

In fact the average of people dying with Covid19 have been around 80 years in most countries and men are more likely to die than women.

These simple facts made me think – how much of this can explain the different mortality rates we observe across countries?

Why has so many people died in Italy and Spain, while mortality rates have been much lower in for example Scandinavia? Similarly why are mortality rates so low in most developing countries?

Can the age composition explain this? The graph below give us the answer.

In the graph I have plotted…

Not the only lunatic making $millions by lying to the masses.

Apoplexy is the order of the day among ‘green’ energy zealots following the release of Mike Moore’s ‘Planet of The Humans’.

In the military they call it “blue on blue”, although when the hard left are pulling the trigger it’s more aptly described as “green on green”.

But the documentary backed by Moore isn’t so much ‘friendly fire’, as an all-out assault on the billionaire hypocrites who whipped up fear and frenzy over changes in the weather and then, as if by magic, produced the notional ‘solution’ to the calamity in the form of heavily subsidised wind, solar and biomass. A ‘’solution’ which, of course, they all heavily invested in.

The film – produced by Moore and made by Jeff Gibbs – has been uploaded to YouTube to allow all and sundry to get the message: renewable energy is…

Today we hear from Dr Andrew Barclay, senior research fellow for our Commons 1640-1660 project. He explores the accuracy of the naming of the so-called Convention Parliament of 1660…

Prior to dissolving itself on 16 March 1660, the Long Parliament had agreed that a new Parliament should meet on 25 April. The elections held over the next six weeks used the old franchises revived for the 1659 Parliament. Unlike then, the new Parliament did not include MPs from Scotland and Ireland. The other obvious difference from 1659 was that it included the traditional House of Lords, not the Cromwellian ‘Other House’. The new assembly was consciously intended as the Long Parliament’s successor, although, crucially, one with a fresh electoral mandate.

But was this a ‘Parliament’? Modern historians have usually said that at this stage it was instead a ‘Convention’, on the basis that it had not been…

Things not looking too good right now? Let’s take a nostalgic trip back to the world of April 1975. This month, the Vietnam War ended after around 1.35 million people had been killed; a further two million Vietnamese would subsequently flee the communist regime. In neighbouring Cambodia, the Khymer Rouge emerged as victors in the civil war; genocide would follow, with up to two million deaths – a quarter of the population – in the next five years. Meanwhile, civil war broke out in Lebanon; by the time it finished in 1990, an estimated 150,000 had been killed. Oh, and there was a military coup in Chad.
And this was the top 10 in Britain for the week ending 26 April 1975.

1. Bay City Rollers, ‘Bye Bye Baby’ (Bell)

As you were.

1. Bobby Goldsboro, ‘Honey’ (UA)

When this was first released in 1968, it reached #2 in the British…