At 2 a.m. June 6, 1993 a small cargo ship ran into a sandbar not far from a beach at the mouth of New York harbor. Then the passengers started to jump off. They plunged into the rolling waves, some clinging to plastic bags containing all their possessions. One after another they jumped. Soon two […]
I was shocked that Biden pulled it together for the State of the Union. He not only managed to remain alert and coherent for 90 minutes, he delivered a powerful new case for a sort of Progressive populism that almost no other Democrats have been able to articulate. Some of the commentary has diminished the […]
War in Ukraine is shocking and appalling. It is a deep, life inflecting historical moment. Certainly for me, a child of the Cold War and someone who not long ago believed in a generally hopeful view about the likely progression of history. The uplifting dimension, of course, is that Ukraine seems to be winning, or […]
When I stand at the meat counter looking down at a pack of sirloin that is about 10% more expensive than it was two years ago, it does not occur to me to blame Larry Summers. Yet for David Dayen — a journalist whose work I admire — inflation is caused by free markets, and […]
When the New York Times editorial board sat down to interview Elizabeth Warren, the first question was about Hunter Biden. These 17 distinguished journalists proceeded to fire a bunch of zingers at the candidate, seeing if they could trip her up on hot button issues like immigration, trade, and Medicare for All. The transcript is […]
I am a Russian engaged in a campaign of fake political advertising designed to change the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election. I operate in plain sight, yet I am having no problem deploying my campaign, which is aimed to a narrowly defined segment of the American population that I believe will determine the election. […]
Interesting blog posted at Stigler Center’s ProMarket on the latest political sciences theories about the rise of populism: “The main driver [of populism] is “cultural backlash” and, as far as economics plays a role, it is in a racialized manner—nativists believe that “aliens” are getting too numerous or powerful and that is why they think […]
Warren has boldly pushed back on the critics who went after her for not having a plan to pay for Medicare for all. First she came out with a detailed plan for how to pay for it, then she produced another detailed plan for the three-year roll out process, and then we got the plans […]
We get that Elizabeth Warren looks like a dangerous lefty who wants to destroy capitalism with massive tax hikes, huge new programs and a proliferation of meddlesome new laws and regulations. Yet we are taking a stand in her support. Her main theme is tackling corruption. We agree that it should the main priority of […]
OH GOD PLEASE GIVE US A RECESSION, AND FAST! This seems to be the underlying wish behind media saturation coverage of last week’s somewhat bad economics news. I think it’s biased wish-fulfillment reportage, and rather embarrassing, given the low unemployment rate and other strong economic indicators. However, I admit to having the same shameful wish, […]
What a pathetic mess in Congress around the Ilhan Omar controversy. I can’t be happy that the Dems are getting what they deserve for perpetuating sclerotic leadership — it’s too scary to think they may blow it and hand Trump a second term. The main thing going on here are overly hysterical fears of anti-semitism, […]
See Pelosi’s “immorality” gaffe here. It’s mortifying to watch Trump play the Democrats with the border wall gambit. It’s high stakes stuff, and Trump has significantly raised the game with tonight’s speech and the planned photo op border tour set for Thursday. I really started to worry when I saw the “immorality” sound bite from […]
Trump’s conjuring of an immigrant terrorist mob marching for the border was a truly superior and well-time exercise in cynical, evil political manipulation. Yet today’s new drug pricing proposal — while less telegenic — may even be a few notches more evil and cynical. As with many cynical and evil political gestures, the Trump drug […]
It’s been about a decade since we released Power and Control: Domestic Violence in America. All these years later, our original web site is still very active, showing hundreds of visits a month. I’ve always been proud of a video widget we introduced in 2010 — it offers a series of short video clips from […]
Over the past year or so, you could be tipsy over all the tipping points that have flown past in in the saga of Big Tech v. its detractors. Pre the 2016 Russia US election cyberwar, only a few fringe groups were worrying about Big Tech monopoly power. Then the election hacking came to light, […]
In our harshly divided partisan world, in which people who like to go to mountains are forever locked in conflict with those who prefer the beach, I’m a mountain person. For years I allowed children and other distracting influences to drag me to the ocean, but I’ve recently been making up for decades of sandy […]
The grotesque political charade of children in cages is just another consequence of decades of hypocrisy and cowardice on the issue of immigration. As everyone knows, we have an economy that depends on millions of immigrant workers, documented or not. In compassionate times, we look away. In times of anger, we demonize. Hypocrisy and cowardice […]
One of the world’s inevitabilities is regulatory capture: when regulators who are supposed to regulate an industry end up serving the industry’s interests, rather than the public’s. Given this immutable truth, outrage over the recent legislation amending the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial regulations strike me as somewhat beside the point. Dodd-Frank got taken hostage a long […]
Kroft: Hi, I’m Steve Kroft. I’m a broad shouldered, good looking, well preserved older man with deep lines on my face, magnificent hair and enough of a serious, journalistic persona that you can tell that it’s important that I’m sitting here doing this assignment. I hope you enjoyed the commercial for a wonderful new pharmaceutical […]
It would be hard to come up with a slimier, more specious argument than the one made by the Trump administration in its pharmaceutical pricing initiative, launched last week. Yes, Trump’s Council of Economic Advisors has found the major culprit in high drug prices: and it is European socialism. The same perpetrators of government-funded single-payer […]
The Jerusalem embassy move is another crude, angry Trump gesture against the political correctness of the elites. It has the added plus for Trump of paying off campaign contributor Sheldon Adelson and the evangelical Mike Pence constituency driven by Millennial visions of the second coming. It’s doubly anti-PC because it is based on a cynical […]
Such great news that Goldman Sachs and Apple are teaming up to create a new Apple credit card! Yes, the great vampire squid that is “wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money” has finally hooked up with the world’s most valuable company, in what is […]
Rolled out of bed today determined to write a blog about the future of America, as it will be determined in the 2018 and 2020 elections. The strands: How to stop right wing populism? Is it a culture problem or is it an economics problem? Some tentative asnwers: It’s not only about what Democrats can […]
Two bad days in Congress didn’t scare Mark Zuckerberg into a profound spiritual and religious conversion. He has not renounced the material world. Zuckerberg seems to be the same smugly poised $64 billionaire that he was before Facebook had its month from hell. Still, although I spend a lot of time fretting about monopolistic technology […]
A couple of fairly crazy, free-thinking professors have formulated a new ideology they call Radical Markets. I’ve read their book — it’s a bizarre but compelling amalgam of Henry George, Adam Smith and extremist libertarianism. One of their insane ideas is something along the lines that no one should own anything, but that property should always […]