All of this means that fetus-phobic countries face economic irrelevance, and when they add the additional toxin of socialism, the path to oblivion becomes even steeper and more slippery.
The alleged advances of the ‘new’ Keynesian economics were really a move backwards to pre-Copernican Aristotle, who never understood the effects and functions of the interest rate in a market system.
The Calvinistic lifestyle of worldly asceticism became a source of growth and capital accumulation.
When one takes a step back and looks at the broad sweeps of economic and financial history, then speculations about whether this manager is in or out, or this company will beat or meet or miss expectations, or what will be in this month’s ISM or GDP revision all sort of fade away, and a bigger picture emerges.
If you pay attention to economic debates you know by now that a celebrity historian named Niall Ferguson made some off-hand comments at a financial conference in which he linked John Maynard Keynes’ homosexuality to some flaws in his economics.
Recently I was interviewing potential new writers for a financial newsletter, which I’ve been asked to help launch, and one of them (a professor of economics) told me that “the financial markets and the economy are two different beasts entirely.” Where do people get such ideas?
Anticipating the future is very difficult, and investors are always guessing and always updating their guesses, but almost never getting their forecasts of the future exactly right. Investors tend to anticipate future changes in GDP growth, but inexactly.
The optimistic scenario for the economy is generally inconsistent with the weakening spate of recent economic statistics this week including ISM and jobs growth.
I don’t give stock tips, but I did explain what my research had found: that one of the most important things to look at when one is compiling a portfolio is the country in which a company is domiciled.
The age old answer to the question, “Is the Pope Catholic?” is, “Yes.” But the answer to the question, “Is the Pope capitalist?” is, “Probably not.”
Mauldin’s material is well promoted and widely read (or at least widely circulated), and from time to time people ask me what I think of his opinion of some matter or another.
The biggest divergence in return occurs in the simulation which varies the country mix away from the standard industry approach of capital weighting.
One of the first things one notices, if one is a regular viewer of BBC productions, is that Downton is unusually ideologically and religiously balanced. One of the other effects one notices when one watches a lot of BBC is that one starts referring to oneself in the third rather than the first person.
Have you ever noticed how many of the most prominent conservative voices in America sound more like liberals? I have, and I believe they are in class all their own: they have a special mission and fit a particular profile.
The Ruling Class of America is not up to the challenge of leading America in the world, partly because it has engaged for several generations now in a process of reverse merit selection.
The deal which Congress struck with the President in order to avoid the alleged horrors of the fiscal cliff is basically a fiscal cave, in which the opposition party caved in on pretty much every issue except one tiny detail.
Douglas Gresham, C.S. Lewis’s stepson, once said to me something like this: “If a young woman unwisely bestows her affections and becomes pregnant, and Christians shame her, they’re causing future abortions.” I think that’s right.
"it’s going to be a five billion-person middle class. This will become the most powerful force in the world. Their demand for our goods and services will set off an economic boom…I believe that we’re heading for not just a sonic boom, but maybe a supersonic boom."
The phrase–surplus population–is what first tipped me off to Dickens’ philosophical agenda. He’s taking aim at the father of the zero-growth philosophy, Thomas Malthus.
Our facile governing class keeps insisting that we are just one more ban or one more campaign or funding stream or program or educational outreach or military action away from the end of evil. But we’re not.
