Biden, Central Planning, and Saule Omarova

The fact that someone went to Moscow State University in the Soviet years should not (obviously) automatically disqualify them from holding a position...

Taxing Unrealized Capital Gains: A Bad Idea That Just Won’t Die

Vampires are — so the stories go — extremely difficult to kill, and so it’s somehow appropriate that the same is true, but in reality, of...

A Low Blow: Climate Policy and Europe’s Energy Crunch

This weekend’s Capital Letter (written on Thursday and Friday) was focused on the growing energy crunch in Europe. Today, Javier Blas, chief energy...

‘Climate Risk,’ the Fed, and AOC

The Fed should not have a climate policy, but it’s 2021, and so the central bank has been edging towards having one. CNBC (from March): The...

BlackRock, ESG, and China – an Interesting Combination

We’ve all become rather too used to hearing sermons from BlackRock’s Larry Fink on the importance of including ESG as part of every responsible...

The Central Bank Trap

Given today’s market, it seemed appropriate to turn to “Dr Doom,” and, writing for Project Syndicate, Nouriel Roubini doesn’t disappoint,...

Pushing Back Against Biden’s Tax Cartel

From Deutsche Welle, yesterday: Ireland is set to drop its 12.5% corporation tax rate later this year, Irish media reported on Wednesday. While...

Sic Transit Transitory?

Not the easiest of days for those arguing that the current surge in inflation is “transitory.” Caroline Downey, with some background for NR: The...

Cuba and the ‘Democratic’ Socialists of America

There’s this . . . The New York Times : Shouting “Freedom” and other anti-government slogans, thousands of Cubans took to the streets in...

The War on Meat (Spanish Edition)

The war on meat seems to have spread to Spain: The Guardian: This week Spain’s consumer affairs minister, Alberto Garzón, launched a campaign...

The SEC and Regulatory Creep (Again)

The SEC (from 2020): For more than 85 years since our founding at the height of the Great Depression, we have stayed true to our mission of protecting...

Pending Home Sales: Sticker Shock Shock?

Today’s Capital Note includes a discussion about the rise in home prices — bubble or not and so on. It was written last night, and one of the...

Incentives and Unemployment

I cannot say that this comes as a great surprise. Via the Wall Street Journal : The number of unemployment-benefit recipients is falling at a faster...

Dealing with the Pandemic — An Authoritarian Precedent

There are many lessons, to put it mildly, to be learned (or relearned) from the way that the COVID-19 pandemic has been handled. One of them is the...

Oat Milk and Environmentalism

It is hard to deny that certain forms of environmentalism, often (but certainly not exclusively) when climate change is involved, take on strong...

Inflation — and a Timely NR Capital Matters Webinar Today at 2 P.M. EDT

“Our Fed has done things which no Fed has ever done before . . .” “Yeah, yeah, but your Fed was so preoccupied with whether or not it could,...

Jobs Report: Something for Everyone

Month-by-month economic data always have to be treated with care, but today’s jobs report ought to ease some of the labor-market worries that we saw...

Cyberattacks — First Fuel, Now Beef

Bloomberg: A cyberattack on JBS SA, the largest meat producer globally, has forced the shutdown of some of world’s largest slaughterhouses, and...

The Costs of Net Zero – A Warning from Britain

In a last desperate, if unnecessary, effort to ensure that she would be remembered as one of Britain’s worst prime ministers, Theresa May ensured...

Biden, Gas Prices, and ‘Gouging’

It is no news that Joe Biden’s understanding of how markets work (and the good that they can do) is not the strongest, but it would be nice if the...

Inflation: Over by Christmas?

As Isaac Schorr noted on the home page this morning, today’s inflation news is . . . not good: The Consumer Price Index (CPI), which tracks the cost...

The Biden Jobs Purge

No, no, the Biden administration does not represent some sort of return to Bolshevism (nothing like), but something about its willingness to insist on...

John Kerry, Davos, and the ‘Great Reset’

Last year, the World Economic Forum (“Davos”) announced that it was launching what it modestly referred to as the “Great Reset” initiative: ...

McKinsey: Corporate Social Responsibility, the Putin Way

McKinsey & Company (“our commitment to making a difference in society is embedded in everything we do”) is one of those firms that like to...

Uyghurs? Hong Kong? No Problem: Xi Expected to Speak at (Virtual) Davos

AP: World Economic Forum organizers are expecting leaders including Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, German...

