Ralph Benko

Posted June 12, 2013

George Gilder, whose new book publishes this week, is one of the original pillars of Supply Side economics.

Posted June 05, 2013

This columnist, last week, observed that “The GOP’s moral imperative is in fighting for equal opportunity and equal justice for ‘the little guy.’ It is in default.”

Posted May 29, 2013

My close encounter with Mother Teresa was a chance one, in 1979. This chance encounter taught me everything I know about good macroeconomic policy.

Posted May 22, 2013

Time Magazine recently featured Sen. Rand Paul as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. He was not just on the list. Time placed Paul on its cover for the first, (though likely not for the last time). This may signal the emergence of the Libertarian Moment.

Posted May 14, 2013

Janet Napolitano, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, is on the list of potential Democratic presidential candidates compiled by the extraordinarily astute Prez16.com.

Posted May 08, 2013

The GOP has relapsed into a potentially fatal business-as-usual complacency. The recommendations contained in its high profile but anodyne “autopsy” represent, at best, a band-aid for a party hemorrhaging from a much more fundamental wound: being out of touch with the needs, values, and dignity of the American people.

Posted May 01, 2013

The gold price fell, dramatically, and now is bobbing about. Meanwhile, the prospects for implementing a 21st century gold standard continues to rise. Dramatically.

Posted April 24, 2013

Marco Rubio came under intense fire from the Heritage Foundation last week for his stance in favor of a comprehensive immigration reform. Reform, as it must, includes a path to earn citizenship for illegal aliens who can prove themselves otherwise of good character.

Posted April 17, 2013

Amid an ongoing decline in the price of gold, a major brawl recently broke out in the elite media over…the gold standard. What is this free-for-all all about? And why does it matter?

Posted April 10, 2013

The Fiscal Cliff, the Sequester, and the Continuing Resolutions now are behind us. The next Episode in the Continuing Saga is looming: the Debt Ceiling. President Obama has put down his table ante...

Posted April 03, 2013

Coming up next: a political Battle of Armageddon over repealing Obamacare. The Republicans are attempting to take the majority in the Senate. The Democrats ambitiously wish to take the majority in the House. All hangs on about two dozen races.

Posted November 07, 2012

Americans just cast ballots for president, for the House, and for a third of the U.S. Senate, plus various local offices and referenda in our splendid Quadriennale. It is a moment for reflection … about our expectations of our elected officials. Our national political Narrative is fixated on the presidency while, Constitutionally, the House of Representatives is our key governing body. The presidency — as well as the campaign for that splendid star turn — turns out to be 90% theater and 10% substance.

Posted October 24, 2012

Are central bankers about to embrace the real world? The events at most central banking conclaves are a total, excruciating, bore. The recent gathering of the Federal Reserve’s tribes at Jackson Hole, however, produced an elegant, compelling, presentation by rising star central banker Andy Haldane. Finally, a youth in the banquet hall declaring that the Emperor has no clothes.

Posted October 17, 2012

One of the latent issues of the 2012 presidential race is a referendum on the Bernanke Fed. If Romney is in, Bernanke is out.

Posted October 10, 2012

In the iconic movie Goldfinger the villain, Auric Goldfinger, pursues a nefarious scheme, code-named “Operation Grand Slam,” to contaminate America’s gold horde at Fort Knox, thereby leveraging the value of his own, uncontaminated, holdings.

Posted October 03, 2012

As noted in last week’s column about the rising recognition by authorities in Germany about the virtues of gold, the gold standard is receiving impressive new recognition internationally. The GOP plank calling for a commission to study “possible ways to set a fixed value for the dollar” — with an unmistakable nod to gold — is the most prominent element of the 2012 GOP platform still being heard to “reverberate around the world.” Meanwhile, it continues to gain impressive momentum in the United States.

Posted September 26, 2012

On September 18th, the London office of Deutsche Bank — one of the most respected banks in the world, and a bellwether of elite opinion — published a Global Markets Research paper entitled Gold: Adjusting for Zero. It was written by two esteemed, mainstream analysts Daniel Brebner and Xiao Fu.

Posted September 19, 2012

One of the brightest stars in the free market galaxy is the work of the Hispanic American Center for Economic Research, HACER. HACER provides, among many other key services, a multilingual “Drudge Report” for free market news and opinion, crucial to nurturing the growing embrace of free markets.

Posted September 11, 2012

Paul Krugman, in his New York Times column of August 24, "Galt, Gold and God," rails against an interest in the gold standard, which he attributes to Paul Ryan. Krugman lambastes Ryan, ironically enough, for an observation the latter made paraphrasing Keynes: "'There is nothing more insidious that a country can do to its citizens,' he intoned, 'than debase its currency.'"

Posted September 05, 2012

A Saturday Evening Post reporter asked, in 1932, John Maynard Keynes if there had ever been anything like the Great Depression. Keynes replied, “Yes. It was called the Dark Ages and it lasted 400 years.” While the Great Recession is not so severe as was the Great Depression, it begins to appear that the world is enduring something that could be called “The Little Dark Age.”