Economics

Center on Wealth & Poverty

Obama Turns Machiavelli on His Head

The most quoted political wisdom from Machiavelli is that “it is better to feared than it is to be loved.”  President Obama’s Middle East policy may well go down as the turning point in U.S. policy in which Machiavelli was turned on his head, setting the stage for the whirlwind of chaos and war. What is one to think about Read More ›

Scott Powell Talks to Students About American Free Enterprise: Its History, Its Critics, and Its Sources of Renewal

The following is a transcript of a recent talk CWPM Fellow Scott S. Powell gave to a crowd of students at Florida Atlantic University.

There have been many civilizations that have come into being over the last 6,000 years—from the ancient Mesopotamians, Egyptians, and Asian civilizations that sprang up around the Euphrates, Tigress, Nile, Indus and Yellow River valleys, to the more recent and advanced Greek and Roman civilizations, which have more directly shaped Western civilization. While each of these civilizations made their own contributions to progress during the times in which they flourished, none of them unleashed the kind of economic development and entrepreneurial productivity witnessed in the first two hundred years of the American civilization. Read More ›

George Gilder: Obama’s FCC Puts Internet, American Innovation at Risk

George Gilder explains his opposition to the FCC ruling on net neutrality, arguing that taxing and regulating the internet like it was 1934 will surely stifle investment and innovation, and will turn bandwidth abundance into scarcity. Writes Gilder: “The Internet is a multifarious engine of real innovations, launching new and transitory monopolies with every new phase of its tumultuous growth. An unnecessary effort to suppress every monopoly would bring all this innovation to a halt.” Continue reading . . .

What does the strong dollar signal?

2015 is off with a bang of higher currency volatility than in past years. Switzerland’s mid-January surprise abandon of its currency peg to a declining Euro — causing an overnight 16 percent upward spike and instant revaluation of the Swiss Franc — looks to be followed by Denmark. The long established exchange-rate of the Krone that Denmark pegged to the Read More ›

Non-Woolly-Minded Fed Critics Make Points

Former Federal Reserve vice chairman Alan Blinder recently asserted in the Wall Street Journal (Jan. 28, 2015) that the Fed “has been performing well,” and that its independence needs to be protected from Congressionally imposed audits and rules. Given the nation’s last six years’ experience, which has witnessed and been subject to the worst post-recession recovery since the Great Depression—in Read More ›

Scott Powell Small

Federal Reserve Needs To Normalize Interest Rates In 2015

Dodd-Frank reform priorities were to increase transparency, decrease risk and protect the taxpayer from too-big-to-fail banks. None of those imperatives has been accomplished. But five years later, the legacy of Dodd-Frank has saddled banks and the economy with increased uncertainty and compliance costs of more than 400 new regulations, many of which aren’t yet finalized. Read More ›

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President Barack Obama gives his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol, Jan. 27, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.
Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

The State of the Union Is a Mess: Honesty Would Be a Good Start

With a new year often comes anticipation and optimism. And this year the State of the Union address will be in front of a new Congress — with a Republican majority in both the House and Senate.

President Obama’s State of the Union speech will likely have its smallest audience to date. That is the price any leader pays for being dissembling on a range of important issues — from Benghazi, to IRS targeting of conservative American non-profits, to keeping your doctor, trading the Gitmo 5 for deserter Bowe Bergdahl — and showing disrespect for the voting public. After all, when after the November 4 election results came in, and Obama said he heard the message of “two-thirds of the people who chose not to vote,” that was final confirmation of rigidity and denial that turns people off.

What America’s domestic and foreign policy failure both now have in common at the outset of 2015 is an “Alice in Wonderland” syndrome — where reality is turned upside down, where nonsense is passed off as truth, where disarray is a plan and stonewalling is an acceptable response.

Unfortunately there are no silver bullets to our current predicament in either domestic or foreign policy. What American people should demand now is not immediate results but more honesty in public discourse about the causes of our national decline and the need for new and different approaches that embrace realistic solutions grounded in principles and institutions that work and deliver measurable results.

On domestic policy, the first order is for Washington to acknowledge the absurdity of dealing with over-indebtedness by piling up more debt or fixing problems with more regulations. Any new legislation or executive order — like a free community college entitlement — that adds to the federal debt should simply be dead on arrival. Clearly a new monetary policy approach is needed by the Federal Reserve, whose six-year experiment with  zero interest rates and money printing has left the poor and middle class entirely behind, while helping big government, Wall Street and corporate officers with big company stock awards get even richer. There is something wrong with Washington policy that has left the vast majority of Americans worse off than they were ten years ago.

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Federal Reserve Needs To Normalize Interest Rates In 2015

Ordinarily, the plunging oil prices experienced during the last three months would be welcomed as beneficial for the economy — lowering transportation costs and stimulating consumer spending. But these are not normal times, and the sharp 45% drop in oil prices can trigger a larger financial market crisis and a recessionary contraction. Prolonged deficit spending and the Federal Reserve’s easy-money Read More ›

The State Of The Union Is A Mess: Honesty Would Be A Good Start

With a new year often comes anticipation and optimism. And this year the State of the Union address will be in front of a new Congress — with a Republican majority in both the House and Senate. President Obama’s State of the Union speech will likely have its smallest audience to date. That is the price any leader pays for Read More ›

Powell: In 2015, normalize the Federal Reserve

Ordinarily, the plunging oil prices experienced during the last three months would be welcomed as beneficial for the economy — lowering transportation costs and stimulating consumer spending. But these are not normal times, and the sharp 45 percent drop in oil prices can trigger a larger financial market crisis and a recessionary contraction. The debt crisis that brought the U.S. Read More ›