Independent Ideas on the Economy, Financial Markets, and Investing

The Politics of Control and Economic Oblivion

Posted on September 9, 2022 by MN Gordon

A recent White House fact sheet declares that President Biden has delivered on promises to cancel $10,000 of student debt for low- to middle-income borrowers. Who’s he really delivering for?

Without question, the student debt crisis is a disgrace. There are roughly 45 million student loan borrowers who owe on the order of $1.6 trillion. Most of this debt is from federal student loans.

Thus, the federal government is responsible for this mess. It supplied the credit. In turn, massive amounts of federal student loans inflated a higher education bubble and an industry of entitled, fake intellectuals.

The business model generally requires signing credulous 18-year-olds up for massive amounts of government backed student loans. These young adults have been told since before they could count that college was the magical path to a bright future. But as tuition costs ran higher, propelled by more and more student loans, the value proposition no longer penciled out.

To be clear, cancelling student debt rewards a corrupted education industry much more than it rewards overindebted students. It allows colleges and universities to perpetuate an inflated product. Continue reading →

Posted in MN Gordon, Politics | Tagged freedom, government meddling, joe biden, labor productivity, student loan debt | 20 Comments

Have We Entered the New Dark Ages?

Posted on September 2, 2022 by MN Gordon

Elizabeth Warren must be a fool. That, or she thinks the rest of us are fools.

The Senator recently took to CNN to publicly fret over the Federal Reserve’s rate hikes. She’s worried they will tip the economy into recession.

What’s Warren afraid of? Her fears have already come true.

The U.S. economy already is in a recession. GDP data alone shows the economy contracted in both the first and second quarter of 2022.

The technical definition for a recession has long been understood to be two consecutive quarters of declining GDP. So, by definition, the economy is in a recession. Everyone knows this, save President Biden and Warren.

Recessions may not be agreeable. But they are necessary. In fact, the present recession is precisely what’s needed to clean up the consumer price inflation mess that Warren and her colleagues made. There are consequences for mass money printing. And they must be reckoned one way or another. Continue reading →

Posted in MN Gordon, Politics | Tagged china, europe, gas, new dark ages, russia, united states | 34 Comments

The Backstory on Our California Exodus

Posted on August 26, 2022 by MN Gordon

Along the 32nd parallel, in San Diego, where the western march of America’s manifest destiny collides with the Pacific Ocean, the sunsets are always perfect.

The view from the coast here is due west. It is also south of the Channel Islands. The setting is completely unobstructed.

Reds, yellows, oranges, purples, and pinks radiate out from the sun as it drops to the waterline. The colors swirl across the sky and dance and glisten off the glassy water.

We watched the great ball of hydrogen slip beneath the liquid horizon while bobbing just offshore on our surfboard nearly every day for several years that encompassed the mid-1990s. Staying in the water for sunset was essential.

The old fishermen who casted their lines off the rocks near PB Point spoke of an extremely rare green flash. If one was lucky, the green flash could be observed just as the sun dips below the waterline. The Jules Verne novel “Le Rayon-Vert” (The Green Ray), published in 1882, described it as:

“A green which no artist could ever obtain on his palette, a green of which neither the varied tints of vegetation nor the shades of the most limpid sea could ever produce the like! If there is a green in Paradise, it cannot be but of this shade, which most surely is the true green of Hope.” Continue reading →

Posted in MN Gordon, Politics | Tagged arbitrage, california, don't california my tennessee, exodus, liberal hellhole, tennessee | 3 Comments

Is the IRS Coming for You?

Posted on August 19, 2022 by MN Gordon

This week, while you were busy working, President Biden signed what he says is, “one of the most significant laws in our history.”

It’s called the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022. The name implies it will reduce inflation. How pumping $750 billion into preferred sectors of the economy will reduce inflation is unclear.

But what is clear, and as confirmed by the Congressional Budget Office, is that the bill will force working-class Americans to pay an estimated $20 billion more in taxes over the next decade.

For the Biden administration, this is all part of its plan to consolidate power, push its socialist agenda, bury workers with crushing taxes, and destroy the middle class with soaring inflation. The Build Back Better Act may have failed. But the IRA, which cobbles together much of the trash from BBB, is now federal law.

We’ll have more on this in just a moment. But first, some context is in order.

Where to begin…

Money provides the means for trading available goods and services. If a person wants to increase their portion of goods and services, they must first increase their productivity. They can do this in one of two ways. By working harder. Or by working smarter. Continue reading →