Cato Institute co-founder Ed Crane always marvels at the simplistic thought processes of economic reporters and commentators. It truly mystifies him that they still spill so much ink on how to get a c...
Tag: John Tamny
As USC And UCLA Exit the PAC 12, College Football’s Self-Inflicted Decline Picks Up Speed
When Jerry Jones purchased the Dallas Cowboys in 1989, his investment bankers told him he was making a big mistake. Luxury boxes at Texas Stadium were empty in many instances, so were seats. Jones was...
Bob Harig’s ‘Tiger & Phil’
Mitch Mustain, Whitney Lewis, and Lance Pavlas. What do the names mean to you? Most likely nothing, though if you’re a college football fan they likely ring a bell. All three were all-world college fo...
With His Bitcoin Bet, Michael Saylor Mistook ‘Scarcity’ For An Inflation Hedge
Argentina has a population of 45 million, while Switzerland can claim roughly 8.6 million citizens. Where it gets interesting is that the Swiss franc is one of the world’s most circulated currencies, ...
The Federal Reserve Cannot ‘Tighten’ Credit, and It Never Could
Back before Facebook was a public company, founder Mark Zuckerberg had a bit of a reputation with venture capitalists. He would show up to meetings in shorts, flip flops, and with messy hair. His not-...
When We’re Not Booming and Busting a La Bitcoin, We’re Stagnating
As most are aware, the various cryptocurrencies are in correction mode at present. Some of this is rooted in a reality discussed in this column a few weeks ago about why these private money concepts l...
CEOs Like the Late Jack Welch Embody the Endless Possibilities of Capitalism
When he was CEO of Coca-Cola, the late Roberto Goizueta was obsessively focused on making his shareholders rich. There was no talk of “stakeholder capitalism,” about Coke’s community endeavors, or job...
If Google’s Dominance Concerns You, the Only Solution Is Continued Google Dominance
It’s a presidential tradition that serious, tier one candidates for the office speak at the Detroit Economics Club. Young people must wonder why since Detroit is almost never the city mentioned as the...
Silicon Valley’s Prosperous Existence Is the Surest Sign of the Fed’s Unctuous Irrelevance
A headline at Forbes.com last week indicated rising layoffs at Silicon Valley start-ups that are said to foretell a quiet summer for venture capitalists. On the same day, an A1 story in the Wall Stree...
If You Expected Bitcoin to Beat Gold As An Inflation Hedge, You Understand Neither Gold nor Inflation
The market speculation that is Bitcoin has risen to prominence for a variety of reasons, but it’s not unreasonable to say that the dollar, euro, yen, pound, yuan (or name your county’s currency) have ...
Dana Brown’s Entertaining and Insightful Memoir of Vanity Fair, ‘Dilettante.’
Upon return from a family vacation three summers ago, economist Ike Brannon remarked at a subsequent lunch about an individual at the resort who was almost literally covered in tattoos. This was an ex...
What Would Everett Dirksen Think of Congress, and $40 Billion for Ukraine?
“A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.” The previous quip is associated with 20th century GOP powerhouse Everett Dirksen, but it’s likely apocrypha. Whether a rea...
Stefan Al’s Thoroughly Excellent ‘Supertall’
In Michael Ovitz’s very excellent 2018 memoir (review here) Who Is Michael Ovitz, the entertainment legend provided fascinating insight into why CAA was much more than a talent agency. Arguably a majo...
Contra Simpleton Pundits, ‘the Fed’ Didn’t Cause the Stock-Market Correction
Every stock-market rally is top heavy. In other words, every stock-market rally is led upwards by the very few. The 80/20 Pareto Principle that defines so much of life is 95/5 when it comes to equitie...
Tina Brown’s Very Entertaining ‘The Palace Papers’
Two days before Prince William married Kate Middleton on April 29, 2011, John Berlau published an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal hailing Middleton as “The Entrepreneur’s Princess.” In Berlau...
-1.4% GDP Just Reminds Us of the Abject Stupidity of GDP
“Macroeconomics is a tautology and a myth, a dangerous one at that, sustaining the illusion that prosperity is necessarily linked with territory, national units, and government spending in general.” –...