Climate Legislation by Regulation: Now the SEC?

One of the numerous shared characteristics of “socially responsible” investing and the (closely linked) ideology of “stakeholder capitalism”...

Green Bubble Inflating

Writing from the U.K. in an article for CapX, Bill Blain (who “absolutely believe[s] climate change is the biggest challenge humanity faces”),...

Sustainable Industry Sustained by Forced Labor?

“Sustainability” has become a mantra of “stakeholder capitalism,” an expression of corporatism that has been around for longer than often...

Command and Control, Cuomo, and Vaccines — a Bad Combination

Command and control is no way to run an economy. And the more centralized it is, the worse it becomes. We will doubtless be getting a taste of just...

Green Jobs, They Said: Tesla and the Sand Lizard

The Financial Times: Elon Musk’s meteoric rise may have seemed unstoppable in 2020, but the humble sand lizard has put the brakes on Tesla’s...

Sending the Wrong Signal: The Tory Food Police Give a Flavor of Post-EU Britain

So, Boris Johnson and his team have pulled off a last-minute deal with the EU. Tactically, that’s no small achievement, but whether it is a good...

(Another) Climate Warrior Aiming to Bypass Democracy

Whether it’s through their attempts of “legislation” by regulation, litigation, or the pressure of Wall Street’s corporatists, the climate...

Less Meat for You

Back to the kitchen again, I fear. In recent posts, I have written about the war on (mainly) meat. Here, via Ryan Bourne, writing for Conservative...

Nudge, Nudge, Say No More (Meat)

The Daily Telegraph: The [British] Government has established an environmental ‘nudge unit’ to work out how to persuade people into green...

The Climate Warriors are Eyeing Your Plate

The war on red meat, spearheaded by vegetarians (and then vegans) has been going on for years. More recently, the climate warriors have joined in. A...

NASDAQ against Shareholder Rights

The function of a stock exchange is to provide an orderly market for the trading of securities. As part of that, a stock exchange will generally...

New York Takes a (Further) Californian Turn

When it rains it pours. . . . New York — and particularly New York City — has been left in terrible shape by the effects of the pandemic and, lest...

Edward Lazear (1948–2020)

We are deeply saddened to have to report that Edward Lazear, someone we were extremely proud to have included in our roster of authors for Capital...

Central Bankers – The (Latest) Unacknowledged Legislators of the World

I’ve written a bit about how central bankers have been entering the climate wars (and how, regrettably, the the Fed has now enlisted alongside...

After COVID-19: The Next Crackdown, or at Least a ‘Reset’ (Spoiler: Climate Change)

COVID-19 can be a serious disease and it needs to be taken seriously. Recognizing that obvious fact is not the same as supporting the often...

Nanny Boris Johnson, Censor and Food Policeman

I would call British prime minister Boris Johnson a disappointment, but that seems rather harsh on the word “disappointment.” He’s botched...

Going Blue Doesn’t Come Cheap — Arizona’s Tax Misstep

I put up a couple of posts last month about the possibility that Arizona might, by approving Proposition 208 in this November’s vote, impose a sharp...

Lights Out (for the Good of the Planet, of Course)

Many cults demand a degree of performative asceticism and quite a few of them find virtue in the simplicity of a more natural, supposedly prelapsarian...

Raising Arizona Taxes — Maybe (Part 2)

In a recent Corner post, I discussed Arizona’s Proposition 208, which would introduce a new fifth income tax bracket, raising the top rate from 4.5...

Raising Arizona Taxes (Maybe)

California, to be expected, Illinois too, but Arizona? It’s a measure, perhaps, of that state’s changing politics that it may soon be seeing an...

Ending the Illinois Flat Tax (Maybe)

Rather surprisingly, Illinois’s state income tax is a flat tax, charged at 4.95 percent. That may change if a ballot measure for November proposed...

Sweden – and Other Inconvenient Lockdown News

Well, this is awkward. Bloomberg (from last week): It seems increasingly clear that Sweden will suffer a much milder recession than both the euro...

Spain — the Euro Zone’s Latest Weakest Leak

New York’s Restaurant Disaster

With New York City sinking ever deeper into financial difficulty, it’s worth paying attention to this report over on the home page by Brittany...

‘Nothing Is So Permanent As . . . .’

Here’s the Economist from July, describing the deal in Brussels under which (subject to various approvals) the EU agreed both its latest multi-year...