Wall Street speculators are reviled for supposedly profiting on others’ economic hardships. (Here is how speculation actually works). Oil prices go up, it’s speculators’ fault, and we need more controls. So you’d think if speculators were to wind up losing massive amounts on a market turn, the anti-market critics would feel that justice is finally being served. JP Morgan’s recent …
Shoot Bankers First, Fact-check Never
The industrial sector of the economy produces the material wealth that makes our environment beautiful, comfortable, tasty, and fun. Some of this wealth is consumed immediately, while the rest can be invested for the future. But those who spend their time producing it don’t necessarily have expertise in where to best invest it. That’s why we have banks, which specialize …
End the Fed! And Then What?
A sound monetary and banking system is the foundation of economic growth and industrial progress. Our central bank, the Federal Reserve, claims, by mandate, to maintain “stable prices” and “full employment.” Yet its record is one of chronic monetary instability. Because money is the essential link between all the diverse, coordinated sectors of our economy, this instability is the root of …
Selling Your Soul For a Narrative: Understanding the Gleick Fraud
Within the green movement, Peter Gleick is a renowned environmental scientist specializing in the negative impact of global warming. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, co-founded the Pacific Institute, served as chairman of a “task force on scientific ethics and integrity” in the American Geophysical Union, and received a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship (aka “genius grant”) in anticipation …
Climatology Establishment Smears Scientific Critics
Responding to a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed by 16 scientists who reject global warming catastrophism (discussed here), 38 academic climatologists have offered their counterargument, which amounts to 1) disagreeing with the 16 scientists’ factual claims about the climate and 2) claiming that since most of the scientists are not climatologists, their claims are uninformed. Both points are wrong.
The Global Warming Campaign Takes a Blow
The movement to convince the public of catastrophic global warming is fundamentally unscientific. Its leaders do not, as true scientists would, objectively study and relay the full evidence about what drives the climate, they fixate obsessively on CO2. They do not share how poorly understood climate drivers are; they act as if they can predict the climate with certainty. Through …
What’s in a Price?
Have you ever thought that it would be nice to get through a bit more of the novel you’ve been reading but you’d rather not pay two cents (literally) for the electricity it would take to run your light bulb for one hour? Have you ever decided you’d rather carry your 50 lbs. of weekly groceries home for 5 miles …
Causes of the Great Depression
As opposed to the pseudo-scientific, Marxist idea that capitalism is inherently unstable and will lead inevitably to mass unemployment and strife, there is a general agreement among macroeconomists today that the Great Depression was the product of the Fed’s highly distortionary monetary policy. However the nature of this distortion is still a subject of debate.
To Understand Energy You Must Understand the Price System
What is the most promising energy technology for the future: coal, oil, gas, and nuclear, or solar panels, battery-powered cars, and fluorescent light bulbs? The reflexive approach to answering such questions taken by the federal government over the past four decades has been to form expert committees and let the best argument win — or at least the best argument …