Enemies Lists

by Paul Jacob Courtesy of the Obama administration, we're experiencing more and more Nixonian moments. Take medical reform. The health insurers started out in Obama's camp. But a shuffling of policies and a few insurance companies began making obvious points... | Comments (1)

Spending Freeze Not Likely

by Ron Paul Last week politicians in Washington made a few things clear about how they really feel about the state of the union. First, they are beginning to hear the growing discontent with the size and scope of government... | Comments (0)

Have We Turned the Corner?

US GDP Fourth Quarter 2009 by Fred E. Foldvary The US GDP, measuring the output of the economy, was reported at $14.463 trillion as of January 31, 2010. In the fourth quarter of 2009 (October, November, December), the annualized growth... | Comments (0)

Robbing Words of Meaning

by Paul Jacob Words change over time, in meaning as well as sound. Since much of this comes from misuse, ignorance, laziness, and even wordplay, the more you know and the less fun-loving you are, the more a scold about... | Comments (0)

Legalize Competing Currencies

by Ron Paul Much has been made recently about the supposed economic recovery. A few blips in a few statistics and many believe our troubles are all over. Of course, they have to redefine recovery as “jobless” to account for... | Comments (0)

The Tragedies of Haiti

Their History -- Heartbreak After Heartbreak by Fred E. Foldvary The greatest tragedy of the earthquake of 12 January 2010 in Haiti was that the devastation was caused more by human failure than the natural disaster. The earthquake that hit... | Comments (0)

Money, Money, Money

by Paul Jacob Money. Politicians like to spend it. People -- especially special interests -- like to get it. And taxpayers really don't much like having to pay for all that spending. So our representatives try to procrastinate their balancing... | Comments (0)

Government is Too Big to Succeed

by Ron Paul Last week, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission kicked off their first round of hearings on the causes of the economic meltdown on Wall Street. The commission is being compared to the the Pecora Commission launched in 1932... | Comments (0)

Government Loves Landowners but Hates Landlords

Can “fair housing councils” also be predators? by Fred E. Foldvary They call them “landlords,” but they also lease the dwelling places, pieces of buildings, which are capital goods, not land. The “land” lord also provides labor services. They could... | Comments (0)

Visible Taxes, Invisible Support

by Paul Jacob There’s a lot of talk about the Value Added Tax and its various sister excises, like the Retail Sales Tax and the GST, or Goods and Services Tax. A lot of countries have one or more of... | Comments (1)

Why the Fed Likes Independence

by Ron Paul Last week it was revealed that when Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was Chairman of the New York Federal Reserve, he urged AIG officials not to disclose to the Securities Exchange Commission relevant details of agreements with banks... | Comments (0)

Will Bluefin Leave Earth Forever?

Baby's a Tuna, and It's Feeling Blue by Fred E. Foldvary Bluefin tuna are being hunted to extinction. They have already been reduced to a small fraction of the global numbers of a hundred ago. They may disappear from the... | Comments (4)

Steal This Free Document

by Paul Jacob Is it possible to steal a free good? Ask a lawyer. She’ll look it up, probably in federal court records. Now, our federal courts use a not-very-user-friendly database system, known as PACER, for distributing public records. These... | Comments (0)

Keynesianism Delivers a Decade of Zero

by Ron Paul This past week we celebrated the end of what most people agree was a decade best forgotten. New York Times columnist and leading Keynesian economist Paul Krugman called it the Big Zero in a recent column. He... | Comments (3)

Somewhere Hidden Something Goes

by Fred E. Foldvary As you read this, fifty trillion neutrinos are passing through your body each second. Neutrinos are tiny neutral particles. The sun emits illions of them, and they pass through the earth without affecting it. We cannot... | Comments (3)

Pension Tsunami

by Paul Jacob A humungous national debt. Growing state federal government budget deficits. Social Security and Medicare, running out of funds. All very frightening. But look out: The costs of public employee pensions are walloping city and state budgets —... | Comments (0)

Healthcare Reform is a Lump of Coal

by Ron Paul Last week on Christmas Eve, after many backroom deals were made, the Senate passed the healthcare reform bill with a strictly partisan vote. I was pleased that my colleagues in the GOP are on the right side... | Comments (1)