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They Were Talking About The Laffer Curve in 1963
Last week at the President Ronald Reagan Ranch Center in Santa Barbara, Calif., the staff made a nice move. On the occasion of the publication of the first volume of the collected works of the...
View ArticleElections, Evolution And Asset Rotation
Since the current Congress and president took office in January 2013, major asset rotation has taken place in the markets. The stock indexes are up by more than a third, with gold and oil down...
View ArticleGreenspan Is Thinking About Gold At The Right Time
Former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan is on a gold roll. In September, Greenspan published a thought piece in Foreign Affairs musing on the indubitable monetary qualities of gold. “If, in the...
View ArticleThe Laffer Curve Anniversary Is Just Now
Last December marked the 40th anniversary of the Laffer curve—sort of. Sometime around the week of Dec. 2, 1974, at the Two Continents restaurant at the Hotel Washington, there on Pennsylvania Avenue...
View ArticleEurope’s Past Economic Success Lay Not In Quantitative Easing
Europe used to have a fabulous economy. So did Japan. In the 1950s and 1960s, and even a chunk of the 1970s, the growth rates in West Germany, France, Italy, and Japan were huge, 6 percent per annum...
View ArticleThis Economy Is Yearning For The Policy Mix
The economy appears to be improving, at long last seven years into the recovery from the Great Recession. Jobs are being added at the Ronald Reagan-era average, even if the population is a quarter...
View ArticleMy Presentation To Janet Yellen
On Friday, I numbered among the twenty-some self-styled conservatives, organized by Steve Lonegan, who gathered at the headquarters of the Federal Reserve to meet with Chair Janet Yellen and governor...
View ArticleThe Texas Miracle And The Federal Reserve ‘Put’
Texas had a few nice years there. Economic growth was soaring and employment booming, and fortunes were multiplying and tax receipts cruising. On that last item, tax receipts, really cruising. For the...
View ArticleHillary Will Run Against The 1980s — What Were The 1980s Again?
Hillary Clinton and her conceivable Democratic opponents—Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren—all seem to be attending to one economic sage. Not Paul Krugman, in a twist, but fellow economics Nobelist...
View ArticlePaulson Is A Mensch For Giving Harvard $400 Million — It Keeps The Feds At Bay
John Paulson, the hedge-fund manager who rode the housing bust for a tremendous profit in his “big short,” recently announced that he was endowing the Harvard school of engineering with a gift of $400...
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At Jackson Hole, The Cranks Prevailed
Stanley Fischer, Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve (MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images) The Federal Reserve’s annual Jackson Hole retreat last week was a strange exercise. The theme was “inflation...
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Bernanke Has His Facts Wrong — And Is Short On Courage
Bernanke’s reflections reveal that the Fed is incapable of summoning the courage, to coin a phrase, to deal with the world as it actually is. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Ben Bernanke’s...
View ArticleGOP Candidates, Please Be Better Than Bush And ‘Voodoo Economics’ Talk
The Republican Presidential debate on the topic of economics is upon us—the CNBC-hosted debate at the University of Colorado Boulder Wednesday evening. I’m a CU faculty member and will be in the crowd,...
View ArticleJack Kemp Keeps Sailing Through The Criticism
Was the New York Times Book Review ever mighty? If so, it certainly has fallen. Book reviews at the nation’s paper of record are supposed to be smart and accurate. They are to be a resource for the...
View ArticleHigh Tuition Breeds Caving To College Protestors
“College living is always public living and thus courtesy toward others is an absolute necessity”—Amy Vanderbilt in her classic New Complete Book of Etiquette of 1963. Fat chance at Yale, Princeton,...
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George H.W. Bush Ruined Bipartisanship
Former President George H.W. Bush waves to the crowd at TEDECU Stadium in November 2015 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Bob Levey/Getty Images) A common claim—made by a certain Internet troll who puts up...
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Remember What Happened The Last Time Oil Collapsed
The Dow Jones industrial average fell nearly 300 points on February 2 on renewed fears over the health of the global economy and another fall in the price of oil. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)...
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Hillary Clinton Is The New Nixon, Making Bernie Sanders The New — JFK?
Democratic presidential hopeful and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images) Hillary, the New Nixon—of course: questionable political/policy activity and then the...
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The Fed Can’t Fix The Economy On Its Own–No Matter What It Does
Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen (SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images) Last year, the Federal Reserve finally showed some restraint. It raised an interest rate and tied off “quantitative easing,” the big...
View ArticleThe U.S. Tax System Is An Admission Of Failure
Tax day is right now, April 18 it turns out, not the 15th as usual. The Internal Revenue Service switched it because Emancipation Day is a holiday in Washington DC. It commemorates Abraham Lincoln’s...
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