How The West Was Lost

“Sir, I see Sir Mervyn King has signalled that he no longer believes that price stability should be the Bank of England’s primary objective. Perhaps if he had his gold-plated, index-linked pension replaced by a private sector annuity pension he would be more focused on reducing inflation.”

Letter to [...]

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D’Oh! Homer Simpson Leaves the Post Office With 682 Million Unsold Stamps!

Homer was a flop at the post office. While Homer himself was popular (he outsold Elvis), the stamps didn’t move, costing the USPS $1.2 million. Which, as the article notes, pales in comparison to a $5 to $15 billion projected loss.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click here to see video. [...]

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Are Rich People Worth Having?

Gallup surveyed people on attitudes toward rich people. Here are two very interesting charts that say a lot about the USA.

Chart 1

Why do you think this is the case? With all we hear about the inequality of wealth and the demonization of the One Percenters, this is surprising in that the trend [...]

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Blessed Are The Speculators For They Shall Give Us Abundance

This article is from Don Boudreaux of George Mason University who publishes the Cafe Hayek blog. This op-ed piece was published in Newsday.

Don’t Curse the Oil Speculators

Nothing sparks spasms of poor economic commentary like rising oil prices. From left to right, pundits and politicians outdo each other at accusing evildoers of hurting good [...]

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Newton’s Fruit Falls Upward

Has gravity been repealed for the One Stock That Matters these days?

And do AAPL’s ascent, and the even more meteoric rise of Facebook, say anything special to people interested in economic trends and Austrian economic theory?

My answers to the above are:  to the first question:  No; to the second question:  See below.

[...]

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Dichotomy of the Day

In the news today are two enterprises whose fortunes have diverged so dramatically over the past decade that I wish to comment.  I think that the Austrian economists Schumpeter and von Mises would also have been impressed.

On the one side is an ancient people whose government borrowed hundreds of billions of euros over about [...]

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Why ZIRP Became Inevitable and Why It May Be With Us a Long Time

Last year, on June 26, when the 10-year Treasury traded at 2.87%, already far down in yield from its peak, I indicated that the yield could go a lot lower because the U.S. was developing a “yotai gap” in Japanese fashion.  The post was titled Yotai Gap to Provide Fuel to the Treasury Bond Bull?  [...]

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Europe Joins America in Going for Growth

I said in a recent post that I thought that austerity fatigue had set in in Old Europe.  Here’s confirmation, from Bloomberg.com:

European leaders declared a turning point in the Greece-fueled debt crisis, shifting their focus away from the budget-cutting spree that has dominated two years of rescue operations.

With a second Greek aid package [...]

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DocComment: Competing With the Lower-End Brands the Old-Fashioned Way

The LA Times has a nice piece out titled Counterfeit Gap joins the counterfeit Gucci.  Here’s the lede:

Mirabelle Vargas, 29, winds her way through the open-air stalls in downtown Los Angeles’ bustling Santee Alley, hunting for Victoria’s Secret underwear.

Or at least undies with a tag that says Victoria’s Secret.

An authentic pair [...]

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DocComment: On Apple and Back-to-Basics Capitalism

In Apple’s conference call yesterday, CEO Tim Cook disclosed that the company made a bet at the beginning of the quarter that the new iPhone 4s would be a big success and so it placed extra production orders – betting on the upside- and nonetheless found itself short of inventory as sales exceeded the company’s [...]

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An IPO That Helps Define an Era

As a minor-league anti-war activist, Viet Nam vintage, I always chuckle when I look at how Asian stock markets are doing and near the end of Bloomberg’s list, come upon the Ho Chi Minh Index.  Ha!  Peace does beat elective war, indeed.  Just what was the point of America joining that fight?  Now Intel makes [...]

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