Utopia, you are standing in it!

Why Did IMF Disinvite Nobel Laureate?

CO2 Coalition explains.  Nobel Laureate (Physics 2022) Dr. John Clauser was to present a seminar on climate models to the IMF on Thursday and now his talk has been summarily cancelled. According to an email he received last evening, the Director of the Independent Evaluation Office of the International Monetary Fund, Pablo Moreno, had read the flyer for John’s July 25 zoom talk and summarily and immediately canceled the talk. Technically, it was “postponed.”

Dr. Clauser had previously criticized the awarding of the 2021 Nobel Prize for work in the development of computer models predicting global warming and told President Biden that he disagreed with his climate policies. Dr. Clauser has developed a climate model that adds a new significant dominant process to existing models. The process involves the visible light reflected by cumulus clouds that cover, on average, half of the Earth. Existing…

I fully agree with my leftist friends who say that corporations want to extract every penny they can from consumers. I also (mostly) agree with them when they say corporations are soulless entities that don’t care about people.

But after they’re done venting, I then try to educate them by pointing out that the only way corporations can separate consumers their money is by vigorously competing to provide desirable goods and services at attractive prices.

Moreover, their “soulless” pursuit of those profits (as explained by Walter Williams) will lead them to be efficient and innovative, which boosts overall economic output.

Moreover, in a competitive market, it’s not consumers vs. corporations, it’s corporations vs. corporations with consumers automatically winning.

Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute makes a very valuable point about what happens in a free economy.

Comparing the 1955 Fortune 500 companies to the 2017 Fortune 500, there…

In addition to discussing politicians and insider trading, I also was asked about antitrust laws during my recent CNBC appearance.

As you might imagine, I expressed skepticism about Biden’s plan for a more interventionist approach.

My view is that mergers should be governed by the market, not by politicians.

Especially when politicians have created a Catch-22 situation with antitrust laws.

Companies can be accused of improper behavior regardless of what they do.

• If they charge more than their competitors, that’s supposedly evidence of monopoly power.
• If they charge the same as their competitors, that’s supposedly evidence of collusion.
• If they charge less than their competitors, that’s supposedly evidence of predatory pricing.

Just like the poem from The Incredible Bread Machine.

For today, let’s focus on the specific issue of “consumer welfare,” which has limited the folly of antitrust policy by creating a presumption that mergers are…

Germans have worked out that relying on the weather for your power has one major problem: “The Weather”. They’ve even coined a term for gloomy, windless weather – ‘dunkelflaute’ – periods of days or weeks when their more than 30,000 wind turbines and millions of solar panels produce next to nothing or nothing at all.

Having foolishly trashed their (once enviable) nuclear power generation capacity, the Germans have been forced to re-embrace coal-fired power, like their lives depend upon it – notwithstanding howls of outrage from their lunatic green fringe.

German power prices are the highest in Europe and large-scale power rationing is now routine.

The result for the German economy is, of course, catastrophic, as Claire Lehmann outline below.

Why Germany’s energy blunders offer us a stark economic warning
The Australian
Claire Lehmann
21 July 2023

Since the 19th century, the phrase “Made in Germany” has denoted quality…

Economists assume that poor countries should grow faster than rich countries over time, a process known as convergence.

It’s a reasonable theory, but only if poor countries and rich countries have similar levels of economic liberty.

But that’s often not the case, which is why I put together an anti-convergence club. I have dozens of examples of richer countries growing faster than poorer countries.

And not just for one or two years. Every example in the anti-convergence club is based upon multiple decades of data.

Even more important, every example shows that you get faster growth in nations with free markets and limited government.

Now we have a new member of the anti-convergence club. Here’s a chart that Mike Bird of the U.K.-based Economist shared on Twitter. It shows that Japan has been steadily losing ground compared to the United States over the past three decades.

So…