Aphorism says Personnel is policy Trump’s team in chaos — No one knows what’s next Actors and actions in flux, Regime’s uncertain — Situation grim Investment makes little sense No prospect of growth    

President-elect Donald Trump’s so-called Carrier deal, which seems to amount to a threatening conversation he had with Carrier’s managers, combined with some tax concessions by the state of Indiana, exemplifies the approach he has more or less announced he will take in dealing with U.S. companies that propose to move operations abroad. He threatens…
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In view of my sixteen-year campaign to bring about an understanding of the idea of “regime uncertainty,” one might think that I would be gratified by the growing recognition of the importance of the closely related (but narrower) idea of “policy uncertainty” in relation to the unusually slow recovery from the bust of 2007-2009….
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In a post entitled “Regime Uncertainty on Display – Gun Version,” George Johns at Sleepless in Midland argues that the White House’s rhetoric on gun control has been good (so far) for the firearms industry: Gun and ammo manufacturers and sellers are thriving like never before. And the reason is fear of Barack Obama’s…
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Speaking of regime uncertainty, even distinguished mainstream economists get it. Here’s Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman: I think that the main thing keeping long-term interest rates low right now is cognitive dissonance. Even though the business community is starting to get scared — the ultra-establishment Committee for Economic Development now warns that ”a fiscal crisis…
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In Federalist 62, published in the Independent Journal, February 27, 1788, James Madison writes as follows: It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be…
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Following on my recent post citing corporate CEOs’ complaint that continuing “Regime Uncertainty” forestalls their companies’ investing and hiring, corporate CFOs are today following suit, as reported by DeLoitte’s “CFO Signals“: CFOs’ expectations for sales and earnings growth both dropped precipitously this quarter, and their expectations for capital investment and hiring followed suit. The…
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Peter Wallison on Dodd-Frank The question is why—why did this act have such a dramatic effect on the U.S. economy, essentially stifling the modest recovery that had begun almost a year earlier? The most likely explanation is uncertainty. The Dodd-Frank Act was such a comprehensive piece of legislation—and required so many new regulations before…
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The idea of regime uncertainty had sound economic theory and substantial empirical evidence to support it.

Dr. Brendan Brown, Head of Economic Research at Mitsubishi UFJ Securities International (London), recently cited Senior Fellow Robert Higgs‘s work on regime uncertainty—both as the cause of the prolongation of the Great Depression as well as today’s economic malaise—suggesting that his premise could well be expanded to explain today’s global economy. In his Economic…
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