Source: The American Conservative.

A for-the-record post. That is, I doubt the practical observations this story contains will have much influence on those who ardently believe “our democracy” was threatened on Jan. 6, but now that the post is on file we may reference it later, as needed.

Source: National Review Online.

Among the foolish things we hear from time to time is the claim that government policies are not to blame for the high prices consumers experience at the gas pump. Coronavirus did it, we are told, or Putin did, or corporate greed, or etc. Whatever did it, it wasn’t the angry bird in the Oval Office or his flock.

Continue reading “Biden’s Oil Tantrum” →

Source: The Wall Street Journal.

I am very glad to see this story. It amplifies a point I made in a post not long ago where I said, If you want to understand economics, put money out of your mind. The real economy is the economy of goods, meaning their production and consumption.

Continue reading “We Need to Remember What Reagan Knew About Economics” →

Source: Contemplations on the Tree of Woe.

I have mentioned several times that one of the consequences of the war in Ukraine may be a fundamental restructuring of the global economy — to the disadvantage of the U.S. and Europe. The present essay explains (better than I could) how this might happen.

Source: Moon of Alabama.

It appears that things are getting ugly in Ukraine with (according to Russia) Ukrainian forces murdering their own troops who attempt to surrender and Ukrainian artillery brazenly shelling civilian targets.

The United States will have little to be proud of when the full story of our support for this war is told. If Joe Biden were a competent president, he’d be actively engaged in bringing this conflict to an end.

But Biden is not competent. He doesn’t even notice that he is backing the bad guys.

AOC = Shithead propaganda. Lauren Southern, The Man, does a nice job explaining how.

I don’t want to beat up on an old man, but an old man as damaged by age as Joe Biden should not be president of the United States.

Source: Bacon’s Rebellion.

I read this article with some dismay. Although I agree that universal broadband internet in Virginia would be a good thing, I don’t agree with the approach to creating it.

A basic principle of economics holds that free markets are an efficient dialectic (thesis, antithesis, synthesis). Given that resources are scarce and stakeholders are many, every economic puzzle has an almost infinite number of solutions. Free market dialectics take time, but tend to produce optimal results.

Here, government preempted the free market, driving out benefits society could have enjoyed. Just because something is good doesn’t mean it needs to be done right away.

Source: The Saker.

I don’t know anything about the writer of this brief commentary, except what he says about himself in the piece, but I suspect he represents the point of view of a sizeable number of Russians. He sees the war in Ukraine as the beginning of apocalyptic events, and expresses his belief that “at the ultimate conclusion of this Special Operation, there is no reason why the USA or the EU should continue to exist.”

I don’t endorse the writer’s view, but I expect most Americans would be surprised by the intensity of anti-Western sentiment it conveys.

I think, too, there are very few Americans who take seriously the prospect that the war in Ukraine may become a major turning point in world affairs, with the collapse of Western Civilization a very real possibility.

Source: Michael Hudson.

The balance-of-payments economist speculates that the war in Ukraine “is really a trigger intended to restructure the world economy – and to do so in a way to lock U.S. control over the Global South.” He suggests that Russia and China have an effective counterplan.