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Maintaining stability of the dollar

The Federal Reserve’s premature victory lap over inflation reveals a worrisome misunderstanding of the predicament we still find ourselves in. Unprecedented government spending and debt, combined with mounting fears that the debt can’t (or won’t) be repaid, played a misunderstood role in inflation’s rise several years ago. As such, fiscal policy must be part of the solution. Otherwise, expect the recent acceleration of inflation to stick around or get worse, bringing trouble for the new administration. The pressure on the Fed to declare the race over and continue lowering ...

Trump routs America. Americans yawn

The Supreme Court’s narrow vote to permit a New York state judge to formally pronounce a practically meaningless sentence on Donald Trump pursuant to a jury verdict convicting him of 34 felonies was hailed by some as promising news, that there remain institutional guardrails constraining the 47th president from doing anything he wishes after taking office. The truth is different: The once and now-again president will have virtually no guardrails limiting him. This is because he has effectively routed every civic institution that might have provided one, and he’s got a depleted ...

Trump was right about Seth Meyers

If you’re a late-night host with an affinity for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, you’re probably going to love being the target of a Donald Trump Truth Social tirade, uncorked in the middle of the night. Seth Meyers is a millionaire socialist who preaches on TV about how Trump won with a “fake woke boogeyman,” so “anyone suggesting Democrats can win elections by throwing trans people under the bus, let me just say ‘(bleep) off.’” The preaching is more important than anybody laughing. This was Trump’s hot take: “How bad is Seth Meyers on NBC, a ...

Lots of work, little time to waste

Luck, the saying goes, is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. That’s good luck. What about bad luck? It’s the opposite. Bad luck is what happens when lack of preparation meets an ongoing threat. We’re watching this play out now as fires tragically turn large swaths of Los Angeles’ most valuable real estate to ashes, with a massive price paid, including human lives. We’re just starting to read about dry fire hydrants caused by water shortages resulting from dumping water into the ocean to protect smelt fish. Operations budget cuts at the Los Angeles Fire ...

The masses win, the experts lose

The times, they are a-changing. The balance of power in the perhaps eternal battle between the experts and the masses has been shifting starkly, even wildly, with the former losing and the latter gaining clout. That’s been most visible in the series of announcements and selfies emanating from the gaudy precincts of Mar-a-Lago. The experts like to scoff at what they consider a poor man’s idea of how a rich man lives. Those more attuned to the masses can respond that the compound was built with money made from sales of breakfast cereal. The most striking shift came this week on ...

Who will get credit for successes?

Trump will try to take credit for the Biden economy. Don’t let him. And don’t let Republican enablers of Trump or the media give him credit, either. In 2017, Trump inherited a strong economy from President Obama and never stopped congratulating himself for it. He claimed that “we created the greatest economy in the history of the world.” Rubbish. Trump tanked the economy with his trade wars and his botched pandemic response. Now, Trump is inheriting an even stronger economy. On Friday, the Department of Labor reported that the nation added 256,000 jobs in December, ...