Reforming Capitalism Leads To Socialism

A professor of business and public policy at the University of Oxford asked in a recent article published in Forbes, Why do attempts at reforming capitalism fail?. The author gets many things wrong because he has learned only mainstream economics. For … Read More

Open Letter From Financial Advisors To Netflix About ‘Cuties’ And Child Exploitation

Financial advisors who have Netflix in their clients’ portfolios have asked me if there is something they can do in response to the deplorable marketing of the film ‘Cuties’ by Netflix. I would suggest that if you have Netflix … Read More

Is China Funding BLM?

America is not immune to the conditions that have allowed totalitarians to rise to power.

Black Lives Matter and Antifa have made threats and violence part of everyday American political life. Both organizations have successfully assisted in the support of … Read More

Taking Risks With Other People’s Money

There is an old financial term called OPM, Other People’s Money. It describes the way that business owners and managers obtain funds from other people to leverage the capital that they put into a business. It is a legitimate way … Read More

The New York Times And Trump’s Critics Can’t Have It Both Ways

The internet is a long time. More realistically, the internet is forever.

This is a worthwhile jumping off point in consideration of the latest whine from the perpetually outraged about the Trump administration allegedly providing crucial “inside information” to investors … Read More

Defending Pensions

This summer, the Department of Labor proposed a rule that seeks to reaffirm the principle that pension plans’ main focus should be the financial well-being of retirees, and asked for comments from interested parties. As Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia put … Read More

An Unnecessary Concern About Income Inequality

A concern with income inequality is that the gap between the top 1 percent income earners and the bottom 99 percent has become astronomically wider since the 1970s – increasing by 275 percent from 1979 to 2007.[1]  This data … Read More

Open Letter From Netflix Shareholders About ‘Cuties’ And Child Exploitation

A number of shareholders of Netflix have asked us if there is something they can do in response to the deplorable marketing of the film ‘Cuties’ by Netflix. I would suggest that if you are a shareholder of Netflix … Read More

No Longer Operating Under The Original Intent

In essence we are no longer operating under the Original Intent of the founding of this country. Since subtracting wealth from the top and adding it to a lower level is mathematically a zero net gain, the economy does not … Read More

What This New Economic CAT Scan Shows About This Recession

In the prior article, I explained how a new statistic, Gross Output (GO) uses free-market insights to get a deeper look into the economy than Keynesian statistics such as GDP and GNP.

Now that we know it’s a better … Read More

Post Election Violence?

The United States may face unprecedented violence in the last two months of 2020.

If President Trump is re-elected, riots on a massive scale may be billed as a protest against his continued leadership. If Biden succeeds, the Left will … Read More

Investor Lessons From A World Of Doing Something

The new normal in six words

There is a principle at play in all aspects of the economy right now – from fiscal policy to monetary policy to regulatory policy to state and county medical policy to nearly any … Read More

Finance Prof’s New Book Challenges Stagnation, Division Mindset

I recently interviewed Alex Edmans about his game-changing new book, Grow the Pie: How Great Companies iver Both Purpose and Profit. I call it “game-changing” not as a cliché for important or interesting, but with a more literal and specific meaning. … Read More

This Is The Big Lie

If you tell a big enough lie, and tell it often and loud enough, people will believe it is true. The Nazis and Soviets had it down to a science, with their propaganda ministers, like most totalitarian states. Modern day … Read More

From Individualism To Anarchy

It is my right to kill my own child, it is my right to undergo brutal and barbaric surgery to change my gender, it is my right to torch and loot businesses, topple public monuments and terrorize neighborhoods (if … Read More

The Left Are The Real Secessionists

Is the American Left splitting the nation apart? The evidence is mounting in a truly worrisome manner.

The Progressive attitude that rejects any affinity with fellow Americans that have different perspectives has been growing for some time. Barack Obama’s contemptuous … Read More

New York Post Article: “New York City Is Dead Forever”

Recently, author and former hedge fund manager James Altucher wrote an opinion piece for the New York Post with the title New York City is Dead Forever.

Despite the rather inflammatory title, the article is generally fact-based and well-argued. Whether you … Read More

Socialists’ Attack On “Greed” Is Really Concealed Envy

Gordon Gekko in the motion picture Wall Street regurgitated what socialists have been saying for a century: capitalism is based on greed. Here is part of his monologue:

The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed — for lack of a better … Read More

Happy GO-Day: Wednesday’s Economic CAT Scan Shows Resiliency

This last Wednesday was a milestone for data nerds like me, and for general economic understanding. For the first time, the government released something called ‘Gross Output’ (GO) along with its official GDP numbers. You may not know it, … Read More

Magnifying Old And New Lessons

Note: I wrote the majority of this week’s Dividend Cafe before the news had broken that President Trump and First Lady Melania had tested positive for COVID.  We wish them a speedy recovery, of course, but don’t have much to … Read More

Just What Is It That Judy Shelton’s Critics Are So Afraid Of?

Have you ever wondered why the U.S. dollar is accepted as payment around the world? Better yet, have you ever wondered why the dollar liquefied exchange in Iron Curtain countries during the 20th century, and still liquefies trade in countries like … Read More

A Simple Math Model And The Numbers

In the later part of the 20th century and on into the 21st century, the claims of wealth inequity run rampant. But is this the case; and, if it is the case, is it destructive to the Great Experiment – or to … Read More

New Book About Jesus And Economics: An Excerpt

This is an excerpt from The Maker Versus the Takers: What Jesus Really Said About Social Justice and Economics, by Jerry Bowyer (New York, Fidelis Books, Post Hill Press, 2020)

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Introduction

This all started with a phone call to my radio … Read More

The U.S. Is Not Capitalist

Is the US the vanguard of capitalism for the world? Is the US even capitalist? For most media pundits the answer is obvious: Yes! Everyone knows that! After all, the U.S. has always ranked high on the indexes of … Read More