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Europe’s Self-Inflicted Decline: French Taxing, Italian Regulating, Greek...
Every day brings more and more evidence that Obamanomics is failing in Europe. I wrote some “Observations on the European Farce” last week, but the news this morning is even more surreal. Compared to...
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For Financial Markets, Regulation Is the Problem, not the Solution
This past Monday, I took part in a panel discussion about the financial crisis at the European Resource Bank in Brussels. One of my main points was that people in private markets always make mistakes,...
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In the “Opposing View” Column, I Explain Why USA Today Is Wrong about Bailouts
I think it’s a mistake to bail out profligate governments, and I have the same skeptical attitude about bailouts for mismanaged banks and inefficient car companies. Simply stated, bailouts reward past...
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A Simple Lesson of Policy Diversity from “The Black Swan” Author: Don’t Put...
Several months ago, I wrote a rather wonky post explaining that the western world became rich in large part because of jurisdictional competition. Citing historians, philosophers, economists, and other...
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Defending Cato from the Predictably Inaccurate Ramblings of Paul Krugman
Writing for the New York Times, Paul Krugman has a new column promoting more government spending and additional government regulation. That’s a dog-bites-man revelation and hardly noteworthy, of...
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What Really Happened in Cyprus?
Did Cyprus become an economic basket case because it is a tax haven, as some leftists have implied? Did it get in trouble because the government overspent, which I have suggested? The answers to those...
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The Link Between Systemic Risk and One-Size-Fits-All Regulation
After the financial crisis, the consensus among government officials was that we needed more regulation. This irked me in two ways. 1. I don’t want more costly red tape in America, particularly when...
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Stop the Presses, Europe’s Doing the Right Thing on Failed Banks!
For my birthday last year, the only present I wanted was for the Supreme Court to uphold the Constitution and reject Obamacare. Needless to say, that didn’t happen. Instead, the Chief Justice put...
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Easy Money Is Creating the Conditions for a Bigger European Economic Crisis
At the beginning of the year, I was asked whether Europe’s fiscal crisis was over. Showing deep thought and characteristic maturity, my response was “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, are you ;@($&^#’% kidding...
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Thanks to Lobbying, Banks Obtain Unearned Wealth and Increase Systemic Risk
I periodically comment about government corruption, often in the context of trying to make the general point that shrinking the size and scope of the public sector is the most effective way of reducing...
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The Obama Administration Wants another Housing Bubble…Plus Final Predictions...
More than 100 years ago, George Santayana famously warned that, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” At the time, he may have been gazing in a crystal ball and looking at...
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New Video Shows Bailouts Are a Recipe for Moral Hazard and Cronyism
When debating and discussing the 2008 financial crisis, there are two big questions. And the answers to these questions are important because the wrong “narrative” could lead to decades of bad policy...
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Establishment Media Channels Fox Butterfield on Keynesian Policy
Back in 2010, I described the “Butterfield Effect,” which is a term used to mock clueless journalists for being blind to the real story. A former reporter for the New York Times, Fox Butterfield,...
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Glass-Steagall and Financial Mythology
I try to avoid certain issues because they’re simply not that interesting. And I figure if they bore me – even though I’m a policy wonk, then they probably would be even more painful for everyone else....
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Dodd-Frank: A Wall Street-Supported Law Imposing Heavy Costs, Enabling Future...
Politicians specialize in bad policy, but they go overboard during election years. It’s especially galling to hear Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton compete to see who can make the most inane comments...
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A Horrifying Socialist Future for America?
The debate over socialism shouldn’t even exist. Everywhere big government has been tried, it has failed. And we have reams of evidence that free-market economies dramatically out-perform statist...
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More Hack Analysis from the IMF
The International Monetary Fund is a left-leaning bureaucracy that was set up to monitor the fixed-exchange-rate monetary system created after World War II. Unsurprisingly, when that system broke down...
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Do Economic Crises Produce Liberalization or More Statism?
When I give speeches about modern welfare states, I’ll often cite grim data from the IMF, BIS, and OECD about the very depressing fiscal consequences of ever-expanding government. And if I really want...
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Do Voters Reward Pro-Market Politicians?
A few days ago, I shared some academic research investigating whether economic crises lead to more liberalization (Naomi Klein’s hypothesis) or more statism (Robert Higgs’ hypothesis). Given the dismal...
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Two Things to Understand about Debt Limit Hysteria
One of the few theoretical constraints on Washington is that politicians periodically have to raise a “debt ceiling” or “debt limit” in order to finance additional spending with additional red ink. I...
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