Labor + Capital + Raw Materials = Finished Goods [Note to Readers: This year, approximately 500,000 high school seniors applied to the Ivy League and highly selective schools like Stanford (my alma mater), MIT, and the University of Chicago. Around 475,000 of them (95%) — including my hard-working, ridiculously talented 18 year-old son — were...Read More
Labor + Capital + Raw Materials = Finished Goods I spent four years learning economics at Stanford. I’ve spent (going on) the last forty years unlearning it. It’s not that Stanford failed me. It turns out that the entire field of modern economics was built upon not one but two outmoded ideas, if not conceptual...Read More
Labor + Capital + Raw Materials = Finished Goods I spent four years learning economics at Stanford. I’ve spent (going on) the last forty years unlearning it. It’s not that Stanford failed me. It turns out that the entire field of modern economics was built upon not one but two outmoded ideas, if not conceptual...Read More
“The Wealth of Nations,” Updated — Repairing and Renewing America’s “Social Capital” “Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man.” –President John Kennedy * * * * * “Tens of millions of ordinary Americans will never recover from the financial collapse of 2007-09, a tragedy that spread misery around the world and cost U.S. households...Read More
March 7, 2013: Dow Jones Hits (Another) Record High “Dear Jack: Don’t buy a single vote more than is necessary. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide.” –JFK quoting a made-up telegram from his father, Joseph Kennedy, after he first won election to Congress. “The Federal Reserve’s role is to take away the punch bowl just when the party gets going.”...Read More
The OTHER Problem with Sky-High Gold Prices No, Donald Trump doesn’t have that many ex-wives (yet). What I actually had in mind was the distorting effect high gold prices have on economic activity. That’s in addition to the economic cost associated with skittish, defensive investors shifting a fraction of their liquid assets from “fiat money” (paper) to...Read More
