My new article is up at the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute: “Stuff Does Not Equal Wealth.” This is a revamped version of an older piece I wrote a few years ago. It is essentially a teaching tool with the audience being high school and college women.

Russ Roberts of George Mason University has another solid piece in the Wall Street Journal: “Why Friedrich Hayek is Making a Comeback: With the failure of Keynesian stimulus, the late Austrian economist’s ideas on state power and crony capitalism are getting a new hearing.”
This is a nice rundown [...]

Here’s an excellent interview with John Williams – from ShadowStats – on the International Business Times, via the Gold Report. There are many excellent comments in the piece, including this one:
You are getting happy news from governments, central banks, financial markets, Wall Street analysts and the popular media, which does tend to cater to Wall [...]

Here’s a snippet from a compelling post by Butler Shaffer on the LewRockwell.com blog (regarding a reading of Keynes’ foreword to the 1936 German edition of his General Theory):
Keynes acknowledged that his theory might “expect to meet with less resistance on the part of German readers than from English.”  He added that “The theory of aggregate [...]

I am still receiving some demented emails from emotional readers upset about the following two articles of mine:
- It May Be Financially Irresponsible to Pay Your Mortgage
- Why a Strategic Default May Be Your Best Option
I’ve received almost no rational letters of disagreement from folks who offer up a better solution and try to persuade [...]

From the archives:

 
Here is an interview that I did in early February 2010.
 
Many entities, from the White House to various mortgage banking leaders to self-professed pundits, are trying to put a shame element to borrowers who find themselves with acute negative equity in their homes. Is it possible to successfully shame these people into staying in their [...]

And this is according to an FDIC report.
The names of the banks on the list are never made available to the general public by regulators out of fear that depositors at those institutions may prompt a so-called “run on the bank.”
…Bair confirmed that the pace of bank failures would pick up this year, which would [...]

Citigroup sent this notice out to customers:
“Effective April 1, 2010, we reserve the right to require (7) days advance notice before permitting a withdrawal from all checking accounts. While we do not currently exercise this right and have not exercised it in the past, we are required by law to notify you of this change.”

Ira [...]

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke admits that paper money is worthless.