05/25/2021
Today P.J. O'Rourke, AC P.J. O'Rourke muses on the folly of government planning, including whatever Biden plans to do with $6 trillion of your money. |
Yakov Feygin & Nils Gilman, Hill Why a broad shift toward industrial policy will not lead to bipartisanship. |
Joe Calhoun, AP It was hard not to hear about cryptocurrencies last week what with the bear market and all. Actually, you can make the case that bitcoin has had two bear markets since mid-April. There was a 27% decline followed by a 27% rally, followed by last week's rout. From its intraday peak in April to |
Allison Schrager, Bloomberg Many people knew this was coming. Cryptocurrencies had one of the worst days in their short history on Wednesday. Bitcoin's price careened, plunging 31% before recovering to a loss of about 10%. Ethereum, Dogecoin and Binance Coin all fell about 20%. The reasons why are still being sorted; crypto is a relatively new market and we don't have much data to make sense of it all. But the crypto curious might find some guidance in another corner of the elite investment world: the contemporary art market. Cryptocurrencies and contemporary art are actually very similar commodities. |
Seth Levine, Integrating Investor I've got inflation on my mind these days. Who doesn't? The U.S. 10-year treasury yield is up nearly 3-fold in the past year, stoked by fears of inflation. Commodities too are rocketing higher for similar reasons (in part). However, I'm not convinced these trends will hold. To me, the deck looks stacked against inflation. Its misinterpretation may present trading opportunities. |
Jeffrey Tucker, RCM In the middle of March 2020 - dark times, never to be forgotten - most governors made a fateful error. In the midst of a disease panic, leading to political panic, fueled by media pressure, and pushed by a scientific elite voracious to try out a new experiment on the human population, governments decided to scrap basic rights and liberties to control a virus. The virus did its thing anyway, and we are now left with the carnage one would expect from a draconian shutdown of normal life functioning. |
Rodney McMullen, CNN Companies like mine must play a role in making sure employees understand the benefits of getting the vaccine, and also incentivize their employees to do so. |
Jerusalem Demsas, Vox Rent relief was the solution to a possible wave of evictions. It ran headfirst into reality. |
Robert Robb, Arizona Republic The business community loved Gov. Doug Ducey's Back to Work program, but everything about its bonuses and incentives is questionable or wrong. |
Tim Worstall, Washington Examiner Failing to understand the current tax system, progressives have talked themselves into a serious policy error. |
Hayes Brown, MSNBC What if, and this may sound wild, businesses paid people more, especially "low wage" workers? |
John Tamny, RCM If you want to act in movies or on television in Hollywood, you must be a member of the Screen Actors Guild. That's why the accession of a "SAG" card is such a momentous achievement for actors. It means they're Hollywood legal as it were. So why does acting professionally require union membership? The answer is very simple: SAG wants to prevent those yearning to be stars from flooding the market, and subsequently bidding starting wages down to zero. |
Jeffrey Buchbinder, LPL Financial Research Monday, May 24, 2021 Top Story Stock Market Gains Likely To Slow |
Richard Moody, Regions Bank |
Cooper Howard, Charles Schwab However, while the risk for a wave of downgrades has waned, yields are low relative to comparable alternatives. |
Liz Ann Sonders, Charles Schwab Inflation has become an obsessed-about topic; with the latest CPI report reinforcing inflationists' fears. Is the Fed right that it's only a "transitory" problem? |
Brian Riedl, Manhattan Institute As structural budget deficits grow to trillions of dollars and politicians promise even more spending, taxing the rich has become a popular solution to finance expanded government. But large tax increases on high earners not only are insufficient to close much of these budget gaps; they would... |
Lawrence Gillum, LPL Financial Market Blog Tuesday, May 18, 2021 |
Carrie Schwab-Pomerantz, CS If being home a lot has you eyeing a remodel, be sure to think about the emotional as well as the financial issues. |
Brian Riedl, The Dispatch A bipartisan coalition has introduced legislation to keep Social Security and Medicare solvent. |
Melissa Gopnik, USA TODAY The $300 supplement is letting people decide what's best and safest for them and their families. They're no longer a captive workforce. |
Bruce Thompson, Washington Examiner The Biden administration has proposed two massive spending and tax plans. |
Robert Bixby, The Hill If we truly want to build an economy that does better than restoring where we were prior to the pandemic, putting the debt on a sustainable path must be part of the solution. |
Ann Carrns, New York Times There was big growth in account balances during the pandemic, but some states are offering promotions to attract even more savers. |
Chris Isidore, CNN Those betting against Tesla shares are doing very well so far in 2021, following a disastrous 2020, as shares have lost about a third of their value over the last four months. There just are fewer people shorting the stock this time around. |
Dylan Scott, Vox Employers are stepping up to support the US vaccination campaign. But they could do more. |
Clyde Prestowitz, New York Post Free-world CEOs, presidents and prime ministers are now being forced by China to make fundamental choices. Do they stand for free speech, the rule of law and human rights — or for making money? |
Sue Halpern, The New Yorker For years, businesses have resisted efforts from the federal government to hold them to robust cybersecurity standards. |
Rani Molla & Peter Kafka, Vox It probably won't look like this for long. |
Katharina Pistor, Project Syndicate The story of Facebook's failed effort to launch a global digital currency and payment system is reminiscent of the historic struggle between secular and religious authorities. One clear lesson for other monetary aspirants is that it is risky business to reach for the crown jewel of state sovereignty. |
Fisher Investments Editorial Staff, Fisher Investments |
Peter Kafka, Vox Amazon isn't competing with Netflix, but it is spending billions trying to figure out Hollywood. Maybe 007 can help. |
Anne O. Krueger, Project Syndicate After declaring that "America is back," US President Joe Biden has been busy reversing much of Donald Trump's toxic legacy. But a glaring exception has been trade policy, where a troubling continuity has cast doubt on the new administration's ability to achieve its broader policy goals. |
Christine Benz, Morningstar Charitable giving offers valuable tax breaks, but it's also worth checking up on a charity's effectiveness. |
J.D. Tuccille, Reason The value of our money may be the latest victim of pandemic-era policy. |
Julie Segal, Institutional Investor Hedge funds generated much larger returns than stocks and bonds for years — but everything changed after the financial crisis. |
Chaim Gartenberg, The Verge Would you spend $2,000 on a Penn Executive Chair? |
Joshua M Brown, The Reformed Broker The fraud coins are crashing. It's actually a good thing. |
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