Picture the scene. It’s 2020. You’re at the checkout in a convenience store with a carton of milk. But you’ve got no cash and you’ve left your cards at home. No problem. You scan your right index finger; the green light flashes. Purchase approved and you leave. Easy. Is this a realistic vision of the […]
Laissez-Faire Today
Foreword to The Idea of America
“In the beginning, all the world was America.” — John Locke “The Garden of Eden was a perfect place,” my friend Manuel explained. “Man had free will. He could live in harmony with nature and God — and everything would be fine. But if he defied God, the stain of original sin would be on […]
Sensible Vices
One issue I have with our modern lifestyle — of many — is the emphasis on perfection. Newer, slimmer, bigger, better, faster: the message of perfection screams out to us from glossy magazines, slick television ads and popup ad after popup ad. (Or purrs, cajoles, teases, and smothers.) While I do believe fundamentally in pursuing […]
The Family Is A Machine For Destroying Wealth
People jacked up about income inequality can find a new hobby. The 1% are victims of a doomsday machine, and the countdown is ticking. Machine, thy name is “family.” This came to mind as I was reading a preview of Columbia Professor Andrew Ang’s forthcoming, must-read book on Asset Management. Ang is that oxymoron, an […]
Look Who’s Taking Credit for the U.S. Shale Boom
After a week of reckoning about the American oil and gas boom… I’ve got to get something off my chest. I can’t stand it when a coworker takes credit for something I did. Whether it’s a special report I wrote or just a little investing trick I found on my own — if someone takes […]
The Latest Major Legal Challenge to Obamacare
It might sound like the latest new product from Apple, but IPAB is actually the newest major legal challenge to Obamacare. Recently, a three-judge panel in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco heard arguments about the Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB, a 15-member panel created by the Affordable Care Act and […]
Freedom, the Income Tax, and the Welfare State
Americans have come to believe that the IRS and the income tax are inevitable parts of our lives. After all, most everyone alive today has lived his entire life under federal income taxation. It wasn’t always that way. For some 125 years, the American people lived without having any tax imposed upon their income. The […]
The Dollar Will Be King Longer Than You Think
Here’s a fun fact: Although we all hate the U.S. dollar, as it continues to hemorrhage wealth, its foothold as the world’s reserve currency isn’t going to disappear overnight. A Russian gas deal with China won’t change that — as we’ll highlight below. But before we get to the nitty-gritty, let’s dive into a story […]
The Real Forgotten Man
Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously used the term “forgotten man” in a 1932 speech to describe those at the bottom of the economic pyramid who, he felt, government should aid. But the originator of the phrase “forgotten man” had a whole different meaning in mind. He aimed to expose the seeming good intentions of government to […]
The Federal Reserve is a Law Unto Itself
“As the nation’s central bank, the Federal Reserve derives its authority from the Congress of the United States. It is considered an independent central bank because its monetary policy decisions do not have to be approved by the President or anyone else in the executive or legislative branches of government, it does not receive funding […]