This administration is entering uncharted territory in terms of its failure of policy for economic growth.  In fact, most of what passes for policy, such as Obamacare, the Dodd-Frank bill, and various regulatory initiatives has been destructive to job growth, while Federal Reserve monetary policy continues to misallocate and pervert the pricing of capital.  Recent […]

Francis Fukuyama, author most prominently of the provocative 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, has written an intriguing essay in The Wall Street Journal in which he argues that today’s political turmoil all over the world–Brazil, Egypt, Turkey, the Arab Spring, China, and elsewhere–has a common theme:  the failure of governments […]

I have often said that there are many complicated issues in public policy, but the concept of a minimum wage is not one of them.  It is a “feel good” impulse that makes no sense for any of its intended purposes and, in fact, is harmful to those it is designed to help, the young […]

In December, the Michigan legislature passed and its Governor signed a right to work law.  If there was ever a turning point in the demise of the post World War II social contract, this is certainly it.  Of all places, the citadel of union strength and solidarity and the home of the United Automobile Workers […]

Many people, both financial professionals and commentators, have blamed the adoption of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, which repealed the restrictions on affiliation between commercial  and investment banks in the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, as an important, if not primary cause of the financial meltdown of 2008-09.  Others suggest that these restrictions and separations should […]

This is from the Wall Street Journal, quoting columnist Janet Daley from London’s Daily Telegraph of May 19.  It is pointed at the future of the European Union, but substitute US for EU and it’s still timely and appropriate. How long will freedom survive in the face of mass rage at the loss of the […]

I won’t waste the time and space to dignify the recent deal reached by Congress and the President on the “debt ceiling crisis”.  Suffice to say, it can be characterized as too little, too late, not serious.  But let’s move on, because nothing will be settled until after the November 2012 referendum on this regime. Arthur […]

The European governments and bankers must dispense with the notion that Greece has a liquidity problem and deal with the fact that the problem is one of solvency that will require major debt restructuring and major additional austerity measures, while it has no access to the credit markets.  Again we see the absolute necessity of […]

Everywhere one looks, there is the clash: the risk-takers and the risk-averse, the dynamists and the stasists, the taxpayers and the welfare recipients, the providers and the takers, the rent seekers and the free marketeers, etc., etc., etc. Much of this is playing out in the battles over union “rights”–in the right to work vs. […]

On at least a couple of occasions, I have mentioned The Battle, a book by Arthur C. Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute which defines a fast approaching pivotal moment in the form of a question that we must answer:  Does America recover its commitment to free enterprise and ordered liberty or does it continue […]