One of the main things that people usually bring up in defense of government is the idea that without the government there would not be any roads, or that the roads would somehow fall into disrepair. Well, it is not hard to tell these days that the infrastructure is falling apart, even with taxation at an all-time high. The government still isn't able to properly maintain roads and bridges.
In one Michigan community, people took these matters into their own hands instead of sittin... (more)
In the early days of capitalism there was a mass exodus from farm to factory. No one forced the masses to work in factories; they did so because factory work was better and more profitable than the alternative -- sixteen hours a day of backbreaking farm labor for less money. Or begging, prostitution, crime, and starvation. As Ludwig von Mises explained in Human Action (p. 615):
The factory owners did not have the power to compel anybody to&
There is a growing sense across the financial spectrum that the world is about to turn some type of economic page. Unfortunately no one in the mainstream is too sure what the last chapter was about, and fewer still have any clue as to what the next chapter will bring. There is some agreement however, that the age of ever easing monetary policy in the U.S. will be ending at the same time that the Chinese economy (that had powered the commodity and emerging market booms) will be finally running ou... (more)
I'm a lawyer, and I think legal licensing is an extraordinary scam. Let people choose an attorney, paralegal, legal secretary, or self-educated legal savant to help with their legal problem. Legal licensure is designed to protect lawyers more than consumers.
Attorneys aren't the only professionals who rig regulation to their benefit. More than 1,100 professions are licensed by at least one state. In addition to lawyers and doctors are locksmiths, interior decorators, fun... (more)
Whenever Venezuela comes up in the news the story is rarely good. From massive civil unrest, to rampant shortages, to hyper-inflation, to stories of squatters, the country is probably not on the top of many people's "places I'd like to visit" list.
While we may look at the situation in Venezuela and think, "wow, living there would be awful," the fact of the matter is that these conditions are reality for more than 30 million people who call the country home.
Markets have "reached some kind of a tipping point," warns Marc Faber in this brief Bloomberg TV interview. Simply put, he explains, "because of modern central banking and repeated interventions with monetary policy, in other words, with QE, all around the world by central banks - there is no safe asset anymore." The purchasing power of money is going down, and Faber "would rather focus on precious metals because they do not depend on the industrial demand as much as base metals or industrial co... (more)
Following Monday's historic stock market downturn, many politicians and so-called economic experts rushed to the microphones to explain why the market crashed and to propose “solutions" to our economic woes. Not surprisingly, most of those commenting not only failed to give the right answers, they failed to ask the right questions.
Many blamed the crash on China's recent currency devaluation. It is true that the crash was caused by a flawed monetary policy. However, the... (more)
Jim Rogers says contrary to what Trump and other politicians would have people believe China is not to blame for the US's economic woes. As the world's largest economy, the US is to blame for it's own problems.
Marc Faber, Editor and Publisher of "The Gloom. Boom & Doom Report", www.gloomboomdoom.com, gives his perspective on where markets are headed and what's behind the current selloff.
An age-old rap against free markets is that they give rise to monopolies that use their power to exploit consumers, crush upstarts, and stifle innovation. It was this perception that led to "trust busting" a century ago, and continues to drive the monopoly-hunting policy at the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department.
But if you look around at the real world, you find something different. The actually existing monopolies that do these bad things are created not by mark... (more)
Much as Brazil is the poster child for the great EM unwind unfolding across emerging economies from LatAm to AsiaPac, Illinois is in many ways the mascot for America's state and local government fiscal crisis.
Although well documented before, the state's financial troubles were thrown into sharp relief in May when, on the heels of a state Supreme Court ruling that struck down a pension reform bid, Moody's downgraded the city of Chicago to junk.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has drafted a bill that aims to eliminate the US dollar and the euro from trade between CIS countries.
This means the creation of a single financial market between Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and other countries of the former Soviet Union.
"This would help expand the use of national currencies in foreign trade payments and financial services and thus create preconditions for greater liquidity of domes... (more)
The Financial Times has published an anonymous article which calls for the abolition of cash in order to give central banks and governments more power.
Entitled The case for retiring another 'barbarous relic', the article laments the fact that people are stockpiling cash in anticipation of another economic collapse, a factor which is causing, “a lot of distortion to the economic s... (more)
On Wednesday we witnessed the third largest single day point gain for the Dow Jones Industrial Average ever. That sounds like great news until you realize that the two largest were in October 2008 – right in the middle of the last financial crisis. This is a perfect example of what I wrote about yesterday. Every time the market crashes, there are huge up days,... (more)
“Confoundingly to me, people have come to be quite accepting of the value attached by fiat to these pieces of paper we call currency,” says Jim Grant, who’s the editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer and the author of The Forgotten Depression: The Crash That Cured Itself.
“Are prices meant to be imposed from on hi... (more)
For most people, the stock market is an mysterious force that they will never understand. It might as well be a glittering slot machine as far as they’re concerned. They don’t know how it really works on the inside, all they understand is that the machine is known to pay out big from time to time. Of course, that doesn’t discourage them from trying their hand at the casino anyway. When the average person wants to place their bets on the stock market, they turn to the experts. T... (more)
Fasten your seat belts, this ride is getting interesting. Last week the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down more than 1,000 points, notching its worst weekly performance in four years. The sell-off took the Dow Jones down more than 10% from its peak valuations, thereby constituting the first official correction in four years. One third of all S&P 500 companies are already in bear market territory, having declined more than 20% from their peaks. Scarier still, the selling intensified as the wee... (more)
Investors were rattled as the China Securities Regulatory Commission made no attempt to reassure markets after Monday's crash, as they did a month ago after an 8.5 percent drop.
"It's panic selling and an issue of confidence," Wei Wei, an analyst at Huaxi Securities in Shanghai, told Bloomberg News.“The government won't step in to rescue the market again, as it's a global selloff and it's spreading everywhere n... (more)
Famed investor and author of the Gloom, Doom, Boom Report, Marc Faber, returns to the podcast this week to discuss the slowdown in the global economy, signs of which he claims are multiplying fast all around the world.
He predicts the next year is going to be an especially bruising one for investors, and recommends a combination of diversification and defense for those with financial capital to protect:
I do not believe that the global economy is healing. I
