Last week the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the individual mandate of the ObamaCare law. In tackling the issue, the court framed the question as follows: ”Whether the federal government can issue a mandate that Americans purchase and maintain health insurance from a private company for the entirety of their lives.” The...
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Coverage of the recent financial crisis has been rife with errors of fact and interpretation. Crisis Economics, by Nouriel Roubini and Stephen Mihm, belongs in a special category. The book weaves together underappreciated truths and common falsehoods and does so in ways that relatively few scholars can easily untangle, as Independent Institute Research Fellow...
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So let me get this straight. After the most socialistic century in history, during which all industrialized nations finally found themselves gravitating toward a mixed economy model, we see a somewhat significant financial collapse of international significance and then another stock market drop a few years later, and it supposedly tells us that capitalism...
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As Dave Barry used to say, I’m not making this up. Deeply mired in the fatally flawed myth that World War II ended the Great Depression, Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman yesterday proposed that an invasion by space aliens would well provide the economic stimulus this country needs: As Dr. Robert Higgs has more than...
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For the past year, I have been researching how the housing bubble of the 1920s contributed to the Great Depression when the bubble burst. My study involves reading many articles and speeches by Herbert Hoover, first as Commerce Secretary (1921-1928) then as president (1929-1933). As the nation endures the Obama presidency, I see much...
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Nothing is off limits anymore. Nothing. Not as far as politicians are concerned. Democratic State Senator Kevin De Leon wants California to mandate fitted sheets in the state’s hotels, and forbid flat sheets. According to the bill’s opponent Lynn Mohrfeld, president and CEO, California Hotel & Lodging Association, “SB 432 would cost the hotel...
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That is the estimated number of kids who have been killed by US drones in Pakistan, during a war whose purpose no one can clearly explain, much less justify. The Bush-Obama war on terrorism has been raging for nearly ten years now, and virtually none of it has anything to do with keeping Americans...
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Highly-regarded J.P. Morgan Global FX Strategist Ken Landon included the following in his email advisory on Tuesday: Here’s a tautology: it will no doubt be another volatile day. With confidence having been severely undermined over the past two weeks, risk markets will continue to be susceptible to bouts of extreme fear in both directions....
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An eighteen-year-old Floridian is pulled over for riding a bike without a night light. A small amount of marijuana is found on him. He is thus in violation of probation for a crime he committed years before as a juvenile. He is arrested and tossed in a jail cell. He suffers a medical emergency...
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The U.S. stock market tanked on Monday in the aftermath of Standard & Poor’s lowering its long-term credit rating of the United States—itself a consequence of last week’s debt deal. Superficially, the deal seemed to be a “perfect” political compromise: it split the difference between the White House and congressional Republicans. To be more...
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