Politics

President Trump has declared today “Liberation Day,” because many of his tariffs come into force. His team is taking a gamble that either the law of supply and demand does not apply to trade or that the American public will be uncharacteristically fine with higher prices.

What should economists do, and are we doing it?

While many people have declared the US Constitution to be “crystal clear” on issues of governance, the truth is that much of what the Constitution says is disputed. The first step toward more consensus is understanding that the Constitution is interpreted by fallible people.

What happens to businesses when liabilities exceed assets? They go bankrupt, with the spectacular failure of FTX being front-and-center. However, the Federal Reserve is in the same position but unlike FTX, the Fed can create fictitious assets and pretend that nothing is happening.

With people calling for an audit of the US gold stores at Fort Knox, perhaps we should remember how that gold got there in the first place. Franklin Roosevelt‘s theft of gold from the American people is a crime that still needs to be rectified.

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For the first five months of the 2025 fiscal year, federal spending is coming in at the highest level ever. This is true even when we adjust for CPI inflation.

Warren Buffett is well-known for his investment acumen, and he often makes public statements in favor of capitalism. But his loyalty to the fiat monetary system undermines everything else that he claims to represent.

The Trump administration continues its assault on the First Amendment and the rights of dissenters. The latest casualty is a Turkish graduate student at Tufts University who was arrested by US authorities because she wrote an op-ed in the student newspaper critical of Israel.

Economists like to claim that expectations of more inflation lead to, well, more inflation. Such beliefs ignore the fact that inflation is an increase in the money supply and that general price increases result from fractional reserve-created monetary expansion.