Harald Jahner’s Fascinating and Depressing ‘Aftermath’
“I spent my career as an academic studying great depressions. I can tell you from history that if we don’t act in a big way, you can expect another great depression, and this time it’s going to be far...
A 5:49 A.M. Next Day Delivery Is An Inconvenient Answer for Amazon’s Critics
At its height as the world’s most prominent sports magazine, and realistically one of the world’s most prominent magazines regardless of genre, Sports Illustrated (SI) was a weekly event of sorts. It ...
A Speculation That Elon Musk Isn’t Thinking What You’re Thinking About Twitter
It was 1999 at Goldman Sachs, and a senior person in its private bank was asked what he was recommending his very rich clients buy. He replied that they should purchase AOL, and hold it for life. It’s...
Do Serious People Still Take Seriously the Fed and ‘Soft Landings’?
Who is the most productive 3-point NBA shooter over the last two years? The nature of the question should quickly reveal it as a trick one of sorts. In other words, the answer isn’t Steph Curry. But t...
Peter Ward’s ‘The Price of Immortality’
The late J.R. Richard was a Major League Baseball phenomenon of the 1970s for the Houston Astros. If the radar guns were accurate, no one’s fastball traveled faster than Richard’s. Where it perhaps ge...
Monetarism Imagines a World That Doesn’t Exist…And That Never Has
Last Monday Johns Hopkins economists John Greenwood and Steve Hanke penned an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal that made a confident case for the Federal Reserve as planner of so-called “mone...
Giles Milton’s Fascinating ‘Checkmate In Berlin’
“During those days he stood still for such disastrous fatuities as Franklin Roosevelt’s impetuous call for unconditional surrender, a rhetorical fillip which in the analysis of some military experts m...
Elon Musk’s Mysterious Investment In Twitter Is a Happy Rejection of Victimhood
As most readers are aware by now, last week Elon Musk went public with his purchase of over 9% of Twitter. The $3 billion buy makes him the company’s largest shareholder. Members of the Right cheered ...
Jimmy Soni’s Spellbinding and Essential Story of How PayPal Came to Be
Every so often Cato Institute co-founder Ed Crane reminisces about the early days of libertarianism, and in particular the make-up of the movement as gatherings began taking place. Though the lover of...
Nathan Lewis’s ‘The Magic Formula’
The economic discussion would be greatly improved if it were passably understood that what we call “the economy” isn’t some living, breathing machine that can be engineered. An “economy” is just peopl...
With Its Critical ‘Amazon Empire,’ Frontline Unwittingly Makes a Strong Case For the Company’s Dominance
“You have to be kidding me.” Those were the words uttered with obvious incredulity to Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, the original founders of Tesla Motors. They were at a bar in Woodside, and th...
PhDs Killed Off the Gold Standard In 1971, Not ‘Guns & Butter’
It’s not very well known, but for much of the U.S.’s existence the dollar was linked to gold without any significant stock of gold as backing. This was logical. David Ricardo was clear that a gold sta...
If You’re Short Elon Musk’s Companies, You Might Want to Read Ashlee Vance’s Biography
In a phone call with highly prominent investor Richard Strong about fourteen months ago, he asked me my thoughts on Elon Musk. While I didn’t have deep or detailed opinions on the entrepreneur, I’d wr...
Governments Cause Inflation, Not Banks Making Loans
Christopher Wynne is a U.S.-born businessman based in Moscow. His company, PJ Western, owns and operates PapaJohn’s Pizza locations throughout Russia. His businesses employ over 9,000 people within th...
Steve Forbes, Nathan Lewis, and Elizabeth Ames’s ‘Inflation’
The Berenstain Bears is a collection of “First Time Books” with a devoted following among young kids, along with parents who used to be young, and who used to be devoted readers of the series. The boo...
Amazon’s Revitalized Whole Foods Is a Neighborhood Savior, and a Myth Slayer
In the Spring of 2017, the Whole Foods located in Washington, D.C.’s Glover Park neighborhood shut down ahead of plans for major renovations. The problem was that the owner of the building in which th...