The Result Of The Pies And Divine Light

In my previous two articles (see The Zero Sum Lie and Pies for Everyone and the Divine Light It Brings), I discuss how the United States, with its unique structure and practices, builds unprecedented prosperity and liberty. How has this shining Light from … Read More

Oil Rises

Remember early last year when oil prices ‘went negative’?

Well, despite scary headlines, the actual prices themselves didn’t go negative, but there certainly was a major drop in the value of oil. Markets often get the direction of the economy … Read More

The Ultimate Cosmic Gamble

The Covid Circus of late has prompted many to ponder death and what comes after.

Fear of dying and the unknown of the hereafter have moved many to masking and making many other changes to their lives that they … Read More

Reflecting On Two Historic Market Crises: COVID And The Great Recession

I had a lot I was going to cover in this week’s Dividend Cafe. I mean, some really fun stuff. We were going to go deep and wide into the bond market, into gold, into capex, into market rotation, … Read More

The First Amendment Isn’t Supposed To Be A Partisan Issue

The extraordinary and unprecedented rise in censorship of free speech, and the growing level of attacks, using either violence, economic pressure, or lawsuit harassment for exercising free speech is a reality that threatens the most basic right Americans enjoy.

Protecting … Read More

Copper Shines

We’ve been looking at various surveys and market valuation-based statistics that have a track record of being able to generally get the direction of the U.S. economy right. Now we’re going to take a look at a few indicators … Read More

Pies For Everyone And The Divine Light It Brings

“Pies for everyone” is derived from a free-market and from liberty. In the United States the two pillars – the free-market and a compactual-republic, or liberty – equate to citizens having prosperity and freedom. In his Essay in Interpretation of the … Read More

No, Mr. Bond Does Not Expect Us To Die

Forgive the levity of the title, but the sad passing of Sean Connery does call for a bit of a break from formality.

The villainous Goldfinger in the eponymous film captures Bond, straps him to a table, and points a … Read More

$15 Minimum Wage Proves Democrats Don’t Care About The Poor

Why are Democrats such misers? Their proposal for an increase of the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour proves that the party doesn’t care about the poor. That translates to $30,000 per year before benefits, an amount a family … Read More

The Lessons Of Anti-Money

Setting the table

The general lay of the land out there looks something like this right now (media treatment of a conflation of topics, and maybe even a consensus view outside a remnant of thinkers) …

(1) The Fed moved to hyper … Read More

What The Stock Market Thinks About The Recovery

Investors have skin in the game. That means that when we are wrong and make the wrong allocations according to our error, we get punished. This does not logically imply that investors are always right. Bubbles seem to be … Read More

The Zero-Sum Lie

If the economy was a zero-sum game – meaning if one individual has more, it is because another individual has less – then no society in the world would have any more than the lumber, water, stones, and land … Read More

China’s Dangerous Influence On The News

Published reports indicated that there is renewed expert belief that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese government-run laboratory.

Whether intentional or accidentally, the pandemic was unleashed to the world through Beijing’s actions. It has been previously discussed why there have been … Read More

Bond Market Rocks The Richter Scale

The global sovereign bond market is fracturing, and its ramifications for asset prices cannot be overstated. Borrowing costs around this debt-disabled world are now surging. The long-awaited reality check for those that believed they could borrow and print with impunity … Read More

Weird Recovery, Part 2: Where Are The Profits?

We’ve seen that the recent recession and current recovery are different from anything we’ve seen in most of our lifetimes, and we’ve seen that the nature of this recession and recovery cycle has been that business did not slow down … Read More

Government Spending And Your Heart Rate

I think there is some “economic vocabulary” in today’s Dividend Cafe that might – might! – be a turn-off to some, but will be overcome easily if you bear with it.  And more importantly, there is a practical takeaway through … Read More

Tucker Carlson Ices Industrial Policy By Criticizing Wind Power

The hit movie Frozen wasn’t popular in Oklahoma and Texas during the recent arctic blast. We hit temperatures not seen since 1905, -13 degrees Fahrenheit in Tulsa the other day. Democrats, pay attention! I know it’s hard to keep … Read More

What This Supply Chain ‘Mood Ring’ Tells Us About The Recovery

I wrote previously about how business surveys, such as the Purchasing Manager’s Index Survey (PMI), are good at showing not just the mood of supply chain managers but also what kinds of business conditions are actually occurring. Their sentiment … Read More

Internet Oligarchs Attack Free Speech

The powers of elected governments are being overshadowed by internet, media, and entertainment corporate oligarchs, as well as powerful bureaucrats who reject the concept of free speech or, in America, the enforcement of the First Amendment.

Contrary to popular … Read More

Envy And Human Nature

There is a school of thought which suggests older societies held a close-knit culture which honored each other and contained much trust. While some were this way, however, most primitive cultures were embedded with envy. And this envy most often … Read More

This Data Shows How Weird This Recession Was

First, let me introduce the most important economic statistic that you’ve (probably) never heard of, Gross Output. It was invented by economist Mark Skousen and was adopted by the federal government, which now reports it quarterly. Unlike GDP, Gross … Read More

Another Theologian Falls For Socialism

Americans love to think of ourselves as pragmatic. “’American Pragmatism’ has a double meaning since both the school of philosophy and the average American seems more interested in getting things done and the result of action rather than abstract theories … Read More

GDP Bounced Back, Sort Of

GDP is the most popular general measure of economic output. It started its contraction in the first quarter of the year, rapidly accelerated its fall in the second quarter, and came roaring back in the third quarter. We don’t … Read More

Apathy And Envy For All

Under a collective system, everyone degrades to a lower level whether they want to or not.  Apathy, laziness, fear, and dependence become the norm, making central planning and totalitarian measures even more successful; thus the end of poverty, but the … Read More