If the Fed brought home a report card reflecting its performance since its creation in 1914, its parents would not be pleased. Its record for stability is among the worst in the developed world, and it has done little to fix the problems it was invented to address.
Ken Fisher on: coastal redwoods, dikes, efficient markets, quantitative easing, the limits of our knowledge, climate change, the fed, interest rates, why $100 billion isn’t that much money, money flows around the world like water downhill, tree science, behavioral science, why philanthropy is immoral and bad for humans, optimization of scarce resources, Bastiat, financial system intermediation and why inequality is a good thing.
Ken Fisher on: coastal redwoods, dikes, efficient markets, quantitative easing, the limits of our knowledge, climate change, the fed, interest rates, why $100 billion isn’t that much money, money flows around the world like water downhill, tree science, behavioral science, why philanthropy is immoral and bad for humans, optimization of scarce resources, Bastiat, financial system intermediation and why inequality is a good thing.
“The economy of Venezuela has collapsed as a result of gross socialist mismanagement. Their currency is essentially worthless. To start over, the next government of Venezuela must re-establish the rule of law, protect private property rights and create a new currency.” So writes Richard Rahn, one of America’s most brilliant economists.
By some estimates, the cost of government regulation in the U.S. exceeds $2 trillion. An amazing number. And while we’re paying a fortune for existing regulations, major new ones are coming out at the rate of 3,000 per year, so fast that the White House can only do a cost-benefit analysis on less than one half of one percent of them.
People look to the government to prevent future financial crises and too many trust that politicians and economic experts can create policies to protect us and our 401(k) plans. We shouldn’t rely on them. These experts are smart, mostly well-intentioned people but they can’t prevent the next crisis. No one can. Why is that? And why is a future crisis inevitable? I discuss these and many other questions with “Finance and Philosophy” author Alex Pollock.
Famed economist Milton Friedman called America’s highway system a “socialist enterprise” and he was right. America’s roads are in desperate need of repair and the federal government is clearly incapable of maintaining them efficiently. Drivers pay tens of billions of dollars in gasoline taxes every year and our infrastructure problems only seem to get worse.
Did you know when you text someone that you’ve landed at the airport, you’re using far more advanced technology than your plane’s air traffic controller?
This will go down in history as the episode of the Bill Walton Show where John Tamny referred to views I presented as utter nonsense and I called his naïve.