If you put a frog in a pot of water and gradually turn up the heat, the frog will sit there until it boils to death. If you toss a frog into an already boiling pot of water, the shock…
When the Spanish explored the new world in search of riches, they eventually reached what is now Bolivia and found a veritable mountain of silver. The flow of gold and silver to Spain from Cerro Rico (pictured) and other mines…
Now that the Conference of the Parties 26th Summit on climate change (known colloquially as COP26) is over we can see how the world leaders are responding to a threat deemed by the summiteers to be existential. Various pundits pointed…
“Creative destruction refers to the incessant product and process innovation mechanism by which new production units replace outdated ones. Over the long run, the process of creative destruction accounts for over 50 per cent of productivity growth.” – Joseph Schumpeter,…
A few years ago, as manager of the graduate economics program at the University of San Francisco, part of my job was to recruit qualified students. Consequently, I read hundreds of transcripts from Chinese students. They all had two classes…
On July 9th, the Biden Administration issued Executive Order 14036, “Promoting Competition in the American Economy. It takes a “whole of government” approach to improve our free market capitalist system. Citing the trust busting of Teddy Roosevelt and the New…
I’ve spent the last month as a Peace Corps volunteer deployed to support a mobile vaccination clinic in rural Maine. The mission is to reach underserved communities to make it as convenient as possible for everyone to get the shot….
In 1989, Bill Gates founded Corbis to purchase and license exclusive digital rights to great works of art. Most museums were reluctant to participate. In 1995, Corbis bought the Bettman Archive of 16 million photographs for an undisclosed sum. In…
“The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing. – Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV’s Finance Minister, 1665 The most recent $2 trillion tax…
It is always a wonder when a besmirched and ridiculed financial product becomes mainstream. We remember how, with the artful guidance of Michael Milken, junk bonds, once known as “fallen angels” made the transition to new issue high yield securities